“I’ve asked all of my directors to take a look at all programs and take a look at the efficiency of all programs,” Donoyan said. “We need to tighten our belt, I realize that.”

Donoyan says she will have a deficit reduction plan ready for state officials by next week, but she says finding the savings will not be easy.

“In the year 2000, Woonsocket had a $75 million school budget. Now it’s down to $59 million,” said Donoyan, adding that the decrease comes as expenses for everything from heating oil to personel continue to rise. “The costs across the board have escalated just to keep the bare minimum. The things we can control, we do our best to control, but there are uncontrollable costs.”

Woonsocket city officials have expressed disappointment over a history of school deficits which contributed to a downgrade from Moody’s investor service early this year. The city has sent a finance officer to work with the school department on a budget review.

Paterno graduated from Brown in 1950, and Estes remembers him as a “great mentor”. Paterno played quarterback and defensive back for the Brown Bears.

The university still hands out an annual atheltic award in Paterno’s name. Current students and alumni have debated whether the award should be re-named following the sexual abuse controversy at Penn State.

URI officials say Beagle will be sorely missed. They credit him with helping to establish fundraising and alumni relations at the school and with raising URI’s profile in the larger community. Beagle was instrumental in efforts to build the Ryan Center, among other major construction projects. He also oversaw the university’s first capital campaign in 1992, raising more than $60 million.

In recent years, Beagle has served as Vice President for Advancement, focusing on branding initiatives like the “think big we do” campaign. He has also been active in the transition to the university’s new president, David Dooley.

One bill would broaden the allowable reasons for teacher layoffs, but they would still have to be based on seniority. The House Committee on Labor is scheduled to take up that bill on Tuesday. The sponsor, Rep. Scott Guthrie (D-Coventry), is proposing that the state allow school districts to let teachers go for reasons that include budget cuts, program changes and loss of student population. The bill would also push back the deadline for notifying teachers of potential layoffs, from March 1st to May 15th.

Meanwhile, the House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare will take up the question of whether Neumont University should be allowed to grant degrees in Rhode Island. The Utah-based school is hoping to open a campus in Providence in 2013. Neumont offers Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs in computer science and computer programming. The for-profit university needs an exemption from a state law barring for-profit schools from granting BA and MA degrees.

The Health, Education and Welfare Committee will also be looking at a bill to ban texting during the school day. The measure sponsored by Rep. Peter Petrarca (D-Lincoln, Johnston, Smithfield) would prohibit all texting during school hours, except for pre-approved emergency or instructional purposes. Schools would have to adopt their own disciplinary measures to enforce the law, but the bill specifies that no cell phone should be taken away for any length of time beyond the day of the texting offence, and no student should be suspended for texting.

Finally the HEW Committee will consider allowing school districts to sell advertising space on school buses. The HEW Committee meets Wednesday at 5 p.m.

This week the agency reduced Woonsocket’s general obligation bonds from BA1 to BA2 status. A BA rating means a municipality ranks below average on Moody’s scale of “credit worthiness.”

Moody’s also gives Woonsocket a negative outlook, saying problems in the school department and under-funded municipal pensions are likely to plague the city for some time. City and state leaders have warned of the potential for a downgrade in Woonsocket since an audit last month revealed an unexpected $2.7 million shortfall in school finances.

The Federal Department of Education invited all of the Race to the Top grant states to Washington, to encourage collaboration on public school improvement initiatives.

Rhode Island is in the process of spending $75 million federal Race to the Top grant funding for programs like teacher training and re-vamping public education standards.

Neumont President Ned Levine says he expects bills to be introduced in both houses of the Rhode Island legislature this month to exempt Neumont from the law. If it passes, the legislation would allow Neumont to seek approval for a Rhode Island campus from the State Board of Higher Education.

Neumont offers degrees in computer science and software development at its current campus in Utah. Levine says the school plans to offer similar degrees in Rhode Island and already has relationships with several local companies.

“Companies like GTECH and FM Global are currently coming to Utah to recruit our students,” Levine said. “That demonstrates the scarcity of computer software developers here in Rhode Island.”

Levine has longstanding ties to Rhode Island. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and later served on its board of trustees. He co-founded a local bicycle design and marketing company called Rhode Gear, which at one point had two factories in Rhode Island employing hundreds of people. Levine went on to found a business strategy and brand planning firm before taking a job at Johnson & Wales University. He proudly says that he still has a Rhode Island driver’s license.

While for-profit universities have been under increasing scrutiny in recent years, Levine maintains that Neumont has a good reputation. The school serves 350 students in Utah, who attend classes five days a week. A Bachelors degree takes just 2 ½ years to complete at a cost of roughly $72,000.

According to Neumont, 68 percent of students complete their degrees, and 95 percent of those who graduate go on to find employment in their field.

“The unemployment rate for computer scientists is zero,” Levine said.

City and school officials claimed that the mural had historic significance. It has been at the school for roughly 50 years, and residents call it a tradition in Cranston. The overall message of the mural is not religious, according to school officials. It urges students and teachers to work hard and be a credit to the school.

The Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing on behalf of student Jessica Ahlquist, called the mural an inappropriate display of language that promotes prayer in a public school. Ahlquist considers herself an atheist.

The Cranston school district has 10 days to respond to the ruling. School officials tell the Providence Journal they are not likely to file an appeal.

The full text of the prayer mural:

Our Heavenly Father,
Grant us each day the desire to do our best,
To grow mentally and morally as well as physically,
To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers,
To be honest with ourselves as well as with others,
Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win,
Teach us the value of true friendship,
Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.
Amen

According to the study:

Students assigned to high-VA teachers are more likely to attend college, attend higher- ranked colleges, earn higher salaries, live in higher SES neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers.

The researchers were trying to determine whether “value added” is a good measure of teacher quality. To do this, they looked at test score data for more than 2 million children in a single school district in grades 3-8. Then they used tax records to find out what happened to those children later in life.

They concluded that:

On average, a one standard deviation improvement in teacher VA in a single grade raises earnings by about 1% at age 28. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5% with an average teacher would increase students’ lifetime income by more than $250,000 for the average classroom in our sample.

“Value added” teacher ratings are extremely controversial, with critics arguing that a single teacher is rarely the only factor driving student performance. The New York Times notes that some critics also warn such systems could influence teacher behavior, driving them to cheat, for example, or to remove weaker students from their classrooms

The Board of Higher Ed’s committee on finance has voted to back a proposal to look into requesting funding for a full-time commissioner. The issue is on the agenda for a meeting Monday at the full Board of Higher Education.

The move comes as lawmakers consider the future of the Office of Higher Education. Some state officials have suggested consolidating the agency with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Higher ed officials are deeply opposed to that idea, saying higher education is too important to the state’s economic future not to have its own department.