Rhode Island
How a Central Falls school is inching its way towards year-round schooling • Rhode Island Current
Angelo Garcia likens our current education system to a snow globe. Everybody basically agrees on what should be the bits of educational snowflake materials – the math, science, geography, even recess. Once in a while the globe might get shaken up by demands for accountability, radically changing reading instruction, or whatever.
But in time, with hardly anyone noticing, the snowflakes quietly drift back down to what Garcia, co-founder and executive director of the Segue Institute for Learning, calls “the same inflexible, contained environment.”
With, I might add, the same lackluster results.
For 15 years, Garcia and Segue co-founder, Melissa Lourenco, have been experimenting with how to rearrange the necessary elements of education, but get past its conventional confines.
For example, kids’ summer learning loss is an accepted liability of the agrarian school calendar. For students at this school in Central Falls, the poorest community in Rhode Island, it’s dire.
On a recent, hot summer day, Lourenco took me on a tour of what initially looked like a typical, remedial summer school, with a phonics lesson here and math puzzles there.
A Spanish-dominant group of squirmy little kids hovered around a young instructor helping them unpack the meanings and feelings of emotion words. Would, for example, getting a shot at the doctor’s office make you worried, or “preocupada?” The kids erupted with anxious chatter. The adult switched easily and often between English and Spanish, to translate and commiserate.
The instructor is one of six extra adults who are either doing their teaching practicum through the Rhode Island School for Progressive Education or are completing a B.A. through College Unbound. These programs fast-track would-be teachers who need experience.
Several schools work with these programs since education badly needs more teachers, but especially teachers of color. Other than maternity leaves, Segue has had zero teacher turnover, but they’ll need new teachers eventually. For them, the extra adults helped make the student groups smaller, giving more attention to students who need as much help as they can get.
The kids in that squirmy group are incoming kindergartners getting a jumpstart on language skills, and making friends and adult allies. Few summer programs would bother with students who don’t yet need academic remediation.
The Segue summer strategy has the groups – K-8 – cycling through six “stations” Monday through Thursday. Each station lasts only 25 minutes, so they don’t have time to get bored before moving on to a new subject and place. Three stations are academic – math, English Language Arts and the social-and-emotional learning one we observed. The other three stations promote creativity and collaboration with soft-sell academics woven throughout – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), arts and crafts, and recreation, which is essentially organized recess.
Summer staff experiment beyond the regular curriculum in search of lessons that might be more effective or engaging for use during the regular school year.
On Friday, a.k.a. Fun Friday, kids go bowling, to the beach, the movies, or whatever the grant they got for the purpose can afford. It’s a huge draw.
Indeed, a fifth-grader steamed up to me singing the praises of “all the fun stuff,” while proudly assuring me that while he still had “bad behavior” feelings, “I know how to behave.” He’s apparently a handful, but strongly motivated to stay in the program.
Lourenco says the older kids moan and groan about summer school, but they come. During the regular year, Segue’s 360 urban students have a remarkably low chronic absenteeism rate, 10%. But the 120 enrolled in the summer program come almost as faithfully.
A fifth-grader steamed up to me singing the praises of “all the fun stuff,” while proudly assuring me that while he still had “bad behavior” feelings, “I know how to behave.
A cohort of kids referred for chronic absenteeism work with a social worker who brainstorms with the older kids about how they could get themselves to school regularly. The younger students attend the academic program to make up for lost time and learning while the social worker engages with their families, who should be getting them to school.
Other students come because they have special needs. A few come because their families badly need child care and plead their case with school officials.
Garcia insists that Segue’s is not really a summer school, “but an extension of the school year. There’s always a need to prevent regression, which is why we’re talking about a year-round school.”
Lourenco experienced year-round schooling in another state. She started “whispering” the possibility to the staff, and found them to be surprisingly open. The school would stay within their 185-day year, but take intermittent two weeks off for, say, a fall break. The breaks would be timed differently from the other public schools so families aren’t competing with the rest of the state for flights or space at the Children’s Museum.
