Welcome to the May-June issue of Provplan’s e-newsletter. There has been a lot happening that we want to share with you. First, The Providence Plan board of directors met with the Mayor and Governor together for the first time in our 15-year history. In what was a highly productive meeting, we identified the issues of school readiness and prisoner reentry as priorities for future action. Next are two stories from Ready to Learn Providence: The first one a summary of responses from Providence parents, center directors and family-care providers on the impact, as they perceive it, of proposed cuts to state-subsidized child care; and the second, a report following a visit to Reggio Emilia in Italy, one of the premier early-childhood communities in the world.

Our partner profile focuses on the Providence Police Department, with whom we have partnered over the past three years on its successful community policing initiative. In addition, both Ready to Learn’s AmeriCorps program and Building Futures are recruiting new participants, and don’t forget to check out the fact of the month on pediatrician care in Providence. Enjoy the summer and look for our next issue in late July.

Thanks,
Pat McGuigan, Executive Director
pmcguigan@provplan.org

ProvPlan’s board hosts the governor and mayor at its May meeting 
“This is an historic event for The Providence Plan,” Dick Spies, chairman of ProvPlan’s board of directors, told the group assembled in the large meeting room on the Brown University campus. “It is the first time our entire board and senior staff have met with both the governor and the mayor at a meeting focused entirely on what The Providence Plan can do for the city and its people.”

“There’s no more valuable partnership for us than city and state,” noted Pat McGuigan, ProvPlan’s executive director. “It not only increases our ability to get funding, but it helps us achieve our mission. In the last four years, since you both took office, The Providence Plan has accomplished more than it did in the previous ten. It’s due to this partnership.”

Gov. Donald Carcieri and Providence Mayor David Cicilline were the honored guests at the May 16 meeting held in University Hall. They were there to hear what ProvPlan has achieved in recent years and to discuss future opportunities.

Pat told the governor and mayor that ProvPlan believes two areas of opportunity lie in the fields of school readiness and prisoner reentry. ProvPlan’s Ready to Learn Providence (R2LP) has made tremendous strides in the past four years moving toward its goal that all children in Providence will enter school healthy and ready to learn, but more, he noted, could be accomplished with the right plan and the concerted efforts of all three partners.

“From my perspective, the real bang for your buck is school readiness,” said Mayor Cicilline. “What R2LP has done is just so extraordinary.” As part of the presentation, the group was shown a chart showing steady, significant gains made by entering kindergartners on the Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening assessment. Since 2003, the number of incoming kindergartners meeting the fall benchmark for early literacy has increased by 13 percentage points. [more on Meeting...]

In R2LP study, parents, providers and center directors express concern over proposed cuts to child-care subsidies
The proposed cuts to state-subsidized child care will have a negative impact on Providence’s child-care programs, the well-being of children, and the ability of parents to achieve a more financially secure life, according to participants in a study just released by Ready to Learn Providence, a program of The Providence Plan. In conducting the study, R2LP collected the perceptions of nearly 200 parents, providers and child-care center directors from the city’s most distressed neighborhoods.

For a detailed analysis of participant responses, you can download the executive summary and full report here.

Since its inception in 2002, R2LP has invested more than $5.5 million in early-care education in Providence. Last summer R2LP received an additional $7 million in federal funds to continue its work in the professional development of early-care providers and educators. Given this investment – and its vision that all children in Providence will enter school healthy and ready to learn – R2LP believed it was important to fully understand the impact the proposed cuts to child-care subsidies would have on the families, children and providers within its community, and indirectly, on the many R2LP programs that rely on their involvement. [more on R2LP Study...]

R2LP staff members – and the city’s mayor – see Reggio Emilia in action
For those in the field of early care and education, a trip to Reggio Emilia is something of a pilgrimage. For more than 40 years, this city in northern Italy has earned international recognition for its innovative approach to educating its youngest citizens.

In April, four Ready to Learn Providence staff members participated in a week-long study tour in Reggio Emilia. While there, they were joined by Providence Mayor David Cicilline, who spent a day observing classrooms and meeting with the city’s mayor.

“Reggio Emilia really is extraordinary,” Cicilline said after returning to Providence. “Its focus on nurturing creativity, and the coming together of the entire community for the health and development of its youngest children, should be an inspiration for all of us.”

For Melida Brito, who is now an administrative assistant at R2LP but who for many years ran a family child-care program in Providence, Reggio Emilia has been an inspiration ever since she first read about it in a child development course. When she heard that R2LP was participating in a study tour arranged by Wheelock College, she jumped at the chance to take part in it.

In observing the early-care classrooms in Reggio Emilia, Melida says she was struck by how happy and free the children appeared. “Many of the kids in our classrooms seem stressed,” she says. “We can be more relaxed with our children. We can be there to guide them, but we shouldn’t oppress them. They deserve our respect. If we give it to them now, we will avoid problems in the future.

“In Reggio Emilia, they’re always planning for new early-care centers [to accommodate a rise in births or immigration],” Melida adds. “Here we’re preparing new prisons.” [more on Reggio...]

Partner Profile
This month we take a look at the Providence Police Department, a ProvPlan partner since 2003.

