K-12 council OKs Infante-Green’s plan to relinquish control of Providence schools

After seven years, the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education Tuesday gave its approval to returning control of Providence Public Schools to the capital city effective July 1.

“It’s not like turning on a light switch, which is what everybody is thinking,” Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Angélica Infante-Green told the council.

‘It was time.’ Infante-Green says she’s ready to hand back keys to Providence schools

The 5-1 vote came at the end of a meeting that lasted over three and a half hours and a lengthy discussion about the parameters for ending the turnaround plan in place since 2019. That was the year a revealing Johns Hopkins University report came out chronicling systemic problems that led to years of underperformance and poor learning conditions in Rhode Island’s largest school district.

Council member Jo Eva Gaines voted no. She questioned the motivation behind the city’s leaders, saying she said she has yet to hear city leaders commit to continuing practices that have helped improve school performance. 

“I’m just hearing, ‘We want the schools back,’” Gaines said, suggesting the reason local officials wanted control had more to do with the November elections. 

“It’s not the parents, it’s not the teachers,” Gaines said. “Parents and teachers are worried about what will happen once we step away. They fear going back to the same old practices that for 30 years kept Providence kids at the bottom of the educational barrel.”

Rhode Island Department of Education officials presented a series of “operational boundaries,” including a requirement that the School Board refrain from encroaching upon the school superintendent’s day-to-day administrative powers. The board must also spend 40% of its open session meeting time evaluating student learning outcome data toward board goals and maintain active membership in the Rhode Island Association of School Committees. The School Board, Providence Public School Department and the city solicitor must mutually agree upon the appointment of a single chief legal counsel for the district.

The Providence School Board is scheduled to meet Wednesday at 6 p.m. to review the transition plan.

The draft plan Infante Green presented to the council took note of several measures of performance improvement for the school district, which has exceeded prepandemic performance in both math and English language arts. Providence schools also achieved the greatest reduction in chronic absenteeism among traditional districts. 

More Providence students than ever are taking advanced placement exams and students, especially Hispanic/Latino and Black students, are more likely to score a 3+ than a year ago, the plan stated. 

“We cannot run a district in perpetuity,” Infante-Green told the council. “It is time for the community to take some ownership.”