Statewide averages, while useful for tracking overall trends, often mask these disparities. Students who experienced the largest pandemic-era increases — Black and Hispanic children and those from low-income families — are generally the furthest from their pre-pandemic attendance levels. In many states, the gaps between these students and their peers have widened rather than narrowed.

Because chronic absenteeism — defined as missing 10% or more of the school year — is closely linked to academic achievement, engagement and long-term outcomes, these disparities carry significant equity implications. Without recovery, gaps in learning and opportunity are likely to persist.

This analysis examines trends in chronic absenteeism in 26 states and the District of Columbia, using data from the 2018-19 through the 2024-25 school years, broken down by income, English learner status and race. Together, the 27 jurisdictions educate just under half of the nation’s students.

Income

Low-income students had higher absenteeism rates in every state before COVID and experienced greater attendance disruptions than students overall during the height of the pandemic. Between 2018-19 and 2021-22, the average state saw chronic absenteeism among low-income students increase by more than 17 percentage points, versus 13 points statewide. In all but one state, Nevada, increases among low-income students exceeded the state average.

In some states, the divergence was especially pronounced. In Nebraska, 26% of low-income students were chronically absent in 2018-19; by 2021-22, that number had jumped to 43%. Over the same period, the state’s overall absenteeism rate rose by about 9 points — roughly half as much.

Since the peak, chronic absenteeism rates have declined for all students, with 21 of 27 states seeing larger reductions among low-income students. Those have varied widely, with decreases ranging from just 1 percentage point in Oklahoma to nearly 20 points in Rhode Island.

Despite these somewhat larger decreases, low-income students remain further from pre-pandemic attendance levels in almost every state. On average, chronic absenteeism in this population in 2024-25 remains more than 9 percentage points above 2018-19 levels, compared with about 7.5 points statewide. In Tennessee, absenteeism among low-income students remains roughly 10 points higher than before COVID, while the state overall is about 5 points above its baseline. In Rhode Island, West Virginia, Nevada and Ohio, low-income student attendance is closer to pre-pandemic levels than the state average.

As a result of these trends, attendance gaps between low-income students and their wealthier peers have widened in 23 of the 27 states analyzed. The average difference increased from about 7 to 9 percentage points in 2024-25. In Oregon, the gap widened from roughly 5 points to more than 13.

Where data are available for wealthier students as well, the divide is often stark. In Ohio, roughly 33% of low-income students were chronically absent in 2024-25, compared with 11% of more affluent kids. Similar gaps persist in Rhode Island (30% versus 12%) and Washington state (35% versus 19%).

English Learners

English learners followed a similar, and in some ways more striking, pattern. Between 2018-19 and 2021-22, the average state saw their chronic absenteeism rise by 16.5 percentage points — 3 more than the statewide average increase. In Iowa, English learner absenteeism rose by more than 21 points, from nearly 15% to more than 36%, compared with a nearly 14-point statewide jump. 

Post-peak declines among these students have been roughly comparable to statewide averages, around 6 percentage points. But because they experienced sharper increases initially, they remain further from their pre-pandemic baseline. On average across the states analyzed, English learner absenteeism rates in 2024-25 are about 11 points higher than in 2018-19, compared with 7.5 statewide. Except in Rhode Island and South Dakota, English learners are further from recovery than their peers overall — and in Rhode Island they have not only recovered, but now post lower absenteeism rates than before the pandemic.

In several states, English learner absenteeism remains especially elevated: in Alaska, Hawaii, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah, more than 15 points above pre-pandemic levels. In Utah, it is 17 points higher than in 2018-19, compared with a 9.5-point gap statewide. 

Perhaps most notable is how these students’ relative position has shifted. Before the pandemic, English learners were not consistently absent more than their peers, as were low-income students. In 14 of the 27 states, English learner absenteeism was below the statewide average or within 1 percentage point of it in 2018-19. By 2024-25, that was true for only six states, and in every state, the gap has widened. In Missouri, for example, chronic absenteeism among English learners rose from 12% in 2018-19, about 1 percentage point below the statewide rate, to 27% in 2024-25, more than 5 percentage points above the state average  of 21.5%.

Race and Ethnicity

Pandemic-era increases also varied sharply by race. White students experienced smaller hikes than the average in nearly every state, rising by about 10 percentage points between 2018-19 and 2021-22, compared with 13 points statewide.

Black and Hispanic students saw substantially larger increases. Across states, absenteeism among Black students rose by about 16 points on average, and among Hispanics by about 16.5 points. In every state analyzed, except Washington, D.C., the increase among Hispanic students exceeded the statewide average, and in 14 of the 27 states, Hispanic students saw the largest spikes of the three racial groups.

Recovery since 2021-22 has been somewhat stronger for Black and Hispanic students than for white kids. Across states, Black and Hispanic students have each seen average declines in chronic absenteeism of roughly 7 percentage points, compared with about 5 points for white students. But because absenteeism rose more sharply for Black and Hispanic students during the pandemic, these improvements have not fully offset the larger initial increases.

White students’ attendance remains closest to pre-pandemic levels, averaging about 5.5 points above baseline. Black students remain nearly 9 points above pre-pandemic levels, Hispanic students, nearly 10 points. In 17 of the 27 states analyzed, Hispanic students are the furthest from their 2018-19 attendance rates. Rhode Island again stands out as an exception; there, they now post lower absenteeism rates than before the pandemic. 

At the same time, Black students continue to show some of the highest absenteeism rates, leading in 14 states in 2024-25. In some cases, gaps are extreme: in the District of Columbia, absenteeism among white students is about 9%, compared with nearly 49% among Black peers; in Nebraska, the figures are roughly 15% and 43%, respectively.

Attendance has improved nationally since the pandemic, but underserved student groups remain further from their pre-pandemic attendance levels than others, and the gaps are wider than they once were. Rhode Island has bucked this trend, offering a promising example of what can achieve. Through a commitment to collecting and disseminating detailed, daily school-level data, and bringing together mayors, hospitals, business leaders and other community partners under the leadership of the governor’s office, the state has helped several student groups not only recover, but surpass their pre-pandemic attendance levels.

The persistent disparities in many states and Rhode Island’s progress in addressing them underscore the importance of timely, disaggregated attendance data. Without it, policymakers and educators risk overlooking which students are missing school and why, making it harder to direct supports where they are most needed.

FutureEd Policy Analyst Tara Moon and Research Associate Giana Loretta contributed to this analysis.

PROVIDENCE — It was supposed to be a joyful event. But a Christmas tree and menorah lighting scheduled for late Sunday afternoon at Lippitt Memorial Park was turned into a vigil for the victims of Saturday’s shooting at Brown University.

Despite the mid-20-degree weather and falling snow in Providence, over 200 people gathered to light candles to honor the two students who were killed and nine others who were wounded inside the Barus and Holley engineering building.

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Councilor Sue AnderBois began the holiday event at the park near the Pawtucket line last year.

“Instead, we are gathered here to share light with one another in one of Providence’s darkest times,” AnderBois told the crowd. “We’re here together to be together and to support.”

AnderBois was joined by several of Rhode Island’s elected officials including Gov. Dan McKee, who earlier in the afternoon ordered flags at all state buildings and facilities to be lowered to half-staff as a sign of respect for the victims of the shooting.

McKee did not speak during the vigil, nor did most elected officials in attendance. Remarks during the 10-minute ceremony were given by AnderBois, Mayor Brett Smiley and Sarah Mack, senior rabbi of Temple Beth-El near Wayland Square in Providence.