Providence Police and ProvPlan team up to fight crime
“We had a report of a juvenile with a gun,” the Lieutenant explained. “We chased him and he threw the gun down the sewer. The Highway Department retrieved it, but the serial number had been rubbed off. We believe the gun was tied to a crack house that was raided that morning.”

While listening to the details of this arrest at the weekly staff meeting of the Providence Police Department (PPD), everyone in the room focused on a large screen that illustrated, with a cursor and a map of the neighborhood, the exact location of the chase and the apprehension.

“This guy was obviously a player,” Police Chief Dean Esserman said after the Lieutenant had finished. “I’m glad we’ve got him. Do we have a picture of him?”

With that, Mike Pickford of The Providence Plan clicked a few keys on his computer and brought the perpetrator’s picture onto the screen.

At the heart of this weekly meeting is what is commonly referred to as CompStat – or computerized statistics. CompStat tracks every crime in the city by district and generates neighborhood maps identifying the location and type of crime. This process provides accurate and timely information that the police now rely on to detect patterns and criminal hot spots. At these staff meetings, CompStat makes it possible to share districtwide and citywide information with senior officers, detectives and all of the nine district commanders.

“I use it as a management tool,” Esserman explains. “It allows me to know what’s going on in every neighborhood, every week. It lets me question individual district commanders, and it also allows me to make sure everyone is working together and not just working in their own site.”

Providence Mayor David Cicilline, who took office in January 2003 just four days before swearing Esserman in as his chief of police, had admired the transparency and accountability inherent in statistical analysis long before his election. Inspired by CitiStat, which was developed in Baltimore by Mayor Martin O’Malley and modeled after programs used for criminal analysis, Cicilline launched ProvStat within weeks of moving into City Hall. ProvStat uses cutting-edge technologies to capture accurate, detailed and timely data about city services – information that serves as the basis for discussion about everything from service delivery to quality of life in Providence neighborhoods. Given the mayor’s enthusiasm for this technology, it was hardly surprising that he sought a police chief who also appreciated its value. [more on Providence Police...]

AmeriCorps and Building Futures Recruiting
Two ProvPlan programs are currently recruiting candidates – Ready to Learn Providence’s AmeriCorps program and Building Futures, a new initiative that connects residents from the city’s urban neighborhoods with union apprenticeships.

R2LP’s AmeriCorps program is accepting applications until June 8 for the 2007/2008 year, which runs from August 1 through the end of June. Members serve at branches of the Providence Public Library, Providence early-care settings, and at the R2LP offices. They receive a living allowance of $10,900, an education award of $4,725 upon completion of 1,700 hours of service, child-care allowance, health insurance, training and leadership experience, and three weeks vacation.

If you like working with children and your community, and if you are creative, enthusiastic, dependable and 18 or older, go to www.americorps.org for an application, or send a resume and cover letter to: Nancy Worthen or Nazly Guzman-Singletary, Ready to Learn Providence, 945 Westminster St., Providence, RI 02903. For more information, call (401) 490-9960 or go to www.r2lp.org. Bilingual candidates are encouraged to apply.

Building Futures is seeking men and women from Providence’s urban neighborhoods who are interested in pursuing a career in the construction industry. After a comprehensive evaluation, Building Futures will assess your readiness – mentally, physically and emotionally – for a union apprenticeship. If you’re ready, it will help make the connection; if you’re close, it will help find the support you need to close the gap. Prior training or experience in the construction field is not required.

Apprenticeship programs provide strong wages, good benefits and extensive on-the-job training. Because unions make such an enormous investment in this training, Building Futures recommends placement into one of these programs only when it believes a candidate is qualified and fully ready to handle the work.

If you think you have what it takes, call Building Futures at (401) 919-5919. If it’s the right fit, you’ll end up with much more than a “job.” You’ll have a career that will support a family and fill you with pride.




Meeting, cont.
Asked by the governor if children will sustain these gains as they move through school, Pat noted that because ProvPlan has access to data from the Providence Public School Department, it will be able to track these children in future grades.

“We’re not ready to say what these children will be doing in third or sixth grade, but we’ve got the mechanisms in place to find that out,” Dick added. “That is one of the significant qualities ProvPlan brings to the table: a commitment to collecting data and evaluating evidence of the effectiveness of the programs we develop. You can’t learn and improve if you don’t measure the results of your efforts and adjust those efforts based on that evidence.”

In his overview of current initiatives, Pat noted that by applying for funding through the federal Compassion Capital Fund for its relatively new program, New Roots Providence, The Providence Plan made a decision to tap into the energy of the city’s faith-based organizations. “There’s no question there’s a role for them to play in the vitality and stability of the neighborhoods,” agreed Gov. Carcieri.

On the issue of prisoner reentry into the community, board member Dean Esserman, chief of the Providence Police Department, spoke with passion on the need for more successful approaches. “The best predictor of whether you’re going to prison is whether you’ve been there before. Reentry is a tough issue for a community to talk about, but anything we can do to make reentry successful we should do.

