The Cranston Education Advisory Board (CEAB) met on Monday, Feb. 1, in the media center at Cranston High School West.

Featured guests included District Safety Coordinator Paul Olszewski, Cranston Police Capt. Vincent McAteer III and Lt. Jamie Jennings, Executive Director of Educational Programs and Services Joseph Rotz, and Director of Literacy Susan DeRiso. Also present was Jeff Gale, representing the Cranston School Committee.

CEAB chairperson John McCarthy introduced Olszewski, hired last spring as the district’s safety coordinator. A former state trooper, Olszewski gave a descriptive summary of the things he’s been doing since taking his new position, including creating a district-wide safety plan.

“It includes everything from what to do if there is a school bus accident [or] a missing child, to what to do if there is an intruder,” he said. “Each school is very unique, and now we’re developing one plan for each individual school.”

Olszewski cited school layouts and locations as among the factors that make each of Cranston’s schools unique, and therefore in need of their own individual safety plans. He discussed some of the safety features that have been implemented recently, including the card access plans at each school with the hopes of eventually completely eliminating the use of keys. The card access program is currently being used at Cranston High School East, Cranston West, and the three middle schools, and is being started at four of the elementary schools. Hope Highlands will be included next, as it is slated to become a middle school for the 2016-17 school year.

Additionally, security cameras have been installed at 12 schools so far, and safety training has taken place for new staff members, principals, and secretaries.

“Thirty, 40, and 50 years ago, these buildings were not built with safety in mind,” Olszewski said.

At East and West, panic alarms have been installed which are directly in line with the police department and help to quicken the response time of the police officers en route. The police also have direct access to look at the security cameras with views of both the interior and exterior of the schools, helping to pinpoint where the threat is.

Olszewski introduced the topic of ALICE – alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate – training in Cranston, and noted that the police officers who have been involved in that undertaking have done a fantastic job, empowering teachers and students to react to crisis situations such as intruders in the buildings.

Jennings gave a complete overview of the ALICE training as it has taken place in Cranston’s schools thus far.

“I’ve been involved with ALICE training in Cranston since the beginning,” he said. “It came about because of Sandy Hook. We felt that enough was enough. Shelter in place is the same as doing nothing. You lock the doors, sit there and hope that the police can get there quickly enough. The staff and the students are sitting there, they could be doing something.”

According to Jennings, ALICE only enhances safety measures already in place.

“After a lockdown, what is the next step? Is it evacuating out a window, out a door? It’s not just sitting still,” he said. “You need options and the ability to make decisions. It’s no longer a checklist of first you do A, then B, then C. You can jump from A to F, you can do something.”

Jennings told the group that the school and police departments have worked together as a team, and that the transition into working closely with students and educators has been a good one, with a learning curve for all.

“I was a cop walking into education, and I didn’t understand the mindset, but now I understand,” he said. “Ten out of 12 of us are parents and we wouldn’t do anything that we wouldn’t want done for our own kids. Our training is age-appropriate for K to 12. At the elementary level we work one-on-one. We dress down in polos and we sit down with the kids at their level. They’re smarter than we think they are.”

Jennings spoke of laying foundations with the students, preparing them to listen to the adults present during an emergency situation and to act rather than waiting for the police to come.

“The biggest thing that needs to change is the mindset,” he said. “It’s not just the police who can solve this. The average response time for the police to arrive is five minutes. What are you doing for those five minutes? Thirty-seven percent of the time the incident is over in five minutes.”

ALICE training incorporates situational training that Jennings said can be used anywhere, pointing to the Providence Place Mall as an example.

“It’s the same concept as the aftermath of the Station fire,” he said. “Now we’re all aware of our surroundings, we all look for the nearest fire exits. Regardless of age, all of those kids in your class can help you. Through all of the training we’ve been having, we can definitely see a change in the mindsets.”

The other mindset the police department is hoping to change is that of having police presence on school property.

“So often if someone sees a police car at a school, the phone calls come in and parents want to know why the police were at school,” Jennings said. “We want that mindset to change so that having police presence at school doesn’t automatically equal a crisis.”

McAteer gave an overview of the Cranston department’s Office of Community Outreach, of which he is the leader. He explained that school resource officers, or SROs, are also part of that department. Currently, there are four SROs in Cranston – one at East, one at West, one between the three middle schools, and one that is available to both the charter high school and the elementary schools as needed. Those officers are involved in everything that goes on in the schools.

“Communication between the schools and the police department has gone up exponentially,” McAteer said. “We will have a challenge ahead of us next year with the fourth middle school and we’re not sure yet how we’ll be shifting the police officers.”

McAteer encouraged communication with the police department and the forging of positive relationships.

“Your feedback is essential,” he said. “We are looking for your opinions on how best to serve and support the schools. We want to forge relationships early because it makes a huge impact later.”

Following the safety presentation, Rotz and DeRiso presented a brief overview of the goings-on at the Central Administration level, including the recent release of the PARCC scores and updates on the presentation of the new school year budget to the school committee.

