Fiscal vise squeezes Providence students

by Jonathan Howard

UPDATE: Prior to publication, we requested clarification of two budget line descriptions from the Providence Public School Department. PPSD’s response was received only after this article was released. These clarifications are now included in the article. Last November, after months of sniping among the parties, [...]

Music From Junk

by John Sumerlin

Making musical instruments out of recycled or discarded materials, ergo junk, is a worldwide phenomenon. There are entire orchestras in Venezuela and other relatively impoverished cultures, where children use junk instruments to participate in orchestras of their peers, learning to play and concertize together. There [...]

Dual Language Education Offers A Vision for Providence’s Schools

by Diego Arene-Morley

The Boston Globe report on the results of the statewide academic test, the RI Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS) on October 18, 2024, included one bright spot:  “Students who recently exited multilingual learner (MLL) programs scored higher than the statewide average in both English Language Arts [...]

Legacy Laws Are Hurting Providence Public School Students

by Julia Steiny

Failing urban students is a time-honored habit in Rhode Island, first documented exhaustively in the 1993 ProBE report. The equally depressing 2019 Johns Hopkins report also focused on toxic provisions in the Providence teachers’ contract.  But unlike those two reports, the May 2024 legislative commission [...]

Mary Colman Wheeler (1846-1920) Visionary Artist, Educator, and Founder of Wheeler School         

by Jane Lancaster

Best remembered locally for founding Wheeler School on Providence’s East Side, she was also an internationally known artist and educator, exhibiting in the Paris Salon, receiving an honorary degree from Brown in 1911, and a medal from the French government honoring her role as an [...]

Providence to Pay $15M to Resolve School Funding Dispute with State

by Alexander Castro

The city of Providence will pay an additional $15 million to its public schools, staving off a budget crisis that threatened to disrupt student amenities like sports and bus passes in the coming months, under the terms of an agreement reached this week with the [...]

The Rise and Fall of Esek Hopkins

by Jane Lancaster

Esek Hopkins (1718-1802) lived a long life as a public figure and sea captain and served as the first commander-in-chief of the American Navy. His current reputation is poor, however, after captaining the disastrous voyage of the slave ship Sally. Was he a hero or [...]

Hope Scholarship Shows Promise at Rhode Island College

by Alexander Castro

The Hope Scholarship at Rhode Island College (RIC) seems to be living up to its title by producing small gains in the school’s lagging enrollment, the first annual review of the program shows. Less than a year into the program, RIC has seen higher retainment [...]

State to Keep Control of Providence Schools for Three More Years

by Alexander Castro

Javier Montañez, superintendent of Providence Public Schools, and Angélica Infante-Green, commissioner of the Rhode Island Department of Education, are seen speaking to reporters after a meeting of the state’s K-12 council. Councilors voted unanimously to affirm Infante-Green’s recommendation that a state takeover of the capital [...]

Providence Teachers Contract Ends August 31- What’s Next?

by Jonathan Howard

Whether defended or despised, public school teacher contracts are critical documents that set out what we expect from our teachers and what they can expect from us as their employers. Yet, the public and its elected representatives have almost no information about or influence over [...]