There Will Be Tempered Air

On Thursday, February 20, the School Construction Committee met to make a recommendation about the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems for the new builds at Frenchtown and Hanaford. It was a very thoughtful and engaging conversation. Ultimately, the SCC recommended a hybrid approach, which will allow for the possibility of all-electric buildings someday, with gas-fired burners in place when the buildings open. 

Also, a big part of the conversation that night was an in-depth discussion of the tempered air that WILL be in place in the new buildings. The new buildings will have a condensing fan and a cooling coil to dehumidify the hot air. This means the temperature of the air leaving the HVAC system will be lower than the temperature of the air entering the system. This is a helpful diagram to better understand tempered air: 

This diagram shares the amount of spaces that will be fully air-conditioned (purple) and the areas that will have tempered air (green): 

The green spaces will feel cooler on those very hot days in late May and June, as well as August and September. They won't feel air-conditioned, but there will be a difference between the temperature of the air circulating in those green spaces. It will make those rooms more comfortable and manageable for teaching and learning. 

Thank you to our construction partners for helping us to bring this HVAC system recommendation to the School Construction Committee. This decision is an important step in our process. The work of the Master Plan will continue over the next several months, with the hope that we break ground on these projects in January of 2026. 

We Are Better Together

The Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns has sponsored events to discuss education funding this year. Municipal Leaders, Elected Officials (both Town and School), and School Leadership have been invited to attend. East Greenwich has been well represented at both. Patricia Sunderland, the Director of Finance, presented at the first one on November 15, 2024. Dr. Eugene Quinn, Vice Chair of our School Committee and the Chair of the Finance Subcommittee, was at both events as well, and while not presenting, engaged the speakers thoughtfully at both events. 

The early numbers from the Governor's Draft budget have been reviewed, and it looks daunting for us in East Greenwich. See below: 

This is a slide from the most recent education funding formula event on Friday, February 7. The funding circumstances in East Greenwich were featured in the presentation. We stand to lose more than $842,000 in state aid for next year, and while that feels like a lot of money (which it is), we are being propped up this year by a one-time poverty stabilization payment. In the state funding formula, if an education community's state share declines by more than 2% (which ours did - more on why below), and the calculated aid is less than the previous year (which it is), there is a safety valve. Please note: our poverty stabilization safety valve this year is more than $1 million. In essence, in the current funding formula, without the poverty stabilization, we would have been reduced more than we could have been allocated by the Town at the full 4%. 

Why is this happening in East Greenwich? I worked with Dr. Quinn to come up with a simple way to explain this situation. In short, the median income in EG rose 16.1%. The result: we have the highest ratio to the state median income (191.61%) of any community by far. As a point of comparison, Little Compton is the second highest at 166.86%. 

At the event on Friday, while searching for something appropriate to say, I was buoyed by the comments of Ralph Mollis, Town Manager of North Kingstown and former Secretary of State. Mr. Mollis pointed out that communities like East Greenwich are being hurt by the funding formula to help support other cities and towns in the state. While he agrees that much should be done to help struggling communities, it should not be at the expense of others. In his words, "This is a red flag." 

$842,240 is a substantial amount of money. We will not be able to recoup this by freezing our supply lines. We will not be able to recoup this by failing to fully fund our Facilities Budget, which we have done for the past two years, to my chagrin. We will not be able to recoup this in any simple way. It will take all of us. 

As the official liaisons from their respective public bodies, Caryn Corenthal and Dr. Quinn sat down with Town Manager Andrew Nota and me this week to begin this complicated conversation in advance of our Joint Meeting. With the reality that the Town allocated the full 4% last year and is publicly discussing ways to increase our overall Master Plan amount to meet the needs of our schools, they are demonstrating through their actions their partnership with the School Committee. The four of us have committed to meeting once a month throughout the budget process. 

There will be no finger-pointing. No accusations about what happened in budgets past. We will be better together. 

I invite you to participate actively in our budget process this year. We are working to preserve the conditions that produce the educational outcomes this community expects. We will need your help. 

The truth is, we are better together. 

Learning is About Change

It's the fundamental principle in our profession: learning is about change. We start with the basics in elementary school, teaching little ones letters and numbers, and progress all the way up through advanced courses in high school. We build and scaffold learning so that all students can grow on their own unique path to fulfill the Vision of a Graduate: to be knowledgeable, connected, reflective, and skilled. 

But it can't just be about our students. The adults in their lives, faculty, staff, and families, we have to grow alongside our students as well. That's hard to do. Change is hard. It's uncomfortable but necessary. 