“There are neighborhoods in our city where it is unusual if someone in a household is not under supervision,” the chief continued. “It breaks my heart. I salute the two of you,” he said turning to the governor and mayor, “for making reentry a priority. This is not just an economic issue; it’s a moral issue.”

“This is an area where we see a significant opportunity for partnership with city and state,” Dick noted. “Right now we have data, but we don’t have real expertise in this field. But we can bring resources together in a way that is pretty important.”

ProvPlan’s board of directors has 16 members: five are appointed by the governor; five by the mayor; five by the board; and one, the chairperson, by both the governor and mayor. [top]

R2LP Study, cont.
The proposed Rhode Island state budget for the 2007/2008 fiscal year would cut eligibility for child-care subsidies through the RI Department of Human Services Starting Right Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). Current law allows families with up to 225% of the federal policy level to receive these studies. The proposed budget would restrict eligibility to families falling below 150% of that level, eliminating the subsidies of more than 3,900 children statewide.

In surveys (administered in both English and Spanish), R2LP asked family-care providers and center directors how they believed the cuts would affect their programs and how they thought the cuts would impact the children and families they serve. In focus groups (held in both English and Spanish), parents were asked how they thought the cuts would affect their own lives as well as those of their children.

Although the participating groups approach these issues from different perspectives, their perceptions were remarkably similar. Nearly every participant viewed the proposed cuts as being highly detrimental to programs, families, children and the community. Most participants predicted that without affordable child care, working parents will have few options and that many will be forced to leave work and go on public assistance. [top]

Reggio, cont.
Others who traveled to Reggio Emilia from R2LP were Joyce Butler, R2LPs director; Christine Chiacu-Forsythe, director of Early Reading First (ERF) 2; and Susan Zoll, director of ERF 1.

“Much of what we observed and learned about children while we were there we already knew,” Susan notes. “But being there brought it all to the forefront. We can get caught up in a lot of other things, and this trip really reignited our passion. In Reggio Emilia the focus is always on the child, and all of their work always comes back to that.

“Children there are seen as knowing, competent, resourceful human beings,” Susan adds. “First and foremost, that’s what we want to bring back to our work with Early Reading First.”

Because the philosophical basis of the Reggio Emilia approach is built upon an appreciation for the uniqueness of the community, it can’t be fully exported to another place, notes Christine. But, she adds, the values and thinking behind the approach could certainly be emulated and adopted elsewhere.
For example, she says, “In Reggio Emilia, listening, in its many forms, is an important tenet in understanding other perspectives and is cultivated by the members of the school community. Oppositions to ideas and thoughts are not viewed as oppositional but as a process for gaining deeper insights into child and adult learning.”

“For me, it was a life-altering experience,” says Joyce, who has worked in the early-care field her entire career. “I’ve just never seen anything quite like it. The entire community embraces its young children and views them as contributing citizens. Those values permeate everything that happens in and outside the classroom.”

For more information on Reggio Emilia and its approach to early care and education, see the March-April 2007 issue of the ProvPlan e-newsletter. [top]

Police, cont.
Esserman is, in fact, an early pioneer in CompStat, having worked with William Bratton (chief of police in New York City in the 1990s) and Jack Maple, who became Bratton’s deputy commissioner. Esserman, who served with the two men when they were all with the NYPD Transit Police in the early ’90s, recalls many late nights spent with Maple sticking pins into maps to track crimes and identify hot spots in the subway system. “The technology has certainly evolved since then,” he notes

While some police departments handle computerized crime analysis internally, the PPD decided it made more sense to outsource it. Within months of his arrival, Esserman recruited The Providence Plan as a partner, tapping the organization’s expertise in computerized data analysis and mapping.

Each Monday ProvPlan delivers a full report to the PPD detailing all of the crimes and arrests, by district, that took place the prior week. The following morning, the chief holds his staff meeting, which is attended not only by the top brass in the police department, but also partners in the community – streetworkers, probation and correction officers, prosecutors, school department officials, pastors, reentry professionals and anyone else who has a stake in reducing crime. Pickford or Jim Lucht from ProvPlan operates the computer that displays the maps and data onto the screen. “We make managing by the numbers possible,” explains Lucht. “Our reports and maps make it all very transparent.”

Maps generated through GIS (Geographic Information System) are a key component to pattern recognition. They will show, for example, if a particular crime seems to be occurring only around parks or bus stops. Other information, such as the location of parolees, sex offenders or pawnshops, can be overlaid for further analysis. ProvPlan also provides numerous charts and graphs – with current information on crimes, suspects, arrests and sentencing – that cover police department walls.

Like other cities that have embraced CompStat in the past decade, Providence has seen a sharp decline in both violent and nonviolent crime since it was introduced here. The murder rate has dropped steadily since 2003, and in 2006 that rate declined by 50 percent over the previous year. That year also saw a 55 percent drop in rape. In 2003, 520 robberies occurred in Providence; in 2006, there were 393.

Impressed by these numbers, at least half a dozen cities in the Northeast have come to Providence to observe the way crime analysis is handled here and have since adopted similar approaches.

“I can’t stress enough how important it is that everyone in the department knows what’s happening throughout the city and is working together,” Esserman says. “CompStat makes that possible.”