Earlier this month, Mayor Brett Smiley appointed five community members to the Providence School Board. The nominees, selected from a pool of applicants, have been recommended for approval by the City Council’s Committee on Finance and await a vote by the full council on Feb. 6.
If approved, the nominees will serve on a school board of five elected and five appointed members. The election, which took place in November, was the first Providence School Board election held since the 1960s. Before this November, the school board was entirely appointed by the mayor.
For the November 2024 election, the city was divided into five regions, each of which will be represented by one elected and one appointed member.
Smiley nominated Melissa Hughes (Region 1), Anjel Newmann (Region 2), Jenny Mercado (Region 3), Night Jean Muhingabo (Region 4) and Steven Williamson (Region 5).
“Each candidate brought valuable expertise and a strong commitment to our community,” Anthony Vega, press secretary for the City of Providence, wrote in an email to The Herald. “These leaders will be essential in advancing our educational priorities and ensuring that all students, teachers and families receive the support they need to thrive.”
Hughes, Newmann and Muhingabo all currently serve on the school board. Muhingabo and Mercado both ran for election in November and lost to Mireya Mendoza (Region 4) and Heidi Silverio (Region 3) respectively.
Corey Jones (Region 1), Michelle Fontes (Region 2) and Ty’Relle Stephens (Region 5) were also elected to the board in November.
“I got inspired by community members when I received so many votes,” said Mercado, who earned 34.3% of her region’s vote but lost to Mendoza. “That meant to me that there’s people in the community (who) believe that I could fight for a better school system.” Mercado was motivated by a need “to continue doing the work” and applied for an appointed position.
Mercado will be serving a two-year term, as will Muhingabo. Hughes will serve for one year, while Newmann and Williamson will each serve for three. Following the initial staggered appointments, future board members will serve three year terms, wrote Vega.
Williamson, Muhingabo, Hughes and Newmann did not respond to The Herald’s requests for comment.
The application process involved preliminary paperwork and attendance at a public forum in December. A subset of the applicants were then selected to advance to an interview stage.
At the forum, Mercado said she was inspired by a fellow applicant: a high school student who answered questions from the public in Spanish. Mercado, who learned English after immigrating to the United States at 15, said the student was “the pure example of how diverse our Providence School Department is and how important it is to have multilingual programming.”
Juan Angel Del Castillo Vargas, a senior at Mount Pleasant High School and a Providence Student Union leadership team member, was one of two youth applicants to the board. He immigrated to the United States from Bolivia at 16 years old without his parents over a year ago.
Castillo Vargas said he was inspired to run for school board to push for improved implementation of multilingual services. “I remember the first day I arrived to this country,” he said in an interview with The Herald. “I cried because I tried to communicate with my teachers, and they didn’t understand me.”
Current policies to support multilingual learners don’t reflect students’ needs, Castillo Vargas said. Translated by The Herald from Spanish, he said that he wants policies to be “more centered on what we live through.”
School leaders and authorities don’t see everything that happens day-to-day in the PPSD, Castillo Vargas said. He hoped to bring a student perspective to the school board and shed light on challenges with multilingual services.
Castillo Vargas said he wasn’t dejected when he learned that he was not selected. But when he learned that the other youth applicant also wasn’t nominated, he was frustrated.
But he hopes that school board members will “make an effort to include the student perspective” in their decisions and policy proposals.
Mercado said she wants to make it easier for students, families and teachers to share their views with the school board. She aims to connect with the community outside of the school board and bolster attendance at meetings by providing food and childcare to parents.
“Mayor Smiley looked for leaders who reflect the city’s vibrant neighborhoods and can serve as strong advocates for students, parents and teachers,” Vega wrote.
Mercado is reviewing school data and reading about the district to prepare for her new appointment. “I’m ready to learn,” she said.
Ciara Meyer is a section editor 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.
