Colin Hogan of The Providence Journal joined this week’s episode of “Behind the Story” to discuss ongoing strife inside the Providence School Board.
Hogan, who recently started covering the capital city, attended a board meeting last week that erupted into chaos. Multiple members called for the school board president to step down, while residents aired their frustrations about the dysfunction.
“This is not how school board meetings normally go, including in Providence,” Hogan said.
The internal strife comes as Providence is in its first school year since regaining control of the school district, which had been under state control for nearly seven years. Hogan said the board now oversees a host of important decisions involving budgets, personnel and policy.
But it didn’t appear to Hogan that those issues were a high priority at that meeting.
“For a community looking for answers about what the future will look like, what the school board will do, the majority of this meeting did not serve to answer those questions,” Hogan said.
Later in the show, Dan and Eli discussed the “stories we wish we wrote,” including (not all mentioned on air):
“Behind the Story” is hosted by Eli Sherman and Kim Kalunian of 12 News, along with Dan McGowan of The Boston Globe.