Governor Gina Raimondo began a “community conversation of education” Monday evening with a story from her childhood. She said her father carpooled to work, to a factory that had a job for everyone whether or not they had a degree.

“I wish I could being those days back, but I can’t and we can’t pretend we can,” she said, “We need to make sure Rhode Islanders have the skills they need to be successful in this new economy.”

Raimondo believes improvements, from kindergarten through college, is the best way to ensure residents have the “skills that matter for jobs that pay.”

Joined at Veterans Memorial High School by Education Commission Ken Wagner, Mayor Scott Avedisian, Representatives K. Joseph Shekarchi and David Bennett, Senator William Walaska, Raimondo outlined several initiatives already taken by state government and then opened the proceedings to questions and comments from the audience.

In the proposed budget, Raimondo has put aside funds so that students in all public high schools can take the PSAT and SAT for free in school. Universal full-day kindergarten is funded. Similarly, she wants to expand on the credit bearing college courses students can take while still in high school with her Prepare RI program. She said the best way to make college more affordable – therefore more accessible – is for students to begin while still in high school for free, graduating with a semester or two of work under their belt. The proposed Computer Science for Rhode Island Program (CS4RI) would work to improve computer science courses in all public schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, using partnerships with local business leaders as well as national organizations such as Code.Org and Microsoft.

Raimondo explained that an entry-level computer science job’s average salary is $70,000 and yet only 42 children in public school took the AP Computer Science exam, none of them were people of color.

“That is a moral imperative for all of us,” Raimondo said. “Every child deserves the opportunity to be successful in today’s economy.”

Wagner and Raimondo are also looking to roll out a “bold” empowerment plan to allow individual schools to have more autonomy and flexibility in making decisions. The plan would give educators more freedom to innovate at the school level because “teachers and principals know what is best for their kids.”

“Thank you for acknowledging that teachers and principals know what is best for our students,” Darlene Netcoh, English Department head and teacher at Toll Gate High School, said. “I think our school committee would do well to remember that.”

Many speakers on Monday commended the governor and Wagner for assigning more funding towards special education. Suzanne Arena, founder of Decoding Dyslexia RI, warned that if those funds weren’t in part used to help early detection of learning challenges, such as dyslexia, they would be “misappropriated.” She said there needs to be a better system to identify the students who are struggling academically so that money isn’t wasted in more expensive remedial courses later on in high school or college.

Wagner said, “What we call achievement gaps are actually opportunity gaps. We miss their unique way of learning. When we can properly match students with their style of learning they often excel in the classroom.”

He did mention that when it comes to teaching dyslexic students, the field is still growing as well as working out the best ways to identify and teach these students. Wagner believes schools that take advantage of the empowerment plan will help in reaching those goals.

“We have enough talent in our system to meet the needs of all our students if we just allow for more flexibility in the system for schools and teacher to make these decisions.”

Similarly, Wagner pointed out that many of the concerns brought up by the audience could be improved if not solved by participating in the school empowerment plan.

Carolyn Higgins, a science teacher at Winman Junior High School who is working on the Next Generation Science Standards, said for all the stress on improving STEM learning in the state, she isn’t seeing the proper support nor enough professional development for teachers in the field. Higgins argued elementary teachers, who often serve as the science teacher in younger grades, are “uncomfortable” teaching the subject, but it’s where students’ foundation of science is built.

“What gets me frustrated is that we are expected to do more and more, but we don’t see the money or training for it,” Higgins said. “We want new and improved science curriculums and yet we have not seen the same magnitude of professional development or funding in this area as others.”

Wagner assured Higgins that with the empowerment plan, should a school decide to participate, will have the chance to choose and specialize the professional development, what suits the needs of their teachers. The issue now is that the majority of professional development has to focus on the majority, not the needs of specific teachers or schools.

Raimondo added that with CS4RI schools would begin seeing money allocated to science professional and curriculum development. She wants to continue investing in teacher training but said, “money is not the only answer. We can’t just keep throwing money at a problem.”

She said Rhode Island makes one of the highest investments in education in the country, roughly matching what Massachusetts spends per student. Raimondo said it’s about spending smarter and getting “our money’s worth.”

Gene Nadeau from the school committee argued the city should receive more state funding, and Wagner and Raimondo said the state has looked at and tweaked the funding formula and will continue to see ways in which it can be improved.

Netcoh’s biggest concern was with the PARCC testing. She said with so many variations of the test and so many discrepancies in students’ scores she believes it is “disingenuous and unfair” to hold teachers or districts accountable. She called for a better test than PARCC to be used.

“Trust me, we are holding our students to the highest standards,” she said.

Wagner said the department of education is “lowering the temperature” on test scores, teacher accountability and graduation requirements concerning the PARCC because it was the first time the test was used and the state is in a “time of transition.”

He assured Netcoh that the variations of the PARCC are designed to be comparable and the state is required by the federal government to have a test to gauge progress, especially since the state changed and raised its standards.

“That does not mean tests are not important. We want to make progress and I believe we will see test scores improve year after year.”