Photo courtesy of The Huffington Post

When I am in front of a group of people and struggling to get their attention, I recall the feedback I received as a first-year teacher. Loretta Jene, whom we called Yoda not just because of her small stature but because every word was full of wisdom, accurately told me after my first teacher observation, "Mr. Ricca, you use your voice to control your class. You need something else in your bag of tricks." She was right. 

It was uncomfortable for me to hear that feedback. I was proud to know I could control my classes with my voice. It was more challenging to try something I wasn't sure would work the next time I needed to quiet my class down. There were a few missteps before I settled on one or two techniques, none of which involved me yelling louder than my students. 

If we are to grow and learn with our students, we will have to endure some discomfort. We can't grow when we're comfortable. Unfortunately, being too comfortable leads to complacency, which is not the recipe for growth. Sometimes, the bravest thing we can say is "help" when someone is next to us trying to help us grow. 

It's fundamental to education that we grow and change. We know this because we are fine-tuning a Master Plan for new educational buildings that will include space for the professionals critical to education today, who did not exist when our current buildings were constructed. And we do grow and change as faculty and staff, to meet the needs of students which are perhaps more diverse than ever before. 

We can always do better. We can always learn more. We strive to meet the educational needs of our students while we are growing and changing at the same time. 

We are educators. 

Photo courtesy of Facebook

Less Is More

Last week, I wrote that with a proposed reduction in state aid of over $800,000 in the current state budget, "less would be less" when it comes to Teaching and Learning in East Greenwich Public Schools. I stand by that. We will discuss the FY26 budget at this week's School Committee meeting and again at the Joint Meeting on Monday, February 10. 

While working on the FY26 budget, we are also moving forward with our Master Plan. The current plan is to begin construction in January of 2026. As discussed at the School Construction Committee meeting on January 9, the Town Council on January 13, and the School Committee on January 14, the project is over the budgeted amount. To do that, we will need to reduce the square footage for both the new builds at Frenchtown and Hanaford. 

It would be easy to see this reduction as a loss. That would be short-sighted. The glass is very much half full!

The Master Plan includes much-needed renovations at the high school: 

• Renovations to the Teaching and Learning Spaces for Life Skills & Art
  
  
• Mechanical and Custodial Upgrades, including Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC)
  
  
• Improvements to our Auditorium, a shared community space
  
  
• Revamping our Athletic Spaces

The new first through fifth-grade elementary buildings will ensure: 

• Teaching and Learning will grow and meet the needs of twenty-first-century education for our students
  
  
• Professional spaces for all of the specialists, who are critical to meeting all the academic and social-emotional needs of our students
  
  
• Improved athletic spaces, built to accommodate the community needs once the academic day is over and on weekends
  
  
• Our buildings will reflect the commitment of this community to public education. 

Here is where we are in the process: 

We have a lot more work to do and are still seeking feedback. Last week, we finished a round of programming sessions at the high school, and more are coming up in our elementary schools in February. In addition, we are planning a Community Listening Session for late February or early March. We will continue to refine and hone these projects over the next several months, with professional and public engagement. 

While we do have to reduce the square footage of our new buildings, this does not diminish the fact that, at the end of the project, we will have two brand-new buildings. The buildings will be home to students who have not even been born yet. They will be home to Teaching and Learning, where All Means All and professionals will continue to strive to meet the elements of our Vision of a Graduate. 

In this case, very much so, less is more. 

Less Is Not More

We have not yet reached the halfway point of the school year (Monday, January 27, will be Day 90 of Teaching and Learning), and plans are already well underway for next year's budget. At our first Joint Meeting with the Town Council, we shared that the story of the FY26 Budget is Framing the Future. We have a three-pronged approach: Innovating Implementation, Social Emotional Health, and Community Partnerships. While I will write more about the budget as it comes into focus in the coming months, I want to address a broader theme facing education: Less is not more. 

I have been in education since 1996, in leadership since 2003, and not once, not in one of those years, did the budget for the school (or district) I was serving match the needs of the students, faculty, and staff. It seems to come with the territory that if you are in education, you are also somehow taking a vow of poverty. How many community members in EG know that in my first year as Superintendent of Schools, we had to manage how and what kind of copies teachers made, given the spike in the price of paper. 

Almost everything costs more. Groceries, electricity, and school supplies. Hourly rates for contractors, the cost of health insurance, and a cup of coffee. Gas, a slice of pizza, and cell phone service. 

The expectations for education have also grown, especially post-COVID. We have seen a rise in students' needs, particularly regarding their social-emotional health. We know that our current pre-kindergarten population in EG is struggling with speech and language, given that four years ago, when they came into the world, everyone was speaking behind masks. We know the disruption from regular access to teaching and learning impacted everyone. But now we are paying for it, literally, 

While there was some federal funding to share in the burden of these immediate needs (of which East Greenwich received a pittance compared to other communities in Rhode Island), all those dollars are gone. Yet the reverberation of those COVID years is still being felt. We still have work to do. 

