Public Education Under Attack:
The East Side of Providence, RI is a wealthy part of a larger and poorer City. Its affluence has contributed to a tale of two educational systems: an educationally rich private school system that accounts for 50% of all students in the East Side and a public school system where four out of five students live below the poverty level.
This two-tiered system came to a head recently when a number of parents organized around the Providence School Board’s threat to close Nathan Bishop - the only remaining middle school for East Side families - and turn it into a temporary high school.
On Thursday, March 30th, a group of parents met to discuss the possible school closing. They called themselves the East Side Public Education Coalition (ESPEC). The next day the Superintendent dropped a bomb. He announced that the board was going to vote on the closing that Monday and that he would advise they vote to end Nathan Bishop as a middle school.
The parents couldn’t believe it. It was Friday afternoon. How could they possibly affect - over a weekend - a vote that was going to take place that Monday?
CitizenSpeak to the Rescue:
One of the group’s organizers, Thomas Schmeling, remembered hearing about CitizenSpeak - a free email advocacy service for grassroots organizations. With nothing to lose, he decided to launch a campaign himself. Faced with an immediate deadline, CitizenSpeak’s ease-of-use was critical for this campaign’s success. According to Thomas, “Once we agreed on the text for the letter, I was able to launch a campaign in 30 minutes.”
ESPEC forwarded the web address to about 80 email addresses that they had collected from their previous meeting and from an earlier public hearing. The campaign targeted the Superintendent, school board members, three local city council members and they mayor.
Much to their surprise, over the course of the weekend 65 people participated. Even more surprising was the Superintendent’s and School Board’s response. On Sunday they started returning emails agreeing to a number of the parents’ demands. They agreed not to put high schoolers at Bishop and to reopen Bishop as a middle school in 2007.
CitizenSpeak played a key role in this turn around as evidenced by the email sent to campaign participants by the School Board President Mary McClure. She wrote, “We have received a very large volume of emails about the superintendent’s recommendation to close Bishop and wanted to be sure that anyone who wishes to attend tonight’s meeting could be accommodated.” Convinced that the parents represented a large constituency, the board moved the meeting from a conference room to an auditorium.
According to the Providence Journal, Superintendent Evans was forced to reconsider his initial plan after hundreds of East Side residents protested the proposal at a recent public hearing and after “an extensive e-mail campaign directed at elected officials, including Mayor David N. Cicilline.”
“I’m a political science professor but I have no direct organizing experience and no expertise in city politics,” said Thomas. “I just saw that something needed to be done. CitizenSpeak delivered right into our elected officials’ in boxes the message that we’re big and we’re organized and we intend to be heard.”
Even though ESPEC has a long fight ahead of them, CitizenSpeak helped them get off to a good start, build their list and prove how effective they can be even at the midnight hour.