The issue of charter school expansion has been a point of contention swirling around next week’s historic school board election, even though the Providence School Board has no direct oversight over charter schools.
Charter schools are authorized by Rhode Island’s Council on Elementary and Secondary Education. While their charters are active, they are able to operate outside of many district and state rules. Interested parents submit applications for their students to be entered into a blind lottery for charter school seats. Charter schools select students randomly, as opposed to picking students based on the specific data and information in their application.
Depending on the charter school’s mission, they may be permitted to give greater “weight” to the lottery submissions of educationally disadvantaged students — such as multilingual learners, low-income students, or homeless students. Weighting based on race or gender is not permitted.
The schools often do not have capacity to take on most of the students who enter the lottery. As of 2021, there were an average of 9.5 applications per charter school seat across the state.
In an interview with The 74 Million, Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green shared that 19,000 children in Providence have applied to charter schools. There are 22,000 students in the Providence Public School District.
In the months leading up to the PPSD elections, candidates have debated the role of charter schools within the district’s education system. In interviews with The Herald, ten candidates shared their perspectives on the school choice debate.
The PPSD is currently under state takeover from the Rhode Island Department of Education, which deprives the school board of many of the powers it would have under local control.
There are no circumstances under which the Providence School Board has authority over the creation of charter schools. However, under local control, the board has to approve the closures of traditional public schools. Once a traditional school is closed, its building can be occupied by a charter school.
Ty’Relle Stephens, a candidate in Region 5, noted that the board’s power over school closures is a way the school board can influence charter school expansion in Providence. He is opposed to replacing traditional public schools with charters. He said his goal is to improve the quality of the PPSD so that “students feel comfortable receiving that education.”
Corey Jones, a candidate in Region 1, is similarly worried about allowing additional charter development. He referenced a period in New Orleans where the traditional public model was abandoned in favor of an entirely charter model and noted that the city had some reports of “segregation and stratification” across subgroups.
“There is a real problem with a system that takes the highly motivated parents who fill out the application for the (charter) lottery … and then leaves these other kids hanging by the wayside,” Corey Jones said. “The focus has to be improving our current school system.”
Herman Batchelor Brewster MA’92, a candidate in Region 1, said that the creation of charter schools leads to budget shortfalls, which impacts PPSD’s ability to fund services students need.
If a student switches out of the traditional public school system to a charter school, the public funding originally allocated to the PPSD for their education gets reallocated to their new charter school. However, the district can withhold a certain amount of that per-pupil funding.
In the proposed 2024-25 PPSD budget, about $33 million was allocated for “tuition to charter schools.” The proposed total operating budget of the PPSD was about $506 million.
Michael Nina, a current school board member and candidate in Region 4, said his primary concern is about the mismanagement of the rest of the PPSD’s budget. He emphasized that salaries and benefits make up about half of the district’s budget, but that “we don’t have details” about how exactly that money is allocated.
For Nina, the lack of transparency surrounding PPSD’s budget is a bigger issue than the money allocated to charter schools. “It’s really misleading, the way that people are using charter schools as a scapegoat,” he said.
“If Providence schools would listen to the parents and fix what parents are saying is concerning them, I don’t think any of the kids would really need to go to charter schools,” he added.
Jenny Mercado, a charter school parent and candidate in Region 3, said she supports more school options.
DeNeil Jones, a candidate in Region 5, said her daughter switched to a charter because she “wasn’t being challenged” in the PPSD. She believes that “charter schools make the education system a little more competitive.”
Christopher Ireland, a candidate in Region 2, plans to investigate why charter schools are able to innovate and adapt more easily than traditional public schools. He wants to remove some of the “red tape” that prevents traditional public schools from implementing similar changes.
But for Andrew Grover, another Region 2 candidate, many charter schools are “corporate” and trying to “pump out test scores,” instead of focusing on innovation.
Stop the Wait R.I., an organization that advocates for charter school availability and school choice, endorsed DeNeil Jones , Nina and Mercado. The group has also endorsed Michele Fontes in Region 2.
The organization’s name references the thousands of students on waitlists for charter schools across the state.
In an email to The Herald, Stop the Wait’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer Janie Segui Rodriguez wrote that the organization “endorsed candidates who … are committed to supporting our public schools and providing parents with a wide array of public school choices that can meet the needs of all students.”
The Providence Teachers Union endorsed Corey Jones, Grover, Heidi Silverio (Region 3), Night Jean Muhingabo (Region 4) and Stephens (Region 5). Earlier this month, those five candidates signed a letter criticizing Stop the Wait R.I. for its lack of financial transparency.
“This not only erodes trust in our educational system but raises serious questions about whose agendas are being prioritized — those of our students and educators, or outside entities with concealed agendas,” the letter reads.
In response to the letter, Segui Rodriguez wrote in an email to The Herald that Stop the Wait R.I. takes “great care to ensure our efforts comply with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.” The Providence Teachers Union, which has also criticized Stop the Wait R.I. on X, did not respond to requests for comment.
Nina said that Stop the Wait R.I. was the only organization that reached out to ask him questions about his candidacy. He said he hasn’t received any money from them as part of a larger decision not to request any campaign funding from the community. “Most of our Providence families, they’re very low income,” he said. “I didn’t feel right asking people to donate to a campaign when I can just use social media.”
Silverio was in the first graduating class of the Paul Cuffee Upper School, a charter school in Providence. She said she believes that parents “deserve options” but that she doesn’t believe in the expansion of charter schools. “It’s not fair that you’re able to take public funds and are able to pick and choose who you want in your classroom,” she said, noting that charters have lower percentages of multilingual learners and students with special needs compared to the traditional public system.
Data for direct enrollment comparisons between the PPSD and local charters is hard to compare. The boundaries for charter schools are not the same as those of traditional public districts, and some charters accept applicants from all across the state.
In the 2022-23 school year, 22% of charter students statewide were MLLs compared to 13% of students overall and 37% of students in the PPSD. In that same year, 13% of charter students were receiving special education services compared to 16% overall and 16% in the PPSD.
Silverio said that her job as a Providence School Board member would be to represent the “best interest of our (traditional) public schools.”David Talan, a candidate in Region 4, said that “my concern is for every kid to go to a good school regardless of what type it is.”
Ciara Meyer is a senior staff writer from Saratoga Springs, New York. She plans on concentrating in Statistics and English Nonfiction. In her free time, she loves scrapbooking and building lego flowers.
