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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Rhode Island
Here’s how Rhode Island women’s basketball opened the A-10 Tournament with a win on Thursday
Watch Sophia Vital’s final shot lead URI women’s basketball over UMass
Sophia Vital goes strong to the basket in the final minute to score what proves to be the game-winner as URI beats UMass 60-58 Wednesday night.
HENRICO, Va. — With Rhode Island struggling on offense Thursday in the Atlantic 10 women’s basketball tournament, the Rams turned to defense for a 52-41 victory over George Washington University.
It was that defense that helped turn a two-point halftime lead to a five-point advantage after three quarters despite not making a field goal. They did, however, make nine of 11 free throws and hold the Revolutionaries to six points in those 10 minutes. The win means a 1:30 p.m. tipoff on Friday against No. 4 St. Joseph’s, a team URI defeated last month.
“You don’t see it very often,” URI coach Tammi Reiss said of not making a field goal in a quarter, although she thinks her team has done it this season. “We hang our hat on defensive. We’re not built as this great offensive team.”
The reason the Rams (17-15 and the fifth seed) increased the lead is because they held the Revolutionaries (13-18, the 12th seed) scoreless for the final 5:15 of the quarter, taking a 38-33 lead after three. The Rams continued that strong defense into the fourth quarter, holding the Revolutionaries scoreless for another 2:01.
“We’re not the best offensive team in the league, but we are a very good defensive team,” Reiss said. “We win games when we defend and rebound. And the difference today, they did that. They stayed locked in no matter how they were shooting, no matter what happened.”
Harsimran “Honey” Kaur, the Rams’ 6-foot-4-inch senior center, had 12 points and 11 rebounds, and junior guard Ines Debroise added 11 points and three assists. Anaelle Dutat, a 6-foot junior forward who leads the Rams with 8 rebounds a game, had 10 to go with six points. Sophia Vital, a sophomore guard, added nine points.
Makayla Andrews had 14 points for GWU, and Kamari Sims added 11.
For the game, URI was 13 for 62 from the field (21%), including 0 for 15 in that third quarter. The Rams, however, held GWU to 30% shooting (15 for 50). The Rams had 18 offensive rebounds, committed a season-low six turnovers to GWU’s 18, and made 21 of 26 free throws (80.8%) while the Revolutionaries went 6 for 12 from the line (50%).
The free throws surprised Reiss.
“You’ll never see that stat for us,” she said. “We will never shoot more free throws than our opponent. We just don’t.”
The two teams met just five days prior, with GWU winning, 54-46, at URI in the regular-season finale. Reiss set three goals for her team in the rematch: Take care of the basketball, force turnovers and limit GWU to 50 points.
“We hit all three game goals today,” she said. “When we do two of three, we always win. When we do one of three or none like we did against GW last game, we don’t win basketball games.”
After GWU tied the game at 33 at 5:15 of the third quarter, URI scored the next eight points for a 41-33 lead with 8:22 to go in the game. GWU responded with basket in the paint and a pair of free throws, but Kaur hit two from the line for a 43-37 lead with 5:50 left. A 3-pointer from senior guard Sophia Phillips (six points) extended the lead to 46-37 with 4:28 left, all but icing the game.
Kaur said she and her teammates didn’t get discouraged when struggling to score. They kept “the main thing the main thing.”
“Defense and rebounding was the main thing for us coming back from the last game,” she said, referring to the loss to GWU.
Debroise said the key was making sure the offense didn’t dictate the defense. They concentrated on getting stops on the defensive end and rebounding.
“We find ways to score,” she said. “If we’re not shooting well or making every shot, we find a way to score and get the win.”
The reward for the win, which snapped a two-game losing streak, is a quarterfinal matchup Friday against third-seeded St. Joseph’s. The teams met once in the regular season, with the Rams prevailing, 70-65, on Feb. 19.
Reiss likes her team’s chances if they hit those goals again.
“That’s what I’m most proud of,” Reiss said. “The team was locked into our game plan, and they executed it for 40 minutes.”
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — Rhode Island Senators David Morales and Mark McKenney will be joined by several organizations to rally support for the Freedom to Read Act.
That package of bills would exempt libraries from book banning efforts, and “Affirm the free speech rights of authors, publishers and readers in Rhode Island.”
The event is set for 3 p.m. Thursday at the library in the state house.
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PROVIDENCE – A Warwick social worker labeled “the five-minute queen” for the speed with which she shuttled through clients will serve three months’ on home confinement for her role in a scheme to defraud the government and insurers while robbing patients of crucial opioid treatment.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy on Wednesday sentenced Mi Ok Song Bruining, 64, to three years of supervised release, with the first three months on home confinement, for conspiring with her former boss to commit health care fraud out of a Providence opioid treatment center.
McElroy also ordered Bruining to perform 100 hours of community service, and pay $100,000 in restitution.
“People rely on their mental health professionals … for guidance,” McElroy said while acknowledging that Michael Brier CEO of Recovery Connections Centers of America, was the ringleader.
Bruining, who will lose her license, expressed regret in court.
“I profoundly apologize,” she said.
How the scheme went down
Brier ran Recovery Connections Centers of America, with offices in Rhode Island and Massachusetts from headquarters on Wickenden Street, with Bruining acting as the supervisor.
Under the scheme, the office billed insurance companies for 45-minute counseling sessions per patient when each actually received only a few minutes of attention.
Bruining, who previously pleaded guilty, was known as the “five-minute queen” for her ability to shrink counseling sessions to mere minutes. Authorities accused her of training staff on the tactics, equipping one with a bell to ensure that patients moved briskly along.
Upon their arrest in 2023, authorities called the scheme “one of the most brazen and egregious examples of health care fraud the FBI has seen here in Rhode Island in recent history.”
McElroy sentenced Brier, of Newton, Massachusetts, to 98 months in prison for defrauding Medicare while depriving patients struggling with substance-use disorders of needed treatment. He must pay $3.5 million in restitution.
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