In January of 2026, a new charter school proposal that plans to provide dual language instruction to over 600 students from Providence, Cranston and Pawtucket earned preliminary approval from the the RI Board of Education’s K-12 Council. De la Comunidad Bilingual School would be the state’s first dual language school serving all grades from kindergarten through high school.
Dual language (DL) has proven to be the most effective and efficient way to teach English to students whose primary language is not English, who are called “multi-lingual learners” (or MLLs) within the education field.
Additionally, research shows that attaining bilingualism during early education unlocks cognitive capacity across the board for English and non-English speakers alike, boosting student achievement in math as well as literacy in both languages, with measurable benefits that persist through high school. Students in some dual language programs in Providence, Central Falls and Pawtucket have significantly outperformed their peers in low-income urban districts and have even rivalled the standardized test scores of affluent districts like Barrington.
Public schools have long struggled, and largely failed, to educate MLLs by relying on English for Speakers of a Second Language (ESOL) instruction—which can be taught by ESOL-certified teachers who speak only English. MLL students are often placed in pull-out ESOL classes and in English-only classrooms for other academic topics. As the number of MLLs in Providence schools doubled from 4,000 in 2013 to about 8,000 today, the unique needs of multilingual learners have become increasingly apparent, with district-wide test scores remaining abysmally low under existing ESOL instruction.
More recently, dual language instruction has emerged as the gold standard for English language acquisition. The RI Department of Education put DL at the forefront of its strategy for meeting the needs of MLLs.
So why have Providence, Pawtucket and Cranston moved to block the opening of De la Comunidad Dual Language School?
Concerns about Charter Schooling and Equal Access
Opposition to the new dual language charter school is partly grounded in the wider dispute over the distribution of resources between traditional district-operated public schools and public charter schools. Public charter schools are created and operated by independent nonprofit organizations, but serve the same pool of public school students (albeit, with lesser enrollment availability than traditional public schools). Opponents say the dramatic growth in charter enrollments has come at the expense of the majority of students who stay in PPSD schools. We’ll come back to that bigger picture in future articles.
But the pushback to DLC also centers on a more immediate and specific resource: the Bilingual Dual Language (BDL) certified teachers qualified to teach in a dual language environment. Opponents to De La Comunidad’s charter say there just aren’t enough certified multilingual teachers to go around. And, they say, opening a whole new dual language school will only make it harder to increase access to existing dual language programs serving Providence students.
PPSD’s Expanding Dual Language Program
PPSD already has the largest dual language program in the state and is working hard to expand it.
Providence’s oldest DL program is at the Leviton Dual Language Annex on Greenwich Ave in South Providence. Today, Leviton is a 50/50 dual language immersion school for 288 students in grades K-5, plus two self-contained dual language special education classrooms. By some assessments, Leviton may be the best elementary school in the state, with test scores that equal or even exceed statewide averages despite serving a student body with many more learning barriers.
Leviton shows what district schools can achieve. PPSD at large is still a long way from matching that success, but it’s working hard to expand DL instruction. In 2018, PPSD came under a federal court order to improve poor services to MLLs. Under RIDE’s oversight since 2019, PPSD has taken actions to correct the shortcomings in its services to MLLs, including increasing the percentage of teachers certified in English as a Second Language working in Bilingual and Dual Language education programs. PPSD emerged from federal monitoring in 2024.
“We have 8,000 multilingual learners,” says Jennifer Effland, PPSD’s senior executive director of multilingual learners. That’s 42% of PPSD’s 19,000 students. Nearly a quarter of multilingual learners (1,950 of 8,000 MLL students) are now enrolled in DL programs according to PPSD (up from 1,270 in 2022). Other MLLs in Providence receive ESL instruction, but are not yet in a dual language environment, which would be the ideal, according to Effland.
PPSD has added dual language programs at six elementary schools and at Roger Williams Middle School. PPSD launched its first DL classroom for incoming 9th graders at Hope High School this year. Hope will add a DL grade each year to create the district’s first DL high school program. The new K-8 school being built on the site of the former Gilbert Stuart Middle School will have a DL program when it opens in 2027.
Some PPSD programs vary from the 50/50 full immersion DL model. Other than Leviton, all of PPSD’s DL programs are “strands” serving only some of the students in a building, which some advocates say is less effective than a whole-building DL approach.
Effland plans to continue to expand PPSD’s DL offerings even after hitting the current target of 2,190 seats. “We have a wait list, too,” she notes.
In addition to PPSD’s DL programs, Providence students also already have access to two existing DL charter schools. Nuestro Mundo Dual Language School, a 322-student K-8 charter on Gordon St in Elmwood, opened in 2022, serving exclusively Providence students. The International Charter School (ICS) in Pawtucket accepts students from any RI community, including many from Providence. ICS launched Rhode Island’s first whole-school DL curriculum in 2001.
ICS’s academic scores exceed the average for all PPSD students. Nuestro Mundo has so far not exceeded district averages for math and reading outcomes. In an exception to the usual high wall between charters and districts, Rhode Island’s DL community straddles both, with shared teacher development programs and meetings to share knowledge and ideas.
