Rhode Island School Fired all Teachers
It is very shocking news spread on February 23, 2010 in A Rhode Island school district as the school has voted to fire all the teachers at an underperforming school. Due to the cause of the school’s poor performance last year, the school district’s Board of Trustees are planning to discharge all faculties including, the principal, three assistant principals and 74 teachers would be sent home when the school year comes to an end.
Central Falls High school is one of the lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island. Central Falls high school has about 800 students, but only about 48 percent of them has become graduate in four years. It is in a community where median income is $22,000. The Central Falls Teachers Union says “it is reviewing legal options and hasn’t decided what action to take.”
The superintendent at Central Falls School District, Frances Gallo announced this month, she has to several options, one is called the ‘transformation model’, which includes a series of changes that teachers agree to adopt and another is the ‘turnaround model’, which means firing every teacher at the troubled school. So, she had chosen another option ‘turnaround model’. She said, “This is much more than I would have expected that any union would play with the lives of 50 percent of their population.”
The school’s directors said, out of 800 students, half the students are failing in every subject, with 55 percent skilled in reading and 7 percent talented in math.
Frances Gallo asked to the teachers at the school board meeting on Tuesday, to work perhaps twenty-five minutes more per day and help tutor the students weekly. Gallo also offered the teachers to discuss about education and set two weeks during summer holiday for paid professional development.
