Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Central Falls Supt .Gallo given hero’s welcome!

By

Gallo receives warm reception from R.I. tax group

By Neil Downing

Journal Staff Writer

NEWPORT – Central Falls School Supt. Frances Gallo was given a hero’s welcome on Saturday when she addressed the winter meeting of the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition (RISC), a group that generally supports lower taxes and smaller government.

About 280 people – including business owners, some elected officials and some candidates for public office – gave Gallo a standing ovation when she spoke at the meeting, held at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Goat Island.

So, after firing all the teachers at Central Falls High School – she gives a speech to the RISC Winter Meeting?  just awful!

The RISC is a right-wing, anti-tax, anti-union organization.  

check out their site:

Rhode Island Statewide Coalition

and this:

http://www.statewidecoalition….

So to recap – we have a superintendent who just fired an entire high school’s staff of teachers addressing the Winter Meeting of a right wing, anti-tax, anti-union organization.

Frances Gallo – today’s Worst Person in the World!!!!

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. And then there is this from another right wing wacko.

    <

    p>

    It was her order that prompted a rare statement of support from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the very night the Central Falls school Board of Trustees voted 5 to 2 to terminate 93 teachers, support staff and administrators at the city’s only high school.

    “I applaud Commissioner Gist and Superintendent [Frances] Gallo for showing courage and doing the right thing for kids,” Duncan said.

    <

    p>http://www.projo.com/news/cont…

    <

    p>Strange alliances?

      • Isn’t Arne Duncan supporting the kids? Since 50% of the teachers can be rehired I fail to understand why this is such a big issue.  

      • …because I support a lot of what I’ve heard Duncan doing with his “Race To The Top” program, but I don’t support this move.  Classic example of using a sledgehammer where a scapel would have been more appropriate.

        • Firing all and rehiring some teachers is a strategy encouraged by Race to the Top and very much in keeping with Duncan’s overall philosophy and approach. States and districts had to pledge to adopt these kinds of strategies to be eligible to apply for RTTT grants.

          <

          p>As the piece recommended by Portia points out, there is no research base to recommend Duncan’s sledgehammer approach to school improvement, and as the Chicago Tribune and Washington Post  have reported, Mayor Daley’s and Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 efforts in Chicago were, on balance, not helpful and had some devastatingly negative consequences, including increased youth violence. They certainly were not the unmitigated success story claimed when Duncan was appointed secretary of education. This is from the Tribune article:

          <

          p>

          Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city’s school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.
          Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found.

          The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 — that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn’t lived up to its promise by this, its target year.

          <

          p>Read Diane Ravitch’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, for a good explanation of the philosophy driving Duncan and too many other “reformers,” or read the Washington Post on the book:

          <

          p>

          Diane Ravitch, an education historian, now renounces many of the market-oriented policies she promoted as a former federal education official with close ties to Democrats and Republicans. In large part because of her change of heart, Ravitch’s critique of the reform ideas that prevail in government, philanthropies and think tanks is reverberating in the world of education.

          “In choosing his education agenda, President Obama sided with the economists and the corporate-style reformers,” Ravitch writes in her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” circulating in advance of its general release Tuesday.

          <

          p>As I said, it’s a disappointing outcome from Obama’s education secretary but not inconsistent with an approach to education based on corporate values and principles, an approach that has not worked and is unlikely to improve things for most schoolchildren in this country.

          <

          p>It’s not surprising that right wingers in Rhode Island and elsewhere are applauding those applying the sledgehammer to our public schools, but why are our “progressive” political leaders pushing this nonsense?

  2. Thanks to Gallo for having the guts to do this. We need to empower these managers to weed out the bad players. Too bad we can’t hire Gallo to work for the Governor!

    • All the teachers, good, bad and indifferent belong to the union. Where is mediation in RI? I know that the teachers initially refused to extend their work day without additional compensation, but two opposing sides always start out at the extreme end of bargaining positions. Maybe they had to be pushed to the wall to make concessions, but this is taking on the aura of the anti-union hysteria of the 30’s and 40’s.

