PROVIDENCE – R.I. Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green Tuesday has asked Providence Superintendent of Schools Harrison Peters for his resignation, about a week after the arrest of a now-former Providence Public School District administrator for allegedly taking a juvenile’s shoe off and forcefully massaging his foot without consent.
R.I. Department of Education spokesperson Victor Morente confirmed Wednesday to Providence Business News that Infante-Green has asked Peters to step down as superintendent after having recent conversations with Gov. Daniel J. McKee and community members about the situation. Morente also said RIDE has not yet received a resignation letter from Peters.
Peters did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
Peters, along with his turnaround team, was introduced in January 2020 as Providence’s new superintendent. He started his education career as a teacher in Florida, and worked in various districts such as Charlotte Mecklenburg, Chicago Public, Houston Independent and, most recently, Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida where he served as deputy superintendent and chief of schools before coming the top administrator of Rhode Island’s largest school district.
Peters was also brought to Providence to help turn around a struggling district that had to be taken over by the state. An independent report conducted by Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy released in June 2019 stated that students were struggling to learn in schools that are run ineffectively, which it said were staffed by demoralized teachers, among other scathing findings, and prompted the state takeover.
However, the May 10 arrest of Olayinka Alege, who was hired to be PPSD’s network superintendent to oversee the district’s middle and high schools, prompted serious questions from state leaders why Alege was hired in Providence.
Alege has since resigned.
A 2009 report by the Orlando (Fla.) Sun Sentinel states that five boys at King High School in Tampa Fla., told local police that Alege, then an assistant principal at the school, asked them to take off their shoes and socks and allowed him to “pop” their toes as punishment.
Since then, several local leaders, including five members of the Providence City Council, have called for Peters to resign. The city council’s resolution states that Peters’ “willingness to ignore the warning signs and vouch for an individual with past allegations of inappropriate contact with students demonstrates a complete disregard for the safety of the students in his care.”
“As the governor said [Tuesday], we must do what is best for the students. Asking for the superintendent’s resignation was the right thing to do,” McKee spokesperson Alana O’Hare said Wednesday in the statement.
Providence Mayor Jorge O. Elorza on Wednesday also called for Peters and for new leadership in the district. He described the situation as “extremely disturbing” and is “beyond disappointed” by the slow pace of the PPSD’s turnaround.
“RIDE promised us that this process was going to be different, but this is beginning to resemble their failed intervention in Central Falls,” Elorza said. “We brought in the state with the explicit purpose of radically reforming the [Providence Teachers Union] contract but, almost two years later, no progress has been made. Nothing is going to fundamentally change until there is a new contract and that needs to happen ASAP.”
During a meeting Wednesday with reporters, Elorza said he spoke with Peters “several times” and told him that Peters’ time in PPSD will end “one way or the other.” Elorza also said Peters did not indicate to him if he would resign Wednesday.
Elorza said he initially was not ready to call for Peters to resign based on early information from his own inquiry into Peters’ situation. But, he said, “everything changed” after Peters met with state senators May 10, where Peters acknowledged that he knew about Alege’s past and didn’t share it with state officials.
“He kept it to himself, and that was just unacceptable,” Elorza said. “That convinced me that we need new leadership in the district.”
If a new superintendent search is prompted, Elorza said he would be as much as possible “happy to be involved” with the decision-making process.
“I will indeed weigh in on it,” Elorza said. RIDE would be the entity hiring the new superintendent, Elorza said, also noting that he looks forward to finding a way to work with a new superintendent.
Update: Adds paragraphs 13-17 to include additional comments from Mayor Jorge O. Elorza.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.