Smiley, who converted to Judaism last year, invoked the first night of Hanukkah in his remarks, noting that the initial lighting of the menorah represents a small spark that grows into a bright light by the end of the eight-night festival. He said he hoped the vigil would be “the first little flicker for our community to start to heal and get better together.”

“It’s going to be a long road, but what I know about this community is that we will be here for one another,” Smiley said.

Mack similarly spoke of the need for Rhode Islanders to come together as a way to provide light in these dark times.

“We can use our light to kindle other lights — to care for one another,” she said. “That is how we get through this dark moment.”

After Mack concluded her speech, the crowd spontaneously began to sing “Amazing Grace.” Officials had no further press briefings scheduled for Sunday night on the status of their investigation.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.

Seldom listed among the nation’s top K–12 performers or its most aggressive reformers, the Ocean State was nevertheless home to a relatively powerful school choice sector. According to the study, students at Rhode Island charters gained the equivalent of 90 extra days of learning in English, and 88 extra days in math, per year.

With the U.S. still groping its way back from massive pandemic-related learning loss, the New England-specific finding generated little focused attention either locally or nationally. But in October, CREDO released that suggests the impressive results may be rooted in the state’s approach to opening and evaluating charters.

Rhode Island’s charter regulations are “instrumental in driving” student success, CREDO argues, pointing to a 2017 overhaul of accountability procedures that simplified the conditions for schools to be rated and renewed. According to interviews with over a dozen key figures from the charter world, the Rhode Island Department of Education, and the governor’s office, the change in law improved relationships between schools and state authorities and reduced uncertainty in how schools were assessed.

“There has been a change from chaotic beginnings to more structured, standardized practices,” said Marzena Sasnal, the lead author of the report and a senior research associate at Stanford. “Participants see this as an improvement.”

Yet the local debate around school choice remains fractious, with charters often seen as competing with districts for students and education funding. Within the last few years, lawmakers considered enacting a moratorium on further charter growth, while leaders of the state’s largest district skeptical of charter expansion.

Justine Oliva, the director of research and policy at the nonpartisan , called the matter of charter schools in the state “contentious,” particularly given in K–12 enrollment since the disruptions of COVID-19.

“With declining enrollment, I do think it’s likely that the issue continues to be a live one, particularly with the proposal for new charters moving forward.”

Charter leaders ‘in the dark’

Rather than directly addressing the often-frayed politics of school choice, or even the inner workings of charters themselves, the CREDO report focuses on the more technical subject of charter school authorization — the process by which new schools are approved, kept open, or, if necessary, shuttered completely.

The state, which legalized charter schools in 1995, established a formal framework for evaluating them 15 years later. But according to the educators and bureaucrats who spoke with Sasnal, the flaws in that review mechanism led to low trust on both sides and a degree of unpredictability when the time came to decide whether schools would be allowed to continue operating. 

With renewal decisions spaced at intervals of five years, charter leaders told CREDO they often felt as though they were acting “in the dark,” without receiving timely feedback on their academic performance or organizational health. Even annual data from standardized tests didn’t give a clear picture of how schools would be judged, some complained.

“The criteria for renewal were so ambiguous and complicated,” said Macke Raymond, CREDO’s director and a co-author of the report. “It didn’t even matter what your state test scores were because you didn’t know what the authorizer’s standards of evaluation were going to be when you came up for renewal.”

The atmosphere was clouded further by political and legal pressure that sometimes developed when regulators made their decisions. When Blackstone Valley Prep, one of the top-performing charter organizations in the state, was greenlit for renewal in 2011, several members of the Rhode Island Board of Education with connections to teachers’ unions . A few years later, three districts the opening of a new school, alleging that community opposition to the move had been ignored.

Following the 2017 reforms to the performance review system, however, CREDO’s interview subjects agreed that the steps to approval and renewal are more legible both to schools and community members. Charter applications are published online, and in communities from which students would likely be drawn. School officials said they had a clearer understanding of the outcomes they would be held responsible for, including both academic performance as well as financial and managerial indicators. One leader said his charter school had been able to identify problem areas early and “put in place a corrective action plan.”

Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University, said the updated framework played “a key role” in stoking improvement in the state charter sector.

“The review system integrates national standards, such as standards established by the , to sharpen the focus on performance-based accountability, data transparency, and quality monitoring.”

Tensions remain

Still, whatever tensions have been alleviated by the revamped system of charter regulations have not dissipated completely.

Elections last year in Providence — by far the largest city and school district in the state — elevated three candidates endorsed by local teachers’ unions to the newly re-established school board; just one charter advocate won election. This summer, the city council appeared poised to permit the Excel Academy charter organization to obtain a lease on a shuttered district school, in the face of public outcry. It was the second year in a row that a version of the deal, brokered by Providence’s mayor, .

The back-and-forth follows a legislative push for a statewide moratorium on new charter growth that stalled in 2021. The state’s governor, Democrat Dan McKee, is a noted supporter of school choice currently seeking reelection. But , and the future direction of policy in the state is unclear. 

Representatives from both of Rhode Island’s major teachers’ unions declined to comment for this story.

Total charter enrollment in the state is comparatively high, with roughly 10 percent of all K–12 students attending a charter school. Even beyond that figure, however, much of the demand from families is unmet: Nearly 30,000 students submitted applications for in the 2023–24 school year. 

RIPEC’s Justine Oliva, pointing to on overall charter enrollment and performance in Rhode Island, called the schools “a bright spot” in the state education mix, overwhelmingly attracting students from disadvantaged communities and delivering significantly better academic results than the school districts they would otherwise attend. Children attending Achievement First charters — currently enrolling over 20 percent of all charter students in the state — were twice as likely to score proficient on state reading exams, and three times as likely on math exams, as those in their sending districts. 

“Not all charters have great outcomes,” Oliva said. “They may still have a lot more applicants than get in, but they don’t all have great outcomes. However, our largest charters have outcomes that outperform the sending districts, as does the charter sector overall.” 

Too often, high schools separate so-called academic students from those perceived unlikely to attend college, a process commonly known as tracking. Two high schools in Cranston, Rhode Island are showing that career and technical education programs can prepare students for both college and the workforce.

In fact, seniors who completed CTE paths in the past school year included those with the highest academic rankings at both Cranston High School West and Cranston High School East. Across Rhode Island, students who have completed at least two CTE-specific courses perform higher on national assessments and have a higher four-year graduation rate than other students.

“There used to be a division between postsecondary education and vocational education. At Cranston, we’ve been able to make these two things the same thing,” said Zachary Farrell, executive director of secondary programs for Cranston Public School District. 

High school students in Rhode Island’s second largest district can choose among coursework in Medical Pathways, Pre-Engineering/Robotics, Information Technology, Culinary Arts, Computer Science, Criminal Justice and more. Those who complete a CTE track graduate with real-world work experience and either industry credentials, college credits or both, in paths that the state has approved as aligned to a high-wage, high-demand career. Students do this alongside their existing general education coursework, so they can take AP classes or participate in extracurriculars with the rest of their classmates.

When Santomassimo, the valedictorian, entered the Medical Pathways program her freshman year of high school, she thought she wanted to do direct patient care. But the program’s work-based learning, including a placement at a nursing home, helped to change her mind: “I realized direct patient medicine isn’t for me because I don’t like blood…[Then] [s]chool helped me get set up with an internship at an engineering site…[so I’m] back on the science and research end, not direct patient care.” 

Santomassimo credits Medical Pathways with helping her carve out a specific vision for her future. “I really want to do research…to help inform public policy,” she said. At Brown, she plans to double major in physics and political science.