      • and sometimes you just have to reboot!

        <

        p>

        That high school and five other schools in Providence have been identified by the state as chronically low-performing and must make major changes to avoid being closed.

        The turnaround model requires a new principal and governance structure and allows no more than half the teachers to be rehired.

        Gist on Tuesday said she had accepted Gallo’s proposal. The
        superintendent has 120 business days to submit to Gist her proposal for overhauling the school.

        <

        p>Education has problems all over the country. We have tried man remedies and few have improved things. The Boston system still sucks and how much do tax payers flush down the toilet every year. I like Arny Duncan’s plan of firing everybody, including the Principal and starting fresh.

        <

        p>For the dissenters of this idea, why not give it a chance. This is the kind of thing we need to do with a lot of programs in the country. Try it and see if it works. This healthcare debate would have a lot more legs behind it if we could try it in a few states and then realize it’s a great improvement… or it totally sucks and would have bankrupted the country if we implemented it nationally.

        <

        p>So if Gallo succeeds with a new crew, young energetic teachers (paid less) who can improve the horribly substandard schools then it could serve as a good model.

        <

        p>How could things be any worse than they were?

        <

        p>PS I hate unions and I enjoy ANY move that spanks the movement that has ruined this country over the last 30+ years.

        • unions.  Over the last 30+ years they haven’t had enough power (members) to hurt anyone but themselves. I can think of a few other things that may have contributed to our downslide over the last 30+ years.

        • Like paid vacations?

          <

          p>Like a 40 hour work week?

          <

          p>Like paid sick leave?

          <

          p>Like health insurance?  

          <

          p>How about reasonable working conditions?

          <

          p>How about pensions?  You like pension plans?

          <

          p>Yeah.  Betcha do.  Thank the unions, JohnD.  Instead of crying for the good old days of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.    

            • You thank them by announcing you hate unions?  You have an interesting way of thanking them.  My view (and I am not a union worker, by the way) is that unions changed the work culture that most of us currently enjoy.  They sent the benchmark years ago, and are still fighting for worker rights.    

    • …you have to believe that all the teachers are “bad players”.  Really – all the teachers bad at their jobs?  It’s their fault that the district they work in has a high poverty rate and the various other related problems?  These teachers should be APPLAUDED for being willing to work in such a system in the first place!  Do you really know anything about this situation or is it just another excuse for you to dump on public servants?  (I think I know the answer, BTW.)

      • I don’t have to believe ALL teachers are bad. The procedure in place allows up to HALF of the existing teachers to be rehired. Although frankly even if ALL of them were fired permanently it would be worth it if the plan succeeded and the school improved.

        <

        p>WOuld you agree if they fired all the teachers and the new teachers succeeded and the school starting flourishing? This is about the STUDENTS and not the TEACHERS after all. The end goal is about educating the kids, not supporting unions or anything about the workforce… right?

    • Thanks to Gallo for having the guts to do this. We need to empower these managers to weed out the bad players. Too bad we can’t hire Gallo to work for the Governor!

      • …but sorry, Dr. Goebbels, repeating something often does not make it any truer or more worthwhile a contribution to the discussion.

        • Goebbels references don’t appear often in the Christopher oeuvre.

          <

          p>Fundamentally, JohnD simply does not care about policy here. He cares about what makes him feel good as he says above. The education of his own children is not involved.

          It seems that this story is going to continue to act as a launching pad for the Taunt Brigade for some time now. I’m wondering whether there’s anything we could possibly discuss about it intelligently — other than to pretend that this is something JohnD wishes to “discuss”.

          • …(and yes, I did wonder whether someone would accuse me of triggering Godwin’s Law, not that you did) I made specific reference to Goebbels because he is the one to whom is attributed a quote along the lines of, “If you tell a big enough lie often enough it becomes the truth.”

            • and I also knew you wouldn’t be fully comfortable wandering into Godwin territory.

Archives