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!