Students who complete that pathway, which is available at both high schools, leave with healthcare workplace safety training and a CPR and First Aid certification. They have the option of completing a certified nursing assistant or emergency medical technician certification. Even though she isn’t planning to become a healthcare practitioner, Santomassimo has no regrets about the hands-on classes she took. She completed 40 patient hours as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) in training and successfully passed her licensing test this summer after graduation: “It’s a really good certification to have and will never not be a needed job. I will have that certification as a backup if I ever need it.”

Cranston Superintendent Jeannine Nota-Masse has seen the benefits of exposing students to passions and careers: “At both our high schools, we have an educator training program. You’d be surprised at how many students [say] ‘I love little kids, little kids are so funny,’ and then go into it and don’t love it. They have that hands-on experience before their parents pay for college and they realize ‘Oh I really don’t want to be a teacher.’”

Graduating high school with college credits in hand is another way that the CTE tracks across Cranston help save students time and money. Mark Lizarda, part of East’s second-ever Medical Pathways cohort, graduated with college credits from three different institutions under his belt, not to mention a high score on the AP Calculus test, which converts into college credit.

In 2024, Lizarda won first place in the Medical Terminology exam at the SkillsUSA championship, a national CTE organization for students, and is attending University of Rhode Island this fall. “Those three years [were the] hardest classes I’ve ever taken, but that’s the reason I stayed. It was so captivating and rigorous. I wanted to prepare myself for college.”

The programs also benefit CTE participants who choose to go directly to the workforce. For example, culinary students graduate with food handling and food safety certifications, Information Technology students graduate with CompTIA certifications and all CTE programs include a financial literacy class. “If your child wants to get a job after high school and they have no skills whatsoever, it’s going to be difficult,” Nota-Masse said. “But if they even have entry-level skills, they are still more competitive in the job market than their peers who don’t.” 

Farrell sees the inherent value in a program that connects to student interests. “Forget credentials,” he said. “If students really enjoy the program that they’re in and are learning and having fun and it’s part of their identity, I think you can’t really put a price tag on that.” 

The aquaculture path at West, the only one of its kind in the state, is a model for making learning fun and practical. Rhode Island is known as the Ocean State, and its over 400 miles of coastline are crucial to the economy. Launched by longtime science educator Leonard Baker in 2000, the aquaculture path prepares students for careers in the state’s fish hatcheries and shellfish farms or for further study in the biological sciences. 

With access to an on-campus aquarium, laboratory, pond and greenhouse, students learn about water chemistry, aquatic plant science and how to breed fish. Baker sets every student up with their own aquarium to practice keeping plants and animals alive: “They say ‘I can’t stand chemistry,’ but they’re measuring water temperature and pH balance…They say ‘I can’t stand insects,’ but they’re feeding frogs. We’re making science meaningful, relevant and important to students.”

Every single senior who has completed Baker’s program has been accepted to a four-year institution. On top of that, many of the people running the state’s fisheries are graduates of his program, and one even started a fishery in another state. Some go on to careers in nursing or other healthcare professions because they’ve had exposure to complex refrigeration and filtration systems and extensive practice working in teams.

Stephen Osborn, who leads statewide opportunities for students at the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), credits the program for getting young people excited and ready for their future: “They can“get a job after graduation if they want, but [the program is] also preparing many of them to go onto college. Kids are doing incredibly complex things in their classrooms and they don’t realize it because they’re having fun.”

A between RIDE and, launched in 2018, helped unlock changes that enabled Cranston to give students more options. Cranston high schoolers previously had rotating daily schedules, like most high schools, but switched to a college-style schedule where students only take four classes a semester and are in them for almost 90 minutes instead of 50. This way, students get longer blocks of time for hands-on and work-based learning.

“It took a lot of professional development and a lot of community communication,” said Nota-Masse, reflecting on the process. “People kept saying ‘kids won’t be able to sit in a class for 84 minutes, they’ll go crazy.’ We’re not saying we do that perfectly, but if you’re in construction and you’re working on a project, 84 [minutes] is certainly better than 50 [minutes] to start and clean up.” These technical changes allowed Cranston to expand CTE programs, while keeping room in the schedule for AP courses, electives, special education services or services for English language learners. 

Cranston Public School District is a powerful leader in the state, but it’s not alone. is the new statewide initiative, with the goal that all of Rhode Island’s kids take at least one CTE course before they graduate. Coursework that’s rigorous and relevant is helping to unlock students’ freedom of choice. Says Osborn: “We don’t tell [students] whether to go to college or work. They have the skills and an open door to choose what they want to do after high school.”

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

The decision came just a day after another U.S. district court judge in Rhode Island granted a that offered similar protections to preschoolers That ruling also means undocumented residents can still access adult and career and technical education and won’t be cut off from a range of federally funded emergency services, including for domestic violence and homelessness.

Linda Morris, an ACLU attorney representing the plaintiffs in the Washington state case, said she was elated by the decision, noting its sweeping scope. 

“This is an incredible victory, especially for Head Start providers and Head Start children and families,” she said. “Today’s ruling makes clear that every child, no matter their immigration status, deserves access to early educational support. We are extremely pleased with the court’s decision.” 

In issuing the national injunction, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez strongly rebuked the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees Head Start and funds 80% of its costs, for changing a longstanding legal interpretation and classifying it for the first time as a federal public benefit. 

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for these supports, including food assistance and non-emergency Medicaid. The move to restrict Head Start access is part of a wider Trump administration effort to exclude the undocumented from all taxpayer-funded services and programs, including several that involve education and job training.

The ruling restores Head Start eligibility to children and families who have student visas and other temporary statuses and were also excluded by HHS’s . The move affected the eligibility of more than 500,000 kids, according to the agency’s own analysis, and impacted approximately 115,000 children currently enrolled in the program.

Andrew Nixon, the HHS communications director, said Friday his office disagrees with the injunctions and is evaluating next steps. 

Head Start associations from four states and two parent and caregiver groups sued the agency and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Washington case. 

Joel Ryan is executive director of one of , the.

“I feel relief. I feel like people can breathe a little bit more,” said Ryan, whose organization’s other legal claims against the administration are focused on confusion over its anti-diversity, equity and inclusion mandates and the mass firings of Head Start staff.

Martinez rejected the Trump administration’s assertion that Head Start is a welfare program because it provides other means of support, including meals. Public schools do the same and no one would argue they are not educational in nature, he wrote. 

“Providing services such as health care, nutrition and other social services does not make Head Start non-educational but, as the Head Start Act states, ‘promotes the school readiness of low-income children by enhancing their cognitive, social and emotional development,’” he wrote, noting, too, that Head Start funds do not provide payments of benefits to individual households or families. 

In court Tuesday, U.S. Department of Justice attorney Micheal Velchik tried to parse the degree of learning and instruction that takes place in Head Start from what’s taught at the K-12 level. 

“It’s technically not school or education because it’s preschool. It’s what you do before school and so it’s not really education in that sense,” said Velchik, who mistakenly referred to the program as Head First several times.

Jannesa Calvo-Friedman, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said undocumented parents, families of mixed immigration status and others with full legal standing but who lack documentation told Head Start operators they were keeping their kids away out of fear or confusion.

“The children who are losing education at this time [in their lives] can never get it back,” Calvo-Friedman said, citing studies on the critical nature of early learning. “Unless the directive is stayed or enjoined, defendants will continue to communicate the message that immigrant families need not apply.”

Martinez agreed that allowing the directive to go into effect while the underlying case was being argued would impose imminent and irreparable harm.

“While actual loss of funding from under enrollment might be down the road, families losing access to Head Start due to the Directive’s unclear guidance and chilling effects appears anything but speculative and exists even prior to enforcement,” he notes.  

