Last year we described Providence’s joint labor-management efforts to turn around its lowest performing schools. The story centered on our “unlikely allies”, Providence union president, Steve Smith, and then-superintendent of schools, Tom Brady. Could these two characters create a new type of turnaround strategy, a unique collaborative restart model? Would it work?
At the time, it was all quite hopeful. Smith and Brady seemed to (mostly) be on the same page, and Providence was one of more than a hundred districts to participate in the U.S. Department of Education’s “labor-management collaboration” conference in Denver (USDOE’s website is chock-full of presenter lists, case studies, and even a “tool kit,” seemingly for hosting more such conferences).
At the time, Brady said they would have to work together, or it would be “three years and done.” A year later, he resigned on the heels of a major budget crisis and the mass firing of the city’s 1,900 teachers. The school board chair, Kathy Crain, also resigned. The future of the district’s new joint labor-management restart organization, United Providence, now seems even more uncertain.
We brought Brady, Smith and Crain together to shed some light on what happened, where Providence is headed, and what other local and state leaders can learn about the potential and pitfalls of labor-management collaboration.
Read, listen and watch here.