This community has invested in education. The Town Council appropriated the full four percent last year. We are breathing new life into our buildings, creating spaces that will house the professionals who need to attend to more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Our school community enrollment projections show steady if not slightly increasing, numbers as we look to the future. 

I look forward to working with the School Committee and Town Council, along with our professional staff, to articulate the needs of the East Greenwich community to state leaders. This is a growing, vibrant community that highly values education. If we don't work to change the pattern, less will ultimately be less. 

Photo courtesy of www.slideserve.com

Education is About Growth Mindset

The first classroom I remember being in as a student, my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Hurst, would draw five lines on the board using this: 

The first classroom I used as a teacher had a green chalkboard with the lines already drawn on it: 

In my first four years of teaching, I evolved to using an overhead projector: 

When I was a high school principal, e-mail was just starting to evolve as a way for families to communicate with teachers. In the same building, every teacher asked their students to first send their papers to turnitin.com to check for authentic writing. Students would then print their papers and physically hand them in to their teachers. 

The last time I taught a class, it was entirely virtual. We met online. I taught online. I graded papers and projects on the university's platform. It was a far cry from Mrs. Hurst in 1981. 

Education, by its nature, is about evolution. It's about growing and changing to meet the needs of the students as they grow and change over time. That includes advances in technology, acceptable societal norms, and educational research. 

Under Tim Munoz's leadership, the Policy Committee has started discussing artificial intelligence parameters. This is a brand-new experience for all of us. We've never had to ask questions about content that can be created by Claude AI or Chat GPT. We will rely on the experiences of our teachers and students to shape our expectations. 

Artificial intelligence is just the next chapter of how education will grow into the future. We know that we won't teach our students of tomorrow the way we learned ourselves or, to take it a step further, how we teach our students today. That is our commitment as educators. 

The challenge will be for us as adults. When we were students, we didn't learn that way. When we were taught how to teach, we were not taught that way. If we must grapple with this as educators, we will need our community to grapple with us. It won't be how we all learned when we were in school, but it will be what our future students expect of us. Of all of us. 

We are breathing new life into the buildings in East Greenwich over the next five years. We must make the same promise about how we teach. The students of tomorrow are waiting. 

Greatness Not Perfection, So Far

During the Winter Holiday Recess, we welcomed 2025, and this past Monday, we welcomed back our Faculty, Staff, and Students. With more than half of our year of Teaching and Learning still left to go, I reflected on the first seventy-five days of our academic year. At our Convocation in August, I shared with our employees that this year, we would be about greatness, not perfection. Here are some of the moments of greatness so far: 

• How this community responded to the needs of the EGPS Families impacted by the Brookside Terrace fire in December. In particular, Andrea Coelho, one of our social workers, has been a consistent presence and an advocate for these individuals, communicating with them regularly and sharing what their needs are. This highlights the work of Strategic Plan Priority 2 (Distinguished Teaching and Talented Staff), Priority 4 (Engaged Community) and demonstrates the importance of Connection (one of the tenets of our Vision of a Graduate). 
  
  
• Helping Hands of EGHS, a student-run group, organized a 5K race in honor of Ryan Casey, who passed away in 2023. Mr. Casey was a graduate of Meadowbrook, Cole, and EGHS as well as a dedicated husband and father. This event was a concrete example of how our high school students are Reflective, another tenet of our Vision of a Graduate. 
  
  
• The Cole Girls Soccer Team raised money for the Women in Need (WIN) program at Kent County Hospital. Led by Coach Steve Shelton, this highlights again Strategic Plan Priority 2 (Distinguished Teaching and Talented Staff), Priority 4 (Engaged Community) and Connection from our Vision of a Graduate. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Michelle Lambert, a paraeducator in EGPS, opened a Fitness Center with her daughter. Ms. Lambert offers a class called "Unified Fitness," particularly for those eligible for special education. This continues to highlight our Distinguished Teaching and Talented Staff and demonstrates that All Means All extends beyond the school day for our employees.  

• Cole Students in Steve Garneau's classes recently participated in Lego Education's project #BuildToGive. For every heart-shaped Lego model built and shared on social media, Lego donated a kit to a child in need. There were a total of thirty-two models built at Cole. Another exemplar of our Distinguished Teaching and Talented Staff, our Engaged Community commitment, and the importance of Connection. 

With more than half of our Teaching and Learning year left, EGPS will provide many more examples of greatness, not perfection. We will demonstrate our commitment to the priorities of our Strategic Plan and our emphasis on the Vision of a Graduate. This is the work of Teaching and Learning in this community. 

Happy 2025!