By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Rhode Island Board of Education has approved a new two-year contract for its reform-focused education commissioner, despite the state teachers union’s best efforts to take her out.

Education Commissioner Deborah Gist will remain in her position for at least the next two years as part of a contract renewal that also grants her a minimal 2 percent pay increase each year, GoLocalProv.com reports.

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“The Rhode Island Left’s propaganda campaign against a steadfast reformer has failed, proving that radical and dishonest politics can sometimes run its course,” Republican leader Travis Rowley said, according to the news site.

“From our perspective it was a political decision to try to kick her out of Rhode Island,” Lisa Blais, leader of the taxpayer advocacy group OSTPA, told the news site. Blais was critical of the decision to limit Gist’s contract to two years, as opposed to the three-year extension requested by Gist, because the expiration of the new agreement will fall within an election cycle.

“We didn’t put kids first here. Look, we were a year short of saying that we’re standing by improving our education system,” said Blais, who is also a Tea Party activist.

Gist’s contract renewal was a heated topic in recent weeks as the state’s teachers union lobbied hard against the commissioner.

Gist helped Rhode Island win $75 million in federal funding through President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” education initiative by implementing numerous reforms the union doesn’t like, including increased focus on student testing and eliminating teacher seniority as a factor in personnel decisions.

Gist also supported Central Falls school district Superintendent Francis Gallo in 2010 when she fired all of the teachers at the local high school when they refused to put students above contract demands.

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Gist, who earned $203,000 last year, has improved student academics and made some progress in closing the state’s achievement gap between white and minority students, but the teachers union went out of its way to paint her as “an Attila The Hun type bully who discourages dissent and rules with an iron fist,” as GoLocalProv.com columnist Russell Moore put it.

The union commissioned a poll that allegedly shows more than 80 percent of teachers don’t like Gist because they feel less respected than when she came into office in 2009, media reports show.

But this week several high profile education officials came out in support of Gist, including U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who told reporters, “By just about every measure, Rhode Island is heading in the right direction.”

Gist was also supported by Gov. Lincoln Chafee and Board of Education chair Eva Mancuso.