District presents TAP quarterly update highlighting family engagement, staffing and curriculum gains

District leaders used the Providence School Board meeting to summarize progress under the Turnaround Action Plan (TAP), focusing on family engagement, instructional materials, staffing, early-childhood expansion and wellness supports.

Janet Picciardo, executive director of family and community engagement, said the Parent University program has run 10 workshops with roughly 234 parents participating on Zoom and that the office has identified 74 new families facing housing instability for targeted outreach. "These sessions are via Zoom," Picciardo said, adding that recorded sessions are available on the district YouTube channel and that the office uses Google referral forms to connect families to supports.

Teaching-and-learning leaders noted curriculum alignment and assessment changes: the district has rolled out ARC core daily lessons in elementary and middle grades and is piloting Amplify science in K–8. Colleen Van Fraunt, executive director of teacher development, said district curriculum committees developed core ELA and social studies lessons with 127 teachers participating to create grade-level resources.

Sandra Stewart, chief of student support services, said early-childhood seats rose from 27 to 40 classrooms and that the district has added specialized classroom resources across 109 classrooms in 26 schools. On wellness, she reported that the district is adding about 40 social workers (to a current roster of 53) to move toward a 1:250 social-worker-to-student ratio used as a national benchmark.

Talent and hiring updates: Chief Talent Officer Herman James said the district’s recruitment push produced more than 700 leads in five weeks after launching an employer-brand campaign and that early-contracting has increased hires in hard-to-fill subjects. The district reported 18 early contracts last year and targets 25–30 additional early contracts for the current cycle.

Why it matters: The TAP update tied concrete initiatives to statutory metric buckets the board must review under the amended Crowley Act. Board members urged presenters to highlight which slides map to the 16 statutory metrics so that the board can perform its advisory function effectively.

Next steps: Board leadership requested more clearly organized metric slides tying each TAP initiative to the statutory items the board must track; staff agreed to follow up and consider separate TAP-focused meetings to allow deeper review.