Education

As it is currently constructed, the state education funding formula disproportionately benefits affluent suburbs like Barrington and East Greenwich at the expense of Providence and other cities. If it remains unchanged, this problem will become even more severe when the Trump “Big, Beautiful Bill” cuts go into effect.

• Among the tools used to estimate the number of low-income students in a municipality are data on SNAP enrollment. There is a scale factor to compensate for unenrolled but low-income people, but this still tends to produce an undercount.

The undercount of low-income people will only be intensified by the federal changes that will deny SNAP benefits to an estimated 2,300 immigrant Rhode Islanders and impose stricter eligibility criteria on an additional 9,300, a group that includes parents of high school-aged children. (The formula must also take Medicaid data into account in fiscal year 2027, but, as I describe in the Healthcare section, that pool is at risk of shrinking as well.)

The experiment of putting the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) in charge of the Providence Public Schools has failed to meaningfully address the challenges that our district faces. Returning the schools to local control will not automatically solve every problem, but democratic accountability is crucial to an effective policymaking process, and its absence has been profoundly felt since 2019.

As part of the process of restoring democratic accountability, I also believe that our School Board must be fully elected.

“Zero-tolerance policies” have proven counterproductive, exacerbating the problem of the school-to-prison pipeline without materially improving student safety. Students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities, the very people who are most often targeted by their peers and whom anti-bullying policies should focus most on protecting, are disproportionately impacted.

Instead of focusing on punitive measures, we should design and implement curricula for all grade levels that foster true cultural competence and encourage students to truly understand and respect each other. Strengthening mental health supports so that students who are upset can address their struggles appropriately instead of channeling their frustrations into bullying is also crucial.

• When bullying does occur, the remedy should be focused on correcting behavior, making amends, and imposing consequences suited to the offense (for instance, suspending an athlete from their team for hazing, or limiting unsupervised internet access if a student engages in cyberbullying). Out-of-school suspension, which has been shown to have negative impacts on students’ long-term educational and behavioral outcomes and is often imposed inequitably, should be phased out.

There are two major reforms we should make to improve the public school placement process:

• First, we should mandate neighborhood school guarantees. Every family that wants to send their children to the closest public school to their home should have the right to do so. (Students should not be required to attend their neighborhood school if another school in the district has space and is a better fit for them, but they should have the option to do so if they choose.)

• Second, the school placement timeline (especially for kindergarten, for which Providence placements are not finalized until early June) should be moved earlier to ensure that families who are unsatisfied with their children’s placements have adequate time to pursue alternative options.

The federal government has made it clear that it is vehemently opposed to the project of higher education. In Rhode Island, we must resist the pressure from Washington by continuing to invest in our state universities and, without compromising on safety or necessary facilities upgrades, reallocate state spending to prioritize compensating for federal cuts to research funding over nonessential university infrastructure projects.

We must also reject the reactionary backlash to “wokeness” on campuses and ensure that all academic programs remain fully funded and that all students and university community members can engage in scholarship and discourse on our state’s campuses without the fear of censorship.