The judge expressed disbelief at the government’s contention that implementing the restriction immediately would discourage illegal immigration.

“The Court is floored by this argument,” he wrote. “Nothing on the record provides any means for this Court to infer that access to Head Start ‘incentivizes’ illegal immigration.”

Head Start was established in 1965 to help improve kindergarten readiness for low-income children and to support their families. It has served young learners  and their families in the 60 years since. 

“I don’t see much positive representation from our community all the time,” Kaba said. “I was thinking ‘my scholarship won’t get picked.’ But it did … and I was able to bring something so big to my community, a community that already doesn’t have the most funding in the world.” 

The scholarship, , asks students to answer, “if you had $1 million how would you target the lives of those in Rhode Island and how would you create change?”

Kaba’s investments resulted in a number of youth-centered spaces and opportunities popping up across the city, including 120 calm corners in elementary classrooms to support students’ sensory functions, new physical education equipment for all Woonsocket elementary schools, job fairs, hundreds of donated books, and field trips to local colleges & universities, among others.

Kaba, who is now a rising sophomore at Northeastern University, describes the experience of winning the scholarship as surreal.

“It didn’t occur to me that I was the last person standing and I won $1 million,” Kaba said. “But when I won, the first thing I thought was, ‘OK, let’s get to work. I’m given this opportunity to help improve my community. What steps can I take? And when does the groundwork start happening?’”

When a teen leads, adults follow

Bringing Kaba’s vision to life meant working alongside adults with experience in project management and community engagement while keeping up with her student life at Woonsocket High School.

“In high school, I managed both classwork and extracurriculars like student council, being a peer mentor and participating in Future Business Leaders of America,” Kaba said. “Balancing those things with my work with the scholarship came easy to me.”

Kaba partnered with community organizations across the state like nonprofit . This collaboration helped lay out a roadmap for Kaba’s proposal, manage the scholarship funds and coordinate meetings with community leaders. 

The winning student also sits on the board of the Papitto Opportunity Connection Foundation for a year. This provides an opportunity for them to build their network and connect with leaders in Rhode Island. 

High schoolers can make a difference through spaces and support like this, Kaba said, and also advises teens interested in engaging with their community to “not be afraid to start off small.”

This “small” gesture, Kaba added, can be as simple as gathering a group of friends to organize a community cleanup or starting a school club or Instagram to advocate for something they’re passionate about.

“Starting off small is going to give you those steps to leading these big impactful projects,” Kaba said.

The feedback Kaba received on her community investments, primarily from peers, community members and teachers in Woonsocket, was overwhelmingly positive.

“People told me, ‘I was able to go to this job fair and I got connected to this job,’ or, ‘I’m going to the Harbour Youth Center to get items from the food pantry you created and it’s been helping my family a lot,’” Kaba said. “Community organizations reached out to me to let me know they would love to find a way to work together and do their part to take action too.”

, Rhode Island has deepened its commitment to ensuring all students, including multilingual learners, have access to rigorous, high-quality instructional materials and that teachers have the necessary training to implement them. While overall gaps still exist in the state, students who recently exited multilingual-learner status are now outperforming peers who are native English speakers on .

Multilingual learners — who now comprise more than — represent one of Rhode Island’s fastest-growing and most vibrant communities. In fact, Rhode Island saw the largest percentage growth of any state in the nation between 2010 and 2020. Over the last 10 years, enrollment of multilingual students in many school districts has risen between 100% and 400%. In , the state’s largest city, multilingual learners currently make up almost 40% of all students.

To ensure that these young people received high-quality, inclusive instruction — with materials that reflected their diverse cultural and linguistic experiences, supported English language development and connected with what all students in the state’s classrooms were learning — the Rhode Island Department of Education partnered with the nonprofit in 2021. The goal was to create a cohort to help district leadership teams follow through on the state’s by better addressing the needs of these students in core instruction, school design and programming.  

Districts now choose from several high-quality curricula, which cannot get that designation unless they are designed from the start with multilingual learners in mind. The department encourages district leaders to identify their instructional vision and consider the demographics and needs of their students before reviewing and selecting curricula. Districts must also plan initial and ongoing professional development to ensure teachers are prepared to properly implement the new materials.

High-quality curriculum by itself can drive student growth, but its impact can be greater with proper professional learning and skillful implementation. That’s why the department’s partnership with the forum didn’t stop at curricular materials; it also prioritized the people who will actually be using them.

When educators complete their professional development sessions, they come away with a clear understanding of what rigorous instruction looks like. Principals and other school leaders are challenged to ask: How do we know this curriculum works for our multilingual learners?”  Teachers learn to go beyond providing basic help and use methods that make challenging material understandable for every student. This includes providing regular opportunities for students to discuss topics and clear goals for language learning.

When teachers know how to provide the right support and understand how students develop language skills in different subjects, young people rise to the challenge and often exceed expectations.

Rhode Island’s commitment to strong instruction with high-quality materials, following the department’s and for multilingual student success, form the foundation of this work. Together, they create consistent instructional expectations and invest in ongoing professional development to support the academic success of all students. The state is also implementing new regulations for multilingual learners to better align with federal requirements, best practices,and the state’s commitment to providing a high-quality education.

The results are very encouraging. Nationwide, Rhode Island and between 2019 and 2024, according to Harvard’s Education Recovery Scorecard. also noted that Rhode Island leads all New England states in academic recovery.

This improvement is not just happening in urban hubs; there is a growing commitment to these students in rural and suburban communities that have historically had little exposure to non-English-speaking populations.

For other states to see similar progress, they must follow two simple but critical steps: adopt rigorous instructional materials that meet the needs of all students, and provide consistent, high-quality professional development for teachers, principals and other school leaders.

There is no perfect curriculum. But with the right approach, even great materials can be made better. The key is starting with a strong foundation, giving educators the tools to teach their new curriculum effectively and then continuing to offer professional development long after they’ve started using the new materials. that many teachers simply haven’t received the training they need to implement new materials effectively. That has to change. Professional learning must be continuous and available during the regular workday, encouraging teachers to keep improving their classroom skills. 

Rhode Island’s progress is a testament to what’s possible when state leadership, district teams and national partners work together with one shared goal: creating a system where multilingualism is seen as a strength, not a barrier, and where every classroom reflects the rich diversity of all students.

But the result was something else.

Parents bombarded the dedicated email address with off-topic rants on issues from kids using outdated textbooks to districts that failed to pay for special education evaluations. In the end, the process likely attracted more critics than supporters to the governor’s cause.  urged Black parents to “flood” the governor with complaints about “history being silenced.” The state shut the tip line down offering scant evidence of indoctrination.

A New Hampshire project met . State officials disabled it last year after a ruled that the state’s 2021 “banned concepts” laws that restricted lessons on LGBTQ issues and racial history were too vague. 

But in Oklahoma, a school safety alert system that Superintendent Ryan Walters uses to expose and punish what he calls the Five complaints pointed to books that Walters deemed “pornographic” in a district north of Oklahoma City. His accusation sparked a legal battle over whether the state chief could control the contents of school libraries. 

Richard Cobb, superintendent of the Mid-Del Schools, outside Oklahoma City, called the online system “a huge overreach.” 

“It’s frustrating because anyone can report anything,” he said. “Then the burden is on us to prove our innocence.”

And for many educators, there’s the rub — especially now that the Trump administration has made combating diversity, equity and inclusion an urgent national priority.

