At a Thursday press conference, Mayor Brett Smiley, alongside city and school leaders, announced his plan for returning the Providence Public School District to local control. The district has been under state control since 2019.
The city’s plan includes strengthening education programming, expanding support for multilingual and special education students and investing in after-school and summer learning opportunities in an effort to return the PPSD to city control starting next academic year.
“Through extensive community engagement, including surveys and conversations with nearly 1,200 constituents, we’ve developed a plan that reflects the priorities of those who matter most: our students, their families and our educators,” Smiley said at the press conference.
In February, leaders from the Rhode Island Department of Education named summer 2026 as the earliest time the state takeover — which was enacted due to concerns raised by a 2019 Johns Hopkins report — could end. Last August, state leaders extended the takeover to 2027.
In a letter to the state’s Council on Elementary and Secondary Education shared with The Herald, RIDE Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education expressed discontent with the transition plan.
“This report is incomplete and lacks sufficient detail and substance that will facilitate a successful transition to local control,” she wrote.
PPSD Superintendent Javier Montañez wrote in a community-wide letter shared with The Herald that “more work and collaboration” was needed “to develop a comprehensive, newly designed Turnaround Action Plan.” He added that “the plan would benefit from greater specificity, more detailed action steps and accountable timelines and individuals responsible.”
“The report was created in a silo by city staff and meets neither the Council’s directions nor our collective expectations for a robust, collaborative plan that explains how local leaders will both sustain and continue the progress we have achieved,” Infante-Green continued.
She also wrote that RIDE and the PPSD were only allowed to give feedback on the plan once after it was drafted. Montañez also wrote that he was only given one opportunity to share feedback on the draft.
Infante-Green added that RIDE had “several concerns with elements that conflicted with state law” but did not clarify which aspects of the plan were problematic. In his letter, Montañez specified that the plan “suggests sharing of student and family data with city structures that would conflict with federal privacy laws.”
Infante-Green expressed concern that “the city may implement redundant, burdensome processes and practices of the past.”
Infante-Green has the final authority to end the state takeover, but the city has previously expressed an intent to advocate that the state legislators intervene to overturn the extension of the takeover.
According to surveys conducted by the city, over 90% of community members want to see the PPSD returned to local control immediately or in the near future. Nearly two-thirds of community members surveyed were dissatisfied with “the quality of public education in Providence.”
With an emphasis on collaboration between the city and state, the plan also highlights successful efforts from the past six years under state control. These include improvements in facilities across the district and streamlined data management.
“This report today is not meant to be an indictment of the work of RIDE,” Smiley said, applauding an increase in the number of English-language educators since the takeover began. He said that “we should celebrate that progress, and yet we know there’s still more to do.”
In categories ranging from facilities to governance, the city also outlined action items to take before and after the PPSD returns to local control.
“When the city resumes management of the district, administration staff are prepared to implement the priority actions to address critical issues” outlined in the transition plan, the document reads.
The PPSD has still failed to meet many of the goals outlined in the initial plan for the state takeover, with only 15% of students able to read or doing math at grade level.
The plan highlights the role of the new hybrid school board — which features both elected and appointed leaders — which Smiley said is “deeply rooted in community.” He said that school board members’ “neighbors know them and know how to reach them,” lowering the barriers to getting local, constructive feedback.
The plan also highlights the need for after-school and summer programming.
“It is a fact that every student spends more time out of school than in school,” he said, describing those hours as an opportunity for students to either grow or be at risk of “falling back.”
As part of a billion-dollar school construction and facilities plan, the city also plans to construct pre-kindergarten through 8th grade schools, rather than having separate elementary and middle schools, Smiley said at the press conference.
“We have excellent elementary schools in the city of Providence, but too many of our middle school students continue to struggle,” Smiley said, describing how the sixth-grade transition can be difficult for students.
The decision to move towards the pre-K through 8 model, Smiley said, was guided by research data and expert opinions. The model allows school environments to stay small, enables an easier sixth-grade transition process and provides opportunities for peer mentorship across grade levels, he added.
At the conference, City Council President Pro Tempore Juan Pichardo (Ward 9) described public schools as the “basic building block of any community’s future.”
“Even as we speak here today, the Providence Public School District is busy preparing the next generation of leaders,” Pichardo said.
Annika Singh is a senior staff writer from Singapore who enjoys rewatching Succession and cheating on the NYT crossword.
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.
