McGowan Off the Mark on Mt. Pleasant Once Again
More Updates on the Future of Mt. Pleasant High School
Disclaimer: For the full story on the Mt. Pleasant High School controversy—and why you should care—see my other Substack articles entitled “Why You Should Care About Mt. Pleasant High School” and “McGowan Off the Mark on Mt. Pleasant.”
The Mt. Pleasant High School saga continues…
It took long enough, but finally there is some news on the Providence Public School District’s plans for Mt. Pleasant. About 2 weeks ago, The Boston Globe’s Steph Machado reported that there may be a special election in early 2024 to approve $400 million in borrowing for school construction (bostonglobe.com/2023/11/15/metro/provid…).
While the details of how that money would be spent have not been disclosed still, “it would [probably] be a continuation of the ‘newer and fewer’ approach to…construction.” In other words, the District will prioritize building new schools over maintaining (i.e., not demolishing) older buildings like Mt. Pleasant High School. Unfortunately, that is about all the news we have had on the future of Mt. Pleasant since August or maybe early September.
Boston Globe reporter and columnist Dan McGowan’s recent appearance on A Lively Experiment has given me cause for further concern. As readers of my past blog articles may know, Mr. McGowan has been a very vocal advocate for Mt. Pleasant’s demolition Besides repeating his complaints about the so-called “bricks-before-kids” movement on A Lively Experiment, he has also suggested that any complaints about process and transparency are just excuses to push an agenda.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I have raised the transparency issues from the very beginning. I made a public records request in February of this year, well before the District hosted its “community meetings” on Mt. Pleasant during the summer. Besides, the controversy and blowback the District received from its previous closures of schools like Carl G. Lauro Elementary School, Alan Shawn Feinstein Elementary School, and Fortes Elementary School is by itself enough grounds to raise these issues publicly and forcefully. After all, these past controversies spurred the Rhode Island General Assembly to have hearings on exactly the same pattern of behavior the District is currently displaying here. Why does the District want to continue its unpopular policy of uprooting neighborhood schools with minimal transparency? Shouldn’t the public have the right to know?
More importantly, the recent news almost without a doubt proves that much more than historic buildings is at stake here. What is really at stake is the future of public education in Providence. Put simply, the “newer and fewer approach” to school construction means closing down multiple neighborhood schools, not just Mt. Pleasant. Generally, it also means replacing these neighborhood schools with a vast charter school network.
It has been tried before, and has been an unmitigated disaster. Chicago tried it, and it proved so unpopular that it was crucial in Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s electoral victory over Paul Vallas (https://www.chalkbeat.org/chicago/2023/4/12/23680850/brandon-johnson-chicago-mayor-teachers-union-progressive-win-democratic-party-education/).
Philadelphia tried it, and now recent reporting suggests the need for a total overhaul of Philly’s questionable charter school authorizing practices (https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/report-suggests-philly-charter-school-authorizing-needs-overhaul/article_5a464004-e818-5807-abd5-359dbd0791e3.html).
Finally, New Orleans tried it, and now they are desperately trying to “bring back [the] neighborhood schools” (https://www.wdsu.com/article/is-it-time-to-end-the-all-charter-school-experiment-in-new-orleans/39013696#).
Long story short, it is much harder to bring schools back than it is to demolish them. Which is why caution now is more critical than ever. We lose more than a school building when a neighborhood school goes away. Imagine, for example, looking back and realizing that every single school you attended growing up no longer existed. That is what happened to a man in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/09/14/439450644/what-else-we-lose-when-a-neighborhood-school-goes-away).
Where we went to school is a central part of our community identity. “What school did you go to?” The answer to that question tells us a lot about “who we were and who we knew” (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/09/14/439450644/what-else-we-lose-when-a-neighborhood-school-goes-away). In the political climate we have now, retaining these ties to the community is more important than ever. Vast charter school networks with questionable records on transparency are poor replacements. Even if you support charter schools in principle, is industrializing education like this the way to go? Shouldn’t we have at least some sensitivity to the community upheaval all this creates?
Charter schools were always meant to be smaller-scale experiments. When they get too large, they drain the resources of public schools with much larger student bodies, and what then? Where will all those students go? Because charter schools simply will not be able to take all of them.
So no, Mr. McGowan, this is not “bricks-before-kids.” This is community before charter school industrial complexes.