To boot, Garcia believes such a year-round schedule would ease teacher burnout as well as staunching learning loss. Teacher burnout is as big a problem as learning loss and probably contributes to it.
That said, teachers already work more weeks than is typical, starting the first week of August. While that sounds like a deal-breaker for many, Segue’s teachers stick around and their chronic absenteeism is zero.
“Obviously,” Garcia says, “Segue is not for everybody.”
But it’s not a snow globe either.
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Police bodycam footage shows the moments officers arrived to the scene of a deadly mass shooting in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
The shooting on Feb. 16 at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena killed Rhonda Dorgan and Aidan Dorgan, the ex-wife and son of the shooter, who died by suicide.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.
Gerald Dorgan, Rhonda’s father, died from his injuries this week. His wife, Linda Dorgan, and family friend Thomas Geruso remain hospitalized.
Around five minutes after the first officer arrives, he beings helping paramedics with a man who identifies himself as Aidan. Twelve minutes in, Aidan Dorgan is transported to the hospital, where he would later die from his injuries.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting www.thehotline.org or texting LOVEIS to 22522.
For the last 10 minutes of the footage, the officer then begins helping paramedics transport the other three gunshot victims.
The video ends with police prepping witness interviews.
The shooting rocked the Pawtucket community. Chris Librizzi, head coach of the Blackstone Valley Schools hockey team impacted by the shooting, said the players and coaching staff “are devastated over the events that took place at Lynch Arena on Monday and intimately affected one of our teammates.”
As authorities continue investigating the shooting in Pawtucket, three patients remain in critical condition.
“We will lean on each other and support one another, as we have always done as a team,” he added.
Pawtucket police said two handguns were found at the scene after the shooting, a Sig Sauer P226 and Glock. Other weapons have been seized at the suspect’s storage unit in Maine.
Investigators continue reviewing all video evidence from before, during and after the shooting, including surveillance footage from the Dennis M. Lynch Arena, police body-worn camera footage and other records — a high school sports livestream captured the shooting from a distance — police said.
A man has died after a shooting in Cranston, Rhode Island, and investigators say a suspect was later involved in a car crash in Swansea, Massachusetts, that killed two other people.
The shooting victim was found Thursday on Legion Way, shot multiple times in the chest, Cranston police told NBC affiliate WJAR-TV. He was taken to Rhode Island Hospital where he later died. His name has not been released.
The suspect initially fled on foot, setting off a shelter-in-place order while investigators searched the area.
Police said Friday that investigators identified a suspect vehicle, which was later spotted by Massachusetts State Police. A trooper followed the car down Route 6 and Interstate 195, but stopped when it crossed back into Rhode Island. The car was later involved in a crash on Route 136 in Swansea, Mass.
Swansea police say that crash on Route 136 (James Reynolds Road) resulted in the deaths of two other people.
According to the Swansea Police Department, two officers saw a white Infinity G37 speed past them around 12:18 a.m. Friday on Route 6, otherwise known as Grand Army of the Republic Highway. Moments later, officers observed that the vehicle had crashed into the side of a blue Subaru Ascent that had been traveling southbound on Route 136.
Both vehicles sustained catastrophic damage, police said.
The vehicle that was struck was fully engulfed in flames. First responders and bystanders tried to extinguish the fire, but both occupants — a man and a woman — were pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Their names have not been released.
The 28-year-old Infinity driver, who struck the victims’ Subaru, was taken to Rhode Island Hospital with serious injuries and later into custody by Cranston Police. They have not been publicly identified at this time.
Swansea police said they are aware that the Infinity was the subject of a police pursuit, and know the driver was wanted in connection to the Rhode Island homicide investigation. While Swansea police had been alerted to be on the lookout for the suspect’s vehicle, however, they say they were not involved in the pursuit and were not pursuing the vehicle at the time of the deadly crash.
The crash in Swansea is under investigation by Massachusetts authorities, including state police and the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office. Meanwhile, Cranston police said they would give an update on their investigation around 1 p.m.
