Linda Borg The Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE — In the latest flare-up of its dispute with management, the Providence Teachers Union is calling for an end to the state takeover of the Providence Public Schools.
In a fiery news conference Monday, union President Maribeth Calabro called the takeover, which began 16 months ago, an “abject failure” and asked the General Assembly to either repeal the Crowley Act, which authorized the takeover, or to support legislation to accomplish the same goal.
But a spokesman for the Rhode Island House said the state takeover was approved by the state Council of Elementary and Secondary Education, not the legislature.
Calabro is calling for a new commissioner and a new Providence superintendent, probably by late spring or early summer. Supt. Harrison Peters arrived here in January 2020, right before the pandemic struck.
Calling the union’s recent no-confidence vote a “powerful indictment” of the leadership of Peters and state Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green, Calabro said, “After the Johns Hopkins report [detailing conditions in the School Department], we supported the takeover. Our hopes have since died.”
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