PROVIDENCE – While state elected and education leaders feel there’s more work to do, the Providence Public School District could be returned to local control as early as 2026.
But the district needs to meet several requirements for the city to get local schools back under its oversight.
Gov. Daniel J. McKee, R.I. Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green and other school officials on Monday announced a “Path to Local Control” plan at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School. The plan outlines what needs to occur for PPSD to be given back to the city after being under state intervention for more than five years.
Infante-Green said it will depend on “the preparedness and capacity of local leaders” when PPSD gets transitioned back to the city. She said if the “right strategy” is in place, transition could be done by next year.
“It’s not like turning on a switch,” Infante-Green said. “We have new leadership that we hope can get us there.”
Monday’s announcement comes at a time when new members of PPSD’s school board have been both elected and appointed, and several public pleas from local city officials to return PPSD back to city control have accelerated.
PPSD has been under R.I. Department of Education intervention
since November 2019 after
a scathing Johns Hopkins University report outlined the district’s various failings at the time. Four months after the takeover, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and hampered several efforts in all sectors, including education.
In 2024, though, discussions about returning PPSD to local control started to ramp up. RIDE and Infante-Green in May sought SchoolWorks LLC to conduct an independent review assessing PPSD’s progress thus far and evaluate local authorities’ capacity and readiness “for a return” to being under city governance and oversight.
SchoolWorks in
its review released three months later offered mixed results on the takeover. The report said PPSD has made “notable progress” in giving students needed learning materials to succeed in math and English language arts, but PPSD “has not yet” set clear expectations for instruction.
Based on that review and Infante-Green’s recommendation, the R.I. Council on Elementary and Secondary Education in late August 2024 voted unanimously to have the state continue its takeover of PPSD for no longer than three years.
Not everyone was pleased with the decision, with Mayor Brett P. Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller expressing disappointment about it.
Miller in an emailed statement late Monday criticized state leaders on the plan’s announcement, claiming the state has not been transparent with city leadership. She said the City Council and the Smiley administration weren’t briefed on the framework and instead learned about it “from the press.” She also stated that the city repeatedly “extended [its] hand to RIDE” to partner to ensure a good path forward for students but the department “refused to take it.”
“This blatant lack of transparency and collaboration only deepens distrust – a clear disservice to our shared work to improve student outcomes,” Miller said. "While we welcome the prospect of an earlier return to local control, this process cannot exclude the municipal decision-makers who will implement the transition.”
Both the
PPSD school board last summer and
Smiley recently requested for the city to immediately return the district to local control. Miller said the state’s alleged failure to engage directly with city leaders “further affirms the council’s position that Providence Public Schools must return to local control in July 2025.”
Returning control to the city would be a “disservice to the community of students, families and educators,” McKee said on Monday, and both the state and city need more time to plan and prepare to give the schools back to the city in the best way possible.
The framework Infante-Green outlined for the city to get its schools back includes the city agreeing to “fully honor”
the settlement agreement between PPSD, RIDE and the city to increase local school funding by the same percentage as state aid.
“This is important because we need to continue the momentum,” Infante-Green said. “The momentum is real.”
The city having school construction projects remain on track for completion and committing to deliver new or like-new buildings for all students is also expected from RIDE, Infante-Green said. She also said Smiley’s office must partner with state and local school leadership to engage the community to publish a transition plan for PPSD. That plan must include how to better serve underserved and multilingual students, and a process to appoint experienced professionals to help guide local stakeholders.
McKee said everything can be negotiated if not all of the conditions are met. However, Infante-Green does not want to see PPSD fall backward.
“The last thing we want is for the district to return to the ways of the past,” Infante-Green said. “Returning to the status quo is not an option.”
(UPDATE: Adds comments from Providence City Council President Rachel Miller in paragraphs 11, 12 and 13.)
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 X at @James_Bessette.
