High Schools Prepare for Accreditors

By Cynthia Needham; Journal Staff Writer

WARWICK – A year after a protracted teachers contract dispute threatened the pending reaccreditation of the city’s three high schools, officials say they are confident the schools will pass muster.

Pilgrim, Toll Gate and Warwick Veterans Memorial are all “back on track” and preparing for visits from the New England Association of Schools & Colleges, the accreditation agency that examines schools every 10 years and is due here next October, Victor Mercurio, director of secondary education, said yesterday.

If it sounds early to be preparing for the evaluation, educators say it’s anything but.

To qualify for accreditation, a high school must first conduct a 24-month self-study, identifying its goals and improvements it could make in seven core areas including curriculum, school climate and facilities. The process requires a major time commitment on the part of faculty, which must conduct the exhaustive study, often after school hours.

With the current accreditations at all three high schools set to expire in the fall of 2008, groundwork for the studies should have begun early last year. But by the spring of 2006, the Warwick schools were immersed in a long-term contract dispute that left teachers “working to rule,” and no sign of those self studies.

School administrators worried that the dispute was putting the accreditations at risk.

Now, a year after a new contract was signed and a year ahead of the visits, Mercurio reports that all three schools are immersed in their self-studies and appear poised to win reaccredidation.

At Warwick Vets, principal Gerry Habershaw says every teacher has played a role in those preparations. “We broke the entire faculty up into subcommittees to research these seven standards. Each group has a chairperson and they have to write a report that the faculty must approve,” he said. In many cases those reports include faculty or parent surveys designed to measure the school’s practices.

At Pilgrim, principal Dennis Mullen said some of that school’s subcommittees have already completed their reports.

Part of the basis for such early preparation is the same reason that’s given educators cause to complain in recent years: state mandates. By meeting those mandates , Warwick and other districts around the state have put themselves ahead of the game in preparation for accreditation visits, educators here say.

But some worry that the physical state of the Warwick school buildings may pose the real threat to reaccreditations.

City Council members Steve Merolla and Robert A. Cushman (former chairman of the School Committee) and School Committee member Paul Cannistra have been particularly vocal in their concerns about the roof at Pilgrim High School, which has an estimated 100 leaks, according to David Small, the district’s director of buildings and grounds.

“Part and parcel of the NEASC accreditation process is we can demonstrate that the physical plants at all three high schools are in good shape and that this community has the wherewithal to support these facilities,” Cannistra said. “To cut to the chase, we’ve got to get the roofs fixed. I don’t want the NEASC team to come in there and put us on probation because we’re not taking care of our buildings.”

When budget constraints prompted Mayor Scott Avedisian to halt the use of bond money – part of which was expected to go to upgrading the Pilgrim roof – Merolla and Cushman criticized the city for negotiating what they saw as pricey union contracts when it can’t property fix its infrastructure.

Mullen, for his part, believes his school’s leaky roof is “a major problem,” but not one that will jeopardize accreditation.

“It’s a serious issue, there’s no question about that, but does it impact teaching and learning? I’m not so sure,” Mullen said.

Mercurio echoed that assessment. The organization, he said, is concerned with the overall state of the facility and whether it is conducive to learning.

“You have to look at it on a much more macroscopic level,” Mercurio said.

“Granted, we don’t want faculty and students in a school with leaky roofs. But the overall question is whether it impedes student learning.”

Should the association’s team find fault with the schools’ facilities, or their practices, Mercurio says the district shouldn’t consider the findings a black mark. Rather, it should use the recommendations as a road map for improvements in the coming years.

“My expectation and my hope is that the visiting team comes into each one of the schools, looks at the self-study, meets with teachers and kids and writes a report that helps us grow,” he said.

cneedham@projo.com / (401) 277-7374

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