The gap between the need for DL and the supply of seats is still wide, but PPSD says it is already expanding dual language access as fast as it can.
Victor Capellan, Board Treasurer for De La Comunidad and a key advocate for the charter project, says that, “While Providence may have more seats than its neighboring cities, that does not mean families’ needs have been met.”
Not enough teachers?
“The biggest barrier to more dual language instruction is staffing,” says Erin Papa, Ph.D., who is the executive director of the Coalition for a Multilingual RI.
“There are just not enough dual language educators—or world language educators—in Rhode Island or the entire United States. Until recently, there hasn’t been an effort to overcome this in RI. The dual language programs we have struggle to find teachers.”
Effland confirms that finding BDL-certified teachers is the Providence district’s chief barrier to expanded DL. “Dual language teachers need certifications for dual language and for their content area. It’s the equivalent of two Master’s degrees.”
To meet the current need of multilingual students, Rhode Island will need 700 more BDL-certified and 700 more ESOL-certified teachers, a goal that will take five to ten years to achieve. On that scale, the number of BDL candidates currently being trained in Rhode Island barely registers. PPSD has openings posted for 10 DL teachers, Nuestro Mundo and Pawtucket School Department both have two openings with a few more expected to be posted by Central Falls and Woonsocket in the near future. Most of the currently enrolled BDL candidates are already working in classrooms on emergency or “expert residency” certifications.
“We will need to significantly boost enrollment in BDL, ESOL and world language teacher preparation programs to truly serve all students,” says Papa.
The Coalition has launched a three-year project with Catalyst Grant funding from the Rhode Island Foundation to streamline the pipelines to train future BDL-, World Language-, and ESOL-certified teachers in RI. But even under the best of circumstances, the training path for most language education candidates is years long.
One faster option: hire multilingual teachers certified overseas who want to teach in the U.S. PPSD was able to hire 15 teachers from Spain last year. But RIDE doesn’t recognize credentials from many Western Hemisphere nations. And aggressive new U.S. immigration restrictions could cut this pathway off.
When asked about the issue of staffing for a new DL program, Capellan suggests that De La Communidad would recruit new Spanish-dominant teachers through community organizations and retain them by making DLC a school where “they are respected, supported, and developed.”
Approval Anyway
In January, following RIDE’s recommendation, the RI Board of Education’s K-12 Council considered DLC’s application to open its first three grades in September of 2027. The Council didn’t really address, much less settle, the teacher availability issue.
In public testimony to the Council, Andy Smith of the RI Education Collective, which appears to have provided much of the staff effort needed to develop DLC’s extensive application process and advocacy campaigns asserted that DLC “will expand, not redistribute” the MLL workforce by working with colleges and international programs to bring more certified teachers to Rhode Island.
Papa from the Coalition for a Multilingual RI made the opposite case to the Council. “These proposals do not expand access. Providence and Pawtucket both have dual language programs that should be expanded… We have a shortage of dual language educators.”
However, the Council did not seek or receive evidence to support either position.
At least some Council members were frustrated at the lack of clarity and urgency around a statewide DL strategy. In the discussion of the DLC application, Council members strongly agreed that more dual language seats were long overdue and asked what RIDE was doing to support DL in traditional districts.
“We put out a grant,” responded RIDE Commissioner Angelica Infante-Greene. “Providence took it up… Pawtucket and North Kingston took the grant, but then cancelled the programs.” (Pawtucket relaunched its DL program last September.)
“This is bigger than grants,” responded Council Chair Patricia DiCenso. “This is strategic planning. We need a much broader view of multilingualism and bilingualism. We need these programs in all of our schools. We need systems and structures across Rhode Island and not a grant here and there.”
“If we can’t mandate dual language for all, can we just approve this?” prompted another councilmember.
The Council gave DLC’s application preliminary approval on a voice vote with at least two voting against. DLC will earn final approval if it hits specific organizational benchmarks as it prepares to open in September 2027. The school intends to occupy space on Westminster Street in downtown Providence.
Larger Questions Arise
The question before the Council was narrow: whether to approve DLC’s charter or not. New charter applications must withstand an extensive and lengthy review process before earning RIDE’s recommendation. DLC played by the rules and earned that endorsement.
But Providence’s challenge of expanding access to high quality dual language instruction is complicated, and it goes beyond DLC’s charter. Providence already has diverse and expanding dual language programs for students at both district and charter schools. But expansion of both district and charter programs is severely hampered by a shortage of trained and certified teachers.
Meanwhile, DLC faces at least two other hurdles on its path to opening next year. The three sending cities have gone to court to overturn the approval, claiming that DLC must receive the official approval of the cities affected. Additionally, a bill that would suspend all new charter approvals, including DLC’s, is pending in the General Assembly.
Jonathan Howard is Co-founder of Cause & Effect, Inc., a consulting company that provides strategic planning facilitation, fund development planning and board strengthening to mission-driven organizations. He is a long-time resident of Providence.
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