On Feb. 27, the U.S. Department of Education launched the . Its name leaves no doubt about its purpose — to uncover and eradicate examples of diversity, equity and inclusion in more than 100,000 schools across the nation. In a statement, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice urged parents to “share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.”

Trump made the issue a hallmark of his campaign, calling such policies “absolute nonsense” and “illegal.” 

On the department’s portal, a simple online form invites parents to report “illegal discriminatory practices“ that the department will use to launch investigations. 

But the department didn’t say what made DEI illegal, and the concept has proved notoriously difficult to define. Schools have implemented race-focused activities like in elementary school, drawing backlash from parents who say the lessons make their children feel ashamed. But others have blocked lessons of clear historical significance, such as about Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to attend a school in New Orleans. 

Even in its attempt to eliminate DEI, the department has found the concept to be something of a moving target.

The launch of the portal followed a stern from the Office for Civil Rights that districts could face investigation if they treat “students differently on the basis of race.” In response, some teachers from lessons on Black history. A day after unveiling the portal, however, officials followed up with a more , explaining that cultural observances like Black History Month and International Holocaust Remembrance Day would be acceptable as long as all students, regardless of race, are welcome to participate. 

But the department recently resumed the offensive. Last week, it told states and districts to sign a document certifying that they have eliminated DEI practices or risk losing millions of dollars in federal funding. The department has since extended the deadline until April 24, said Madi Biedermann, a department spokeswoman.

New York is among of states that has . Washington state Superintendent Chris Reykdal called the department’s ultimatum “an assault on the autonomy of states” and said it would be “irresponsible” to sign the certification. California also seems to be . In an emailed statement, the state education agency called the demand “another attempt to impose a national ideology on local schools by threatening to withhold vital resources for students.”

Adding to the outsize stakes is the way the Trump administration has weaponized the issue, canceling grants and connected with even tangential connections to DEI work. In some cases, it has used DEI as an excuse to challenge legitimate history and bolster thinly veiled discrimination. Using artificial intelligence to comb through over 1,000 web pages, the Pentagon to notable achievements among minority members of the military. It later restored some of them. And in January, Trump for a fatal mid-air collision between a helicopter and a plane over the Potomac River.

Those who have worked in states that have implemented tip lines expect End DEI to meet with a similar flurry of confusion, tangents, spam, personal grievances — and a chill on important classroom discussions.

“I can see the parallel” with Oklahoma, Cobb said. “We’ve seen the Trump administration bully powerful law firms and Ivy League schools into submission. I imagine they would have zero qualms about applying similar pressure to individuals or school districts.”

‘Snitch line mentality’

The department’s move comes amid deep national divisions about DEI. A January by The Economist and YouGov found a roughly even split, with 45% in favor of ending such programs in government and schools, and 40% opposed.

As Trump took office on Jan. 20, another survey attempted to gauge the effects of critical race theory on classroom instruction. The results were similarly mixed. Fifty-eight percent  of high school students reported that their  teachers frequently make comments like, “We must be actively anti-racist,” while 42% responded that teachers support the Black Lives Matter movement. At the same time, 77% said their teachers either never or rarely made them feel uncomfortable about disagreeing with their point of view. 

Brian Kisida, a government and public affairs professor at the University of Missouri and a lead author of the study, said the department’s portal could give parents a vehicle for reporting actual discrimination against their children. But he expressed concern that the likely result would be to magnify the polarization it is designed to eradicate, saying “this snitch line mentality can do more harm than good.”

“I expect many of these disputes could be solved if parents and educators just had good-faith conversations with each other, and both sides would likely learn something in the process,” he said.

Some wonder how the department can thoughtfully navigate the issues, given the dramatic cuts to the program that normally would have been responsible for investigating discrimination complaints: the department’s civil rights office.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon eliminated half of the OCR staff along with seven regional offices that handle investigations. With its remaining employees, the department redirected civil rights enforcement toward administration priorities like ending antisemitic protests on college campuses and keeping transgender students out of girls’ sports. 

“If you’re dismantling the Department of Education and moving everything somewhere else, who are these people that are going to do the investigation?” asked LaToya Baldwin Clark, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles who . “Who are these people that actually do any type of enforcement?”

Biedermann, the department spokeswoman, would not say who is reviewing the submissions or whether officials have followed up on any tips. But unlike the Department of Defense, she said staff members at the department — not AI — will review submissions to identify potential areas for investigation. Biederman offered no information on how many reports the system has received, but Marleigh Schaefer, a spokeswoman for Moms for Liberty, said “thousands of parents have submitted to the portal.” 

One of them is Lauren McDonough, part of a Texas conservative group called Families Engaged.

In her complaint to the department, she described her failed attempts to get the Richardson Independent School District to pass a policy requiring students to use bathrooms that match their sex assigned at birth. She became concerned after learning that a trans girl in first grade attends her daughters’ school. In an email, a district official told her that schools consider transgender students’ requests on a case-by-case basis.

“I was like ‘What the heck, it takes five minutes,’ ” McDonough said of the form. “If something comes of it, great, but my hopes are very low. I feel like I have to exhaust my resources as a parent.”

Biedermann said people who make submissions shouldn’t necessarily expect a response and described the portal as a “tool to identify where and if there are pockets or patterns of … violations.”

Not surprisingly, the site, created by staff from billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, fell prey to pranks. “Y’all know what to do …Copy the Bee Movie script,” one critic — a reference to an about sending the entire script from the 2014 movie to crash a site. Three former staffers at the department said in the rush to get the portal up, the site went down within 12 hours.

“We were laughing about it,” said a former employee who asked to remain anonymous to protect colleagues still at the department. 

Biedermann acknowledged that the portal was initially overwhelmed, but said it resumed operations in about an hour and is now working smoothly.

‘Name names’ 

In Virginia, Youngkin set up his special email address to make good on a promise to listen to parents’ concerns. His successful run for governor in 2021 tapped into deep anger over remote learning and fears that critical race theory was infiltrating classrooms. An academic principle usually reserved for graduate schools, CRT argues that racism is built into the fabric of American institutions.

As governor, Youngkin’s first banned classroom lessons based on CRT. On a , he promoted the tip line as a way to track down “inherently divisive teaching practices.” 

He called out the Fairfax County district for a high school English assignment, titled Privilege Bingo, that was intended to teach students about diverse perspectives. The squares on the bingo card listed features such as being white, Christian, male and able-bodied. , an Army veteran complained that the lesson listed being part of a military family as an example of privilege. The district apologized and revised the activity, but said it remained committed to teaching students how to understand multiple viewpoints. Youngkin pledged to wipe out similar lessons from Virginia classrooms. 

“We’re going to make sure that we catalog it all,” he said.

But the effort didn’t go as planned. Teachers in the Prince William County district, next to Fairfax, thought it was a joke. They even ordered custom T-shirts that read “Hi tip line? I’d like to report Virginia teachers for being incredible at what they do. Thanks Bye.” 

“We just couldn’t believe that they were going to spend tax dollars to run this tip line, but not fully fund our schools to decrease class sizes,” said Angie Trerotola, a high school social studies teacher in Prince William.  

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update got into the act. Co-anchor Colin Jost quipped, “You know you’re racist when you call the cops about a Black character in a book.”

In response to public records requests, the governor’s staff initially submissions to the tip line. But when several news outlets sued, the governor turned over 350 emails as part of a settlement, few of which pointed to lessons Youngkin was trying to eliminate. A spokesman referred The 74 to a statement it released in the fall of 2022 explaining that it the tip line because it was “receiving little to no volume.”

A similar tip line in Rhode Island also failed to gain traction. The Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a nonprofit, at the height of outrage and confusion over how schools were teaching racial issues. It called on parents to “‘name names’ of those indoctrinating our kids.” 

