The Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
March 22, 2005 Tuesday
West Bay

School board chief discards history curriculum resolution

BENJAMIN N. GEDAN, Journal Staff Writer

Member Andrea Iannazzi’s proposal was aimed at encouraging deeper
discussion of events such as the Holocaust.

CRANSTON – School Committee member Andrea Iannazzi had hoped that her
curriculum resolution would yield deeper discussions in high school
classes of history’s darkest moments.

But last night, she didn’t even get to discuss it.

School Committee Chairman Gordon Palumbo refused to include the
resolution in the agenda, preventing any vote. It was the first time
he exercised that prerogative as chairman.

Palumbo said history classes already teach about the slave trade, the
Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, topics Iannazzi looked to
promote in her resolution.

“It’s already there,” Palumbo said yesterday of the curriculum. Of
Iannazzi’s resolution, he said, “It’s counterproductive.”

Public school classes also discuss Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship in
Italy, the Irish potato famine, and apartheid in South Africa, the
other topics cited by Iannazzi.

Iannazzi wanted her resolution to encourage more thorough discussions
of human rights in the city’s public school curriculum. Discussion of
the issues, she said, could help discourage racism and homophobia
among students.

Last night, she did not mention the resolution during the meeting.
But she said she planned to write a new version as a proposed policy
change, hoping to solicit input from faculty, and gain support during
the month preceding a School Committee vote.

Her resolution has already been endorsed by City Council President
Aram G. Garabedian

“I think it has a better chance of passing in that format,” Iannazzi
said. “I am absolutely, one hundred percent committed.”