Teacher unions challenged in unprecedented face-off
01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 28, 2010
State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who approved the firing of teachers, support staff and administrators at Central Falls High School, has said she will “do whatever it takes to create better schools.”
The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski
Eight months ago, Deborah A. Gist began her first staff meeting at the state Department of Education with a call to arms: “Are you ready to change the world?”
The woman who once climbed Mount Kilimanjaro made it clear that she would bring the same resolve to her job as the state’s new commissioner of education.
“Our state’s 150,000 public school students are depending on all of us to do whatever it takes to create better schools,” Gist said in her first speech.
Her urgency to fulfill this promise places Gist — even more than Supt. Frances Gallo — at the center of the turmoil now playing out in Central Falls.