Rotz began by expressing his thanks to the police department.

“We appreciate your work, we’ve learned so much at the school level and at the district level,” he said. “We owe you so much and we thank you for everything you do for us. We’re in such a better place because of these guys.”

Rotz began talking about the school budget and the anticipated spending plans for the upcoming school year. The year will be unusual in that there will be a new middle school, a move of sixth-grade into the middle schools, and the full implementation of all-day kindergarten across the district. The new budget incorporates all of those changes, and according to Rotz, has been well thought out.

“We have a pretty tight budget,” he said. “We’ve crunched the numbers, we’ve looked at every option to make this the most cost-effective move. These aren’t just loose numbers. This plan is the best one for kids, and it’s the most cost effective. I think it’s a great plan. The students at the middle school level are enjoying their programming both during the day and after school, and next year they will enjoy their middle school experiences.”

Rotz said there are already transition programs organized to help support the middle school move for the incoming sixth-graders.

“We need your support for this budget, especially when we go to the City Council,” he said. “If we get level-funded, then we have to go back and figure out how to do this with the same money as last year, so we really need that support.”

Later, at the conclusion of the meeting, Gale reiterated the need for support of the budget and encouraged public participation and presence at the upcoming budget meetings.

DeRiso spent some time going over some broad numbers for PARCC scores, not focusing on each individual school specifically, but on some state and district trends, using a couple of schools for the sake of example. She demonstrated the use of a new public portal that is available for accessing and navigating PARCC data, and can be found via the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) website at ride.ri.gov.

DeRiso walked the group through proficiency statistics for both math and English Language Arts, showing how Cranston students compared to those in similar cities and towns, such as Providence, Pawtucket, and Warwick.

“In English Language Arts, we had a 45 percent proficiency rate. The proficiency rate for the state was 35.8 percent,” she said. “We tested about 1,000 more students than Warwick, which is a similar city with similar demographics, and they had 31.8 percent proficient. Providence had 17.8 percent proficient, and Pawtucket had 19.9 percent proficient.”

She noted that Chester Barrows Elementary School didn’t have any students that didn’t meet the standards and had a proficiency rate of 51 percent as compared to the 35.8 percent state proficiency rate.

In the area of math, the state had 24.8 percent proficiency, while Cranston had 23.5 percent, Providence had 9.8 percent, Pawtucket had 13.8 percent, and Warwick had 21.8 percent.

DeRiso said she has asked the state for the statistics for the students who tested on paper versus by computer, having noted some district trends in that area, but those statistics have not yet been provided.

She emphasized the importance of embracing the use of technology in instruction and assessment.

“Technology is the way of the future and we need to interface with that,” she said. “We have a new commissioner and he has said that he’d like to go 100-percent paperless. We’re testing our students in a very different fashion with the use of technology and with the way we’re asking our students to think. With NECAP you could teach to the test, but the Common Core State Standards have changed that. We’re testing to a very different set of standards. This needed to be done. We need to raise our standards.”

DeRiso gave a statistic to support that need.

“Over 40 percent of our kids who went to college needed remediation work at the college level,” she said. “They are not ready for college.”

She spent some time discussing the statistics with regard to poverty levels and test scores and showed some encouraging results for the district students.

“Only 26 schools in the state were high-performing, high-poverty schools, and six of those schools were in Cranston,” she said.

As she concluded her presentation, DeRiso said she is confident about the direction in which students in Cranston are heading based on the first year’s test scores.

“We’ve got a bit of a way to go, but I think we’re going to get there,” she said.

Rotz agreed, saying: “There is always room for improvement, and this is an opportunity for us to get more technology into our schools, to work more on our 21st-century skills. We’re looking at supplementing with online resources, and we’re working on our students practicing taking information, manipulating information and really breaking it down, processing it and coming up with their own point of view, defending their position. We continue to have conversations about how we can work with our students, how they can access this level of assessment. We continue to look deeply at our curriculum and making sure we are embedding common assessments at each curriculum level. Our data teams are digging deep into the data and looking at the strengths and at the areas to work on. Our expectation is for improvement from year to year, but we really need to wait until we have three years of data to see consistent trends before making any huge curriculum changes.”

At the end of the meeting, McCarthy reminded the group that CEAB is on both the ASPEN site and on the school department website. Meeting minutes and handouts are available.

The next meeting will be held on March 7 at Cranston High School East in the media center, but a special meeting will be held on March 2 for the purpose of working on the district slogan, which will be submitted to Jim Dillon on behalf of CEAB. Those with any questions or those interested in attending the special meeting or submitting logo ideas to be considered at that meeting can contact McCarthy at ceab@cpsed.net.

McCarthy also encouraged schools to continue to submit upcoming events to ceab@cpsed.net. He announced the current drama presentation at West, which will take place March 4-6, as well as the CACTC Friday Night Dinners now under way, with advanced reservations recommended for those.