The free market think tank and the conservative Civics Alliance collaborated on that said state social studies standards are “animated by a radical identity-politics ideology” and show “hostility toward America.” The standards expect students to study Latino history, workers’ rights and feminism, they wrote, but distort “history where white men played the leading roles.”

More recently, Mike Stenhouse, the center’s CEO, that a policy that recognizes transgender students and protects their decision to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity puts them at risk of a civil rights investigation by the Trump administration.

But after four years, the group’s tip line had nothing to show for it, Stenhouse said in an email. The line “has not yielded any notable results” or received many “credible responses,” he said. Stenhouse blamed the lack of participation on the center’s failure to adequately promote the site.

‘Soup du jour’

In Oklahoma, Superintendent Walters has had more success getting the public’s help. His predecessor, Joy Hofmeister, launched a website called Awareity to report school security risks. Walters turned to it to and districts violating a state law banning divisive concepts and his own mandates.

last year focused on two books in the Edmond School District’s high school libraries. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, is an award-winning bestseller about an Afghan boy’s relationship with his father set against the backdrop of the Soviet-Afghan war, and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about growing up in a dysfunctional family. Both books include descriptions of sexual assault.

Walters threatened to downgrade the district’s accreditation if they didn’t remove them. When the district sued over his rule, it had chosen to “peddle porn and is leading the charge to undermine parents in Oklahoma.”

Cobb, the Mid-Del superintendent, didn’t pull the books, but others preemptively removed the titles and similar ones Walters labeled “filth.”

“I guess we all have to make our own decisions,” Cobb said. “But I’d rather stand up and fight than comply in advance with something that is wrong.”

Walters lost the case Edmond brought against him last year. The Oklahoma Supreme Court accused the superintendent of acting with “unauthorized quasi-judicial authority” and said decisions over library materials are up to local districts. 

The option to report “pornographic materials or sexualized content” no longer appears in Awareity’s dropdown menu. The public also can no longer use it to report that a teacher is violating the state’s divisive concepts law. Last June, a federal judge parts of the legislation, finding some of the language confusing for teachers to follow. 

But Walters has a new use for Awareity. The public can report a “violation of religious liberty and patriotism rights.” Those categories complement his controversial mandate for teachers to in the classroom and that students should be allowed to fly and display the American flag at school “without infringement.” 

“It’s like the soup du jour — whatever issues seem to be playing well at the current time,” said Brendon Hoover, coordinator at the Kirkpatrick Policy Group, which advocates for schools having full-time librarians.

He worked with Oklahoma Appleseed for Law and Justice, a nonprofit law firm, to file an open records request for Awareity files. Complaints included objections to schools offering Stamped, by anti-racist author Ibram Kendi, and a middle school book fair featuring selections from the LGBTQ-themed Heartstopper series of graphic novels.

The Oklahoma Department of Education did not respond to questions about Awareity.

Hoover blames the current atmosphere surrounding classroom instruction for contributing to an exodus of teachers from the profession and the state. Last year, Oklahoma approved nearly for teachers to fill vacancies, breaking a previous record, the Oklahoma Voice reported.

“Oklahoma has a huge teacher shortage,” Hoover said, “and it’s because teachers are under attack by their own state Superintendent.”

One former Oklahoma health teacher got tired of being a target. Describing herself as a “blue drop in a red sea,” she said the threat of being reported for discussing racial issues was one reason she left the classroom in 2022. She stopped teaching a lesson about how the slave trade likely contributed to Black Americans’ to certain diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure. After parents complained, an administrator encouraged her to drop the material from her curriculum.

“What the parents heard was, ‘White folks did this to Black folks,’ ” said the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous to protect future job prospects.

UCLA’s Clark said she expects the new End DEI portal to create a similar chill. 

“These mechanisms to surveil and to monitor teachers and principals are ripe for reports that are not serious or not given in good faith,” she said. Ultimately, she said, “the purpose is to get people to self-censor.”

After the Providence, Rhode Island, school district fell victim to a September 2024 cyberattack by the Medusa ransomware gang, school officials said an ongoing investigation found “no evidence that any personal information for students has been impacted.” 

An investigation by The 74, including a review of stolen files captured in the 217-gigabyte leak, indicates otherwise. Sexual misconduct allegations involving both students and teachers, children’s special education records and their vaccine histories were posted online after Providence Public Schools did not pay the cybercriminals’ $1 million ransom demand. 

The district’s failure to acknowledge that students’ records had been exposed — even after being informed otherwise by The 74 — means that parents and students were likely unaware that their private affairs had entered the public domain. 

In October 2024, Providence schools notified 12,000 current and former employees that their personal information, such as their names, addresses and Social Security numbers, had been compromised. But the letter never makes mention of students’ sensitive records. 

In response to The 74’s findings in mid-October 2024, a district spokesperson didn’t acknowledge that students’ sensitive information was compromised. He said the district “has been able to confirm that some [of its] files” were accessed by an “unauthorized, third party,” and that “security consultants are going through a comprehensive review” to determine whether the leaked files contain personal information “for individuals beyond current and former staff members.” 

Meanwhile, in an unsolicited phone call to The 74, a state education department spokesperson appeared to contradict that, saying “no one had actually gone in to see the files.” 

Included in the leak is the 2024-25 Individualized Education Program for a 4-year-old boy who pre-K educators observed had “significant difficulty sustaining attention to task” and who “wandered around the classroom setting without purpose.” Another special education plan notes a 3-year-old boy “randomly roamed the room humming the tune to ‘Wheels on the Bus,’ pushed chairs and threw objects.” 

A single spreadsheet lists the names of some 20,000 students and their demographic information, including disability status, home addresses, contact information and parents’ names. Another contains information about their race and the languages spoken at home.

A “termination list” included in the breach notes the names of more than 600 district employees who were let go between 2002 and 2024, including an art teacher who “retired in lieu” of being fired and a middle school English teacher who “resigned per agreement.” Another set of documents reveals a fifth-grade teacher’s request — and denial — for workplace accommodations for obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and panic attacks that make her “less effective as an educator if I am not supported with the accommodations because I can not sleep at night.” 

In one leaked April 2024 email, a senior central office administrator sought a concealed handgun permit from the state attorney general, noting they “have a safe at work as well as one at home.”

Following an investigation published by The 74 and in October, the district to families acknowledging that students’ personal information, such as vaccine records and special education details, were exposed in the attack.

In response to an inquiry from The 74, a district spokesperson said in a November statement that educators remain “committed to transparency and the security of personal information.”

“During these types of incidents, districts typically start with limited information on what occurred and then gain more information over the course of the investigation,” the statement continues. “As we navigated the initial uncertainty of the situation, PPSD prioritized taking real-time action and communicating with all stakeholders as we gathered more information.”

Before fourth and eighth graders took the 2024 NAEP math assessment, they were asked how many days of school they had missed the previous month. Forty-nine percent of fourth-graders who would score at the 75^th percentile or higher on the test had missed no days the previous month, compared with 26% of those scoring below the 25^th percentile.

Equally striking, 45% of students in the bottom quartile reported missing three or more days of school in the previous month compared with just 20% of students in the top quartile. And at the extreme ends of the absenteeism spectrum, 7% of the lowest-performing eighth graders on the NAEP math test reported missing more than 10 days of school in the previous month, compared with just 1% of top scorers.

Correlation strongly suggests causation. It’s impossible to prove that students performed better because they were in school every day, but it’s the logical conclusion.

