There is no denying that Bristol Warren superintendent Ana Riley stepped into a district in critical need of stabilization. From the disruptive presence of Covid-19 to the disruptions caused by school committee conflict and a revolving door of interim superintendents that preceded her, the focus had been shifted away from the kids for what felt like a long time.

Riley said in an extensive interview from her office at the Reynolds Building in Bristol on Monday that, although it’s still a work in progress, that stability has begun to return to the district.

“I think by the time I came here, what people were tired of was all of that mosh of stuff that was happening and people were ready to move on and do better for the district. I really believe that, which is why we’ve seen a shift,” she said. “Because when you have conflict, you’re stuck. And I think everyone was ready to move past that.”

Now in her first full year at the helm, Riley is excited about the opportunity she sees in the district, and has already taken multiple steps towards making her aspirations a reality.

“I’m grateful they have included me in this role moving the district forward, because I think there’s so much potential here,” she said.

Improving academic achievement
Riley has made numerous presentations on her strategic plan to the school committee, which includes items such as improving school climate and culture, creating engaging professional learning opportunities for teachers, and expanding post-secondary pathways and career and technical education (CTE) programs.

But the number one item Riley says she is focused on is improving student proficiency, which she is approaching from multiple angles.

Riley advocated during this past budget cycle for money to hire more support staff to assist teachers and students, with a focus on assisting kids with IEPs.

“Our gap between our special ed students’ performance and our regular ed students is way too large, and the only way to close that gap is to really increase the level of support we’re giving students,” she said.

Over the summer the district hired a special education coordinator, along with four new special education teachers, and four achievement coaches (who are a resource to special education teachers and regular ed teachers). This has allowed for some dedicated, co-taught classrooms to become established at every elementary school and within the sixth grade.

Riley said that her goal is to continue growing the number of co-taught classrooms until there is one at every grade level in every school in the district.

“The opportunity for growth is tremendous. And so that’s really what we want to build upon,” she said. “That model allows the highest level of support for students — all students, not just our students with an IEP — because if anybody is struggling, the special educator can pull them and support those students.”

The next part of improving proficiency, Riley said, was to focus on professional learning opportunities for teachers. She said that the bulk of the district’s 20 annual hours of professional development (PD) has been taken up by the Rhode Island Right to Read Act, which consumes 15 hours of PD for each teacher. Once that is finished, she said the goal is to create a strategic five-year plan of training that includes input from the teachers themselves on what they need.

“[Assistant Superintendent] Dr. Sanna is going to kick off a district professional learning committee so that the voices of teachers are part of planning that professional learning,” Riley said. She also said she would be conducting a staff survey at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year to get input on things like climate and culture.

Riley said that, although math proficiency remains a critical need for improvement, these measures should begin to help improve literacy proficiency right away. She expects tangible results are on the horizon.

Redefining discipline
Riley has made her thoughts on the need for discipline reform clear in the past, when she informed the school committee that she would be looking into changes to the district’s code of conduct. Riley envisions a more holistic policy, based on multi-tiered systems of support, that looks at each specific situation and digs deeper into why negative behavior occurred and the details that led up to that occurrence.

“Our previous code of conduct had a general, ‘You do this wrong, you get this punishment’, and it didn’t allow for digging into why that behavior occurred, how do we prevent that behavior in the future and how do we support that student in whatever it is that caused that behavior,” she said Monday. “There has to be some individualization. That’s what the new policy is about. It’s about looking at each circumstance in the moment and looking at that child and why the behavior occurred so we can support them.”

But later that day when the policy was discussed by the school committee, Chairperson Marjorie McBride, Vice Chairperson Tara Thibaudeau, and Secretary Victor Cabral said they would not support the policy as it was written without more clarity on how specific punishments would be doled out within each school. Riley responded, saying that setting specific punishments was the purview of individual building principals, as laid out in school handbooks, and not by the school committee, which is responsible for setting the overarching policy that guides discipline, rather than the discipline itself.

After a back-and-forth between committee members who supported or did not support the policy change, it was decided to be tabled until the next meeting, with Riley agreeing to include more information in the policy regarding how each school handbook would outline specific punishments for infractions.

Despite the slight setback, Riley said during her interview that changing the climate and culture within schools is a job for everyone in the school community, including parents, school personnel, and students themselves.

“This is an ‘all of us’ job, not a handful of people job,” she said. “But it also takes practice. You have to do it and try it out so you can get better at it. It’s one of those things that is important for all of us to acknowledge is that if we’re not all in it, we’re never going to change the culture.”

On Covid
While it has not disappeared from our collective consciousness by any means, Riley indicated that the district was moving towards the same approach in responding to Covid as many other parts of society have done — accepting it as a reality, taking the proper precautions, and trying to make the best of it.

She said that every school has air purifiers and HVAC systems capable of making the required number of air exchanges, and that instructions regarding hand washing would continue to be emphasized. She said that there are plenty of tests available for all students and staff that need one.

Riley said that if a student tests positive, it will trigger a five-day isolation period as required by the state. If a student is well enough to do some work remotely, they will be able to do so, but there is no planned required remote learning program being enacted this year. She said she was hopeful that instances of Covid will come to resemble more traditional illnesses, such as the flu or strep throat, that don’t force students to get too far behind with their schoolwork.

“If you have strep throat, you’re typically out for about five days…We’re built for those kinds of absences,” she said. “We weren’t built for kids who were going to be out for 14 days at a time multiple times a year.”

She said that the district has done a good job maintaining a pool of substitutes should a large number of teachers go down sick at the same time.

“Because we’re moving towards that endemic phase, it’s something we’re going to have to deal with,” she said. “There have been years where four or five teachers have had the flu and we’ve had to figure that out. I think we do a good job of recruiting substitutes and making sure we have enough substitutes, so I think it’s maintaining that pool and making sure we do whatever we can when we’re in school to keep people healthy.”

Riley said that one good outcome of Covid was the development of more robust and available remote learning programs, so that if a student does get knocked out for multiple weeks by multiple contractions of Covid, there is at least more support available for them through such programs.

Improvements made
Riley made sure to mention her excitement regarding the two new, full-time Pre-K programs that have been created at Hugh Cole and Colt Andrews Elementary Schools. Each has a full cohort of 20 four-year-olds. “It’s just another place to close that opportunity gap for kids so we can have them ready to go to kindergarten,” she said.

She also spoke about the district finishing up its previous list of capital projects from the last school bond, with all but a few projects underway. She also provided the school committee a detailed list of security upgrades that had been completed at each school building over the summer, which included cameras and control panel wiring upgrades at most schools and the installation of solar-powered 9-1-1 phone kiosks at Mt. Hope High School and Kickemuit Middle School. The district is now in the initial phases of assessing projects they want to pursue for the next school bond, which are eligible for up to 81 percent reimbursement by the state if they pursue certain bonus criteria.

Briefly mentioned was also the approval of Mt. Hope’s construction CTE program, which begins this year.

“There’s so much hope and possibility on the horizon and right now it’s just like, okay, let’s maintain that energy,” she said in closing. “I’m excited for the school year and I think the staff really is, and I think there’s a renewed energy. That’s hopefully going to push us through the school year and we won’t have any crazy interruptions like Covid or anything else to get in our way of moving forward.”