House Speaker Shekarchi unveils 2026 RI housing legislative package
House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi’s nine-bill package for 2026 seeks to cut red tape and relax rules on parking, dividing lots and staircases.
House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi is once again taking aim at the regulations he says are stifling new homebuilding.
The Warwick Democrat unveiled his sixth annual suite of housing legislation on Thursday, Feb. 26, a few weeks after announcing he would not be running for governor this year.
“We are still trying to play catch-up for all the years that Rhode Island was dead last in the country for new housing starts,” Shekarchi said. “While Rhode Island remains a relatively affordable option for people moving here from other states, our own residents are too often priced out of the neighborhoods they grew up in.”
The legislative text of the nine-bill housing package, and with it the specifics of how it would work, were not available for Thursday’s news conference.
But highlights of the package, according to summaries, include:
- Infill housing. Allow property owners to divide lots in single-family zoning districts, creating multiple dwellings instead of one, provided they have water and sewer service.
- Parking maximums. Put new limits on how much off-street parking communities require for new apartment buildings.
- Homeless Bill of Rights. Expand the state’s Homeless Bill of Rights to require 15-day notice to the occupants of encampments before local authorities clear them.
- Emergency shelters. Let communities build temporary shelters, such as the ECHO Village Pallet shelter in Providence, during a state of emergency.
- Stairs. Legalize the construction of four-story apartment buildings with a single staircase.
- Affordable housing taxes. Overhaul the tax system for income-restricted housing covered by the state’s “8 Law.”
Is land-use reform working?
Since Shekarchi was elected speaker in 2021, the General Assembly has passed dozens of bills he backed that tweaked state land-use statutes or streamlined the process for building.
How successful this approach has been is subject to debate.
Many local elected officials wary of development in their communities continue to rail against efforts to erode their power over construction.
Others in the growing Yes In My Back Yard movement see Rhode Island’s piecemeal approach as inadequate in comparison with the scale of the affordability problem and what other states are doing.
As evidence that his changes are making a difference, Shekarchi said Rhode Island saw a 70% increase in building permits in 2023 and a more modest increase in 2024. (Statistics for last year were not immediately available.)
Gov. Dan McKee’s 2030 plan calls for 15,000 new housing units built by that year.
Democratic primary challenger Helena Foulkes is slated to roll out her housing plan on Monday.
It is expected to include a millionaires tax to fund affordable housing, a revolving fund and target of 20,000 new homes.
What would the new laws do?
Letting property owners put multiple homes on a plot of land is one of the most direct ways that lawmakers can encourage the construction of more homes, but it is also one of the most controversial.
That’s especially true in areas zoned for large lots and single-family homes.
How far the new bill allowing lots to be subdivided in single-family zones goes is unclear. It is sponsored by Rep. Stephen Casey, D-Woonsocket.
Legislation setting maximum parking requirements for new developments, introduced by Rep. Joshua Giraldo, D-Central Falls, would apply to areas accessible by public transit.
Critics of off-street parking requirements say they make it harder to build new apartments and make the units that are built more expensive.
Shekarchi proposed the emergency shelter bill last year. It passed the House and died in the Senate.
It was the result of how long it took state officials to navigate Rhode Island’s building code and open the ECHO Village Pallet shelter in Providence.
The staircase bill, sponsored by Rep. June Speakman, a Warren Democrat and chair of the House’s home affordability study commission, follows a wave of cities and states relaxing rules on how many exits are required in new construction.
Currently, the state building code requires two stairways in buildings with more than three stories, and fire officials have opposed all efforts to change that.
Speakman’s bill would allow four-story buildings with a maximum of 16 units with a single staircase.
Supporters of single-stair buildings say they allow development of small sites that would otherwise sit vacant and allow family-sized units with more light and better ventilation.
A previous Rhode Island single-stair bill would have allowed six stories, but it died in committee.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order in mid-February to study the idea.
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