A detailed comparison of state test scores and student absenteeism by Rhode Island education officials suggests as much. They found that just 10% of students who had been chronically absent for three consecutive years scored proficient on Rhode Island’s own standardized math tests in 2024, and 13% were proficient in reading. In contrast, 40% of students who attended regularly were proficient in math and 38% were proficient in reading. As on the state’s dashboard, “long-term chronic absenteeism has a compounding negative impact on student performance.”

Attendance influenced achievement significantly even among students facing the many challenges of poverty. While it’s hardly surprising that only 18% of Rhode Island’s low-income students who attended school regularly were proficient in reading and math last year, just 11% of those who were chronically absent were proficient in reading, and only 9% met that bar in math.

The upshot is there needs to be a relentless focus at the state and district levels — beyond the work of individual schools — on getting every student in school every day. Transparency is essential to progress. Rhode Island is the only state that publishes detailed, real-time attendance data for every one of its public schools, allowing officials to correlate state test scores and absenteeism.  More than a dozen states have yet to release attendance data from the 2023-24 school year, making it difficult for policymakers to even know which absenteeism problems they need to solve.

The quality of instructional materials, tutoring programs or new technology tools can’t make much of a difference if students aren’t in school.

Many stories also picked up on the fact that achievement gaps are growing, as lower-performing students have fallen further behind. For instance, in eighth grade math, the scores for the top 10% of students rose 3 points, while the bottom 10% fell 5 points.

But these national numbers are hiding the fact that achievement gaps are growing in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. While they vary in magnitude, the extent of the divergence playing out in schools across the country is alarming. 

Before going into those state-level results, it’s important to acknowledge that this is a uniquely American problem. The separation between the higher- and lower-performing students in the United States has over the last decade, and there’s no signs yet of that slowing down. 

Last spring, I did an analysis that showed that before 2013, achievement scores were rising, and those gains were broadly shared across student performance levels. 

Consider the left side of the graph below, which shows the NAEP results in eighth grade math, updated through 2024. It is clear that something happened around 2013: On average, scores fell a little bit, but lower-performing students (in red) fell off a cliff. 

Meanwhile, the scores of higher-performing students (in blue) suffered a bit in the wake of COVID-19, but they improved noticeably last year, while the lowest performers did not.

A similar pattern shows up across a wide range of national and international tests, grade levels and subject areas. 

It is also evident in state after state. After the latest results came out, I looked to see how these gaps were changing at the state level. I looked specifically at eighth grade math, and the numbers were shockingly bad. In fact, in every state, the achievement gap has grown over the last two years. 

But those short-term changes don’t explain the full extent of what has happened to American children over the last decade. Each state has seen its achievement gap increase significantly.

To see the full state-level results, check out the table below, which shows the changes from 2013 to 2024. It breaks down the gains (or losses) for students at the 90^th percentile, the midpoint of all students in the state (the median) and the bottom 10^th percentile. It also shows how much these groups have diverged over time and the gap that has grown. 

And those gaps have increased in every state, most dramatically in Massachusetts, California, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In all of these, the gap widened by 20 points or more.

How meaningful are these changes? Depending on the year, the average student gains about 10 points per year on the NAEP math tests. As a rough comparison, that means  achievement gaps have grown by the equivalent of one to two years’ worth of schooling. That’s substantial.

These gaps may seem daunting, and policymakers might be tempted to throw up their hands. But they should take heart from the fact that this recent period of academic stagnation is unusual. Until about a decade ago, small but steady gains were the norm. When researchers M. Danish Shakeel of the University of Buckingham and Paul Peterson from Harvard University looked at this question a few years ago, they that, “average student achievement has been increasing for half a century. Across 7 million tests taken by U.S. students born between 1954 and 2007, math scores have grown by 95% of a standard deviation, or nearly four years’ worth of learning.” They found smaller but still positive results for reading and a narrowing of gaps across racial, ethnic and socioeconomic status. 

In other words, progress is possible. At the moment, American achievement scores are falling and gaps are growing, but it wasn’t that long ago when the data were going in a much more positive direction.

The city of Providence has halted all discretionary spending and imposed a hiring freeze to comply with a court mandate to fund the city’s public schools — with the potential for cuts to municipal services and even a property tax hike, Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters gathered in his office Tuesday.

The warning about tough choices ahead comes three days after a Providence Superior Court judge (RIDE), which is withholding millions in state aid to Providence until the city appropriates local dollars to fund its public schools, which have been under state control for the past five years.

“The decision the court handed down put the city’s finances at risk,” Smiley said. “And we’re going to have to make very difficult decisions in the days ahead.”

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That could include cuts to all grant programs for the community libraries, housing support, and parks programs. Smiley said his office would also consider rolling back police patrols at PVDFest and other holiday celebrations.

“That will all have to stop,” he said.

Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Lanphear on Friday upheld a request from Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green to state Treasurer James Diossa to withhold $8.5 million in state car tax payments from the city, claiming Providence owed nearly $30 million to the district under the that authorized RIDE’s 2019 takeover of the Providence Public School Department.

A decision on how much the city must pay was originally scheduled for Wednesday morning but was postponed to Nov. 20. The City Council’s Committee on Finance was scheduled to meet to reallocate $1.5 million in federal COVID relief funds to help cover school budget shortfalls at its Tuesday meeting, but postponed that part of its agenda to Monday, Nov. 18.

Michelle Moreno Silva, spokesperson for Diossa’s office, declined to comment on the Superior Court’s ruling.

“Our role here is very minimal,” she said in a phone interview. “We just hold the money.”

Smiley told reporters Tuesday that the city may have to conduct layoffs and furlough additional employees — which he said would save the city $200,000 per day. Also possible, he said, the city could impose a mid-year tax hike, something it can’t do without General Assembly approval.

“If legislation is introduced, it will be thoroughly reviewed through the public committee hearing process,” Senate spokesperson Greg Pare said in an email.

Last week’s Superior Court ruling intensified the battle over funding obligations to the district. The feud went public in early October after Smiley to reveal an “ultimatum” made by Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez asking for $10.9 million for the district.

Montañez warned Smiley that without the cash from the city, the district would have to cut winter and spring sports, along with revoking students’ Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus passes.

Smiley responded with a $1 million offer the following day, promising to use money from a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement recently struck with Lifespan Corporation, plus a parking agreement with the Rhode Island School of Design. The City Council promised to repurpose $1.5 million from its share of federal pandemic relief money.

But Smiley said the combined offer was not accepted as of Tuesday.

“All of this is in the context of irresponsible spending from the school department,” he said Tuesday. “We all know there was going to be a fiscal cliff when the federal COVID aid expired and they did nothing to plan for it other than to send us the bill and expect Providence taxpayers would foot that bill.”

Smiley blamed Infante-Green’s administration at RIDE for a lack of collaboration, adding the city would help to instill discipline and oversight on state spending.

“It is clear the commissioner views her ability to run our schools as one without checks and balances,” he said. “Cooperation is a one-way street with her.”

Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller called on the state to put the district back on local control — something the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education declined to do , instead extending the takeover through 2027.

“Our city is not a bank for a state-controlled experiment,” Miller said. “After four years, it has become abundantly clear the state takeover is not working to promote the collaboration and the transparent decision making that our students need.”

RIDE spokesperson Victor Morente said it was a lack of city resources and underperformance that led the state to take over the school district in the first palace.

“City leaders have repeatedly stated they are ready to prove to the State that they are prepared to regain local control, but their budget priorities say otherwise,” Morente said in a statement.

The budget feud led outside of City Hall on Tuesday.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.

