City schools earn $225K grant
Funds will go toward ‘Building a Legacy in Woonsocket’ initiative
WOONSOCKET — Assistant Superintendent of Schools Jenny Chan-Remka couldn’t have been happier this week.
Not only did the school department earn a $225,000 grant for professional development from the Rhode Island Foundation for this year, it also received that funding for the next two years as well.
“The intent is to close the equity gap by creating a coaching program in Woonsocket for both teachers and administrators,” Chan-Remka said.
The new grant initiative, “Building a Legacy in Woonsocket,” will seek to identify the best teaching practices for local students and then through the coaching program, spread them throughout local schools.
The funding will be applied through several of the district’s teacher training and leadership development partners such as New England Base Camp or the Center for Leadership and Equality (CLEE).
“Our part of the grant was to work around building coaching capacity in the district,” Donna Stone, executive director of New England Base Camp, said as this year’s start up of the grant initiative was celebrated by the participants at a gathering in the Museum of Work & Culture.
Members of the Woonsocket Area Career & Technical Center Culinary program were on hand
to serve hors d’oeuvres for celebration.
The funding will help the different training groups to spread the best practices throughout the schools as the training initiative continues, according to Stone.
“Think of it as a ripple effect; you teach one core group of staff members and then have that expand outward to others,” Stone said.
The other participating training agencies include:
• Generation Citizen, a non-profit support group for civic education that will be working with 7th and 8th grade social studies teachers at the middle school.
• Better Lessons, a coaching organization supporting new special education teachers.
• And, Teach for America, which is working with urban districts like Woonsocket to find staff for hard to fill teaching posts.
Lisa DiMartino, strategic initiative officer for the Rhode Island Foundation, said the Foundation gave out $42 million in grants to organizations and schools across the spectrum of its charitable mission.
The funding award to Woonsocket for Building a Legacy, will continue for three years and help increase “teacher effectiveness and leadership development” during that time, she said.
“They have already begun to use the funding to conduct professional development for the schools,” she said.
School Superintendent Patrick McGee lauded the Rhode Island Foundation at the kickoff event for its support of local schools.
“This is an amazing opportunity for the school department. It is a great opportunity for us to improve teaching and learning and leadership,” he said. “This a tremendous opportunity for us and shows that what we are doing in Woonsocket right now is building a legacy as we move forward and that is huge,” McGee said.