The city of Providence has halted all discretionary spending and imposed a hiring freeze to comply with a court mandate to fund the city’s public schools — with the potential for cuts to municipal services and even a property tax hike, Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters gathered in his office Tuesday.

The warning about tough choices ahead comes three days after a Providence Superior Court judge (RIDE), which is withholding millions in state aid to Providence until the city appropriates local dollars to fund its public schools, which have been under state control for the past five years.

“The decision the court handed down put the city’s finances at risk,” Smiley said. “And we’re going to have to make very difficult decisions in the days ahead.”

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That could include cuts to all grant programs for the community libraries, housing support, and parks programs. Smiley said his office would also consider rolling back police patrols at PVDFest and other holiday celebrations.

“That will all have to stop,” he said.

Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Lanphear on Friday upheld a request from Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green to state Treasurer James Diossa to withhold $8.5 million in state car tax payments from the city, claiming Providence owed nearly $30 million to the district under the that authorized RIDE’s 2019 takeover of the Providence Public School Department.

A decision on how much the city must pay was originally scheduled for Wednesday morning but was postponed to Nov. 20. The City Council’s Committee on Finance was scheduled to meet to reallocate $1.5 million in federal COVID relief funds to help cover school budget shortfalls at its Tuesday meeting, but postponed that part of its agenda to Monday, Nov. 18.

Michelle Moreno Silva, spokesperson for Diossa’s office, declined to comment on the Superior Court’s ruling.

“Our role here is very minimal,” she said in a phone interview. “We just hold the money.”

Smiley told reporters Tuesday that the city may have to conduct layoffs and furlough additional employees — which he said would save the city $200,000 per day. Also possible, he said, the city could impose a mid-year tax hike, something it can’t do without General Assembly approval.

“If legislation is introduced, it will be thoroughly reviewed through the public committee hearing process,” Senate spokesperson Greg Pare said in an email.

Last week’s Superior Court ruling intensified the battle over funding obligations to the district. The feud went public in early October after Smiley to reveal an “ultimatum” made by Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez asking for $10.9 million for the district.

Montañez warned Smiley that without the cash from the city, the district would have to cut winter and spring sports, along with revoking students’ Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus passes.

Smiley responded with a $1 million offer the following day, promising to use money from a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement recently struck with Lifespan Corporation, plus a parking agreement with the Rhode Island School of Design. The City Council promised to repurpose $1.5 million from its share of federal pandemic relief money.

But Smiley said the combined offer was not accepted as of Tuesday.

“All of this is in the context of irresponsible spending from the school department,” he said Tuesday. “We all know there was going to be a fiscal cliff when the federal COVID aid expired and they did nothing to plan for it other than to send us the bill and expect Providence taxpayers would foot that bill.”

Smiley blamed Infante-Green’s administration at RIDE for a lack of collaboration, adding the city would help to instill discipline and oversight on state spending.

“It is clear the commissioner views her ability to run our schools as one without checks and balances,” he said. “Cooperation is a one-way street with her.”

Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller called on the state to put the district back on local control — something the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education declined to do , instead extending the takeover through 2027.

“Our city is not a bank for a state-controlled experiment,” Miller said. “After four years, it has become abundantly clear the state takeover is not working to promote the collaboration and the transparent decision making that our students need.”

RIDE spokesperson Victor Morente said it was a lack of city resources and underperformance that led the state to take over the school district in the first palace.

“City leaders have repeatedly stated they are ready to prove to the State that they are prepared to regain local control, but their budget priorities say otherwise,” Morente said in a statement.

The budget feud led outside of City Hall on Tuesday.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

A coalition of social and health service providers wants to remap the labyrinth of seven different agencies spread across state government that offer children’s behavioral health services.

The that make up the called for a new cabinet-level state department to oversee children’s behavioral health in a at an event in Providence.

“Kids’ behavioral health is not akin to adult behavioral health,” Benedict F. Lessing Jr., the CEO of Community Care Alliance, said of the findings in the coalition’s 22-page report titled “Children in Crisis Can’t Wait: The Case for System Transformation.”

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“We know that kids suffer in terms of behavioral health concerns from infancy through adolescence.”

The proposed cabinet would be similar to the , said Tanja Kubas-Meyer, the coalition’s executive director. Technically a division within a department, the aging office reports directly to the governor like a cabinet position — a model preferable to what the new report calls “too-often disjointed access to care for children and their families.”

This hypothetical division would be charged with coordinating the services of existing state agencies who serve kids with behavioral health needs, which would mean being responsible for things like licensing and contracting providers.

One example: While the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities & Hospitals (BHDDH) handles both substance use and mental health treatments for adults, the agency is only responsible for youth who use substances. The Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) is responsible for youth who experience what the state calls “serious emotional disturbance” — whether they are or aren’t in state custody or foster care, which DCYF also provides via contracted providers.

“This is not simply a matter the state will wrap up by itself, and it will be all unicorns and rainbows,” Kubas-Meyer said, adding the recommendations were made in the “spirit of collaboration, as opposed to a criticism.”

The report gives no estimate for what the creation of the new office would cost nor does it calculate the savings that could come from consolidating children’s services. Determining the cost would be difficult anyway.

“Another challenge is that there is not a state-wide unified Children’s Behavioral Health budget that clearly articulates how much money is being spent on these services, and which funding is available to children in general versus only for children with targeted needs,” the report states.

The executive-level has reported a “children’s budget” annually since 2018, which is included in the governor’s . For fiscal 2025, it rose 4.6% to over $2 billion.

But, “there is no clear breakdown of what this funding includes, without which the public is not able to understand what relevant investments were recommended or funded,” the coalition report states.

“The system is really fragmented,” said Sen. Bridget Valverde, a North Kingstown Democrat, one of two state legislators who attended the report release, in an interview after the event. “I think where there are a lot of duplicated efforts, that’s an opportunity where children fall through the cracks.”

Democratic Rep. Tina Spears of Charlestown, who is the executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a nonprofit that supports people with disabilities, also attended.

A new cabinet would have to be achieved through legislation, said Valverde, calling the recommendation “a good suggestion that should absolutely be explored.”

“Efficiency in government — I think that’s something that everybody wants, in all of our sectors, so let’s do it for our kids,” Valverde said.

Other recommendations from the report include establishing a working group of public and private stakeholders to shape the cabinet’s goals, as well as a shared state data hub with more reliable information for understanding children’s behavioral health.

“We worked with Brown University earlier this year, thinking that we were going to put together a data dashboard, and found that neither the coalition nor Brown could access the data that they needed within any kind of reasonable time,” Kubas-Meyer said.

An out-of-office reply for kids’ mental health

Rhode Island’s health system is “deeply frustrating” and it can be confusing for families to access the services they need for their children, the report states.

“You need to invest not just federal dollars, but also state dollars in children’s medical services,” Kubas-Meyer said. “Not every component of services for children are medically eligible, and we need alternate financing. The state must have financing mechanisms that make it possible for both large and small organizations to continue to provide services.”

Lessing pointed to an erosion of diverse outpatient services as one reason he sees behavioral health care having declined in the Ocean State the past two decades. An emphasis on residential treatments or hospitalization in the absence of alternative models has led to situations wherein kids may be staying in psychiatric hospitals — , who reported the agency was “warehousing” kids at Bradley Hospital for longer than needed.

“There has not been a concerted effort in terms of what are the outpatient needs for kids and families,” Lessing said. “These have been generally left to individual organizations to kind of figure out, and that has become more and more problematic over the years…I think what happened 20 years ago, when the state basically gave these programs to managed care, was that it got off track.”

The state lost control over programming, Lessing said, and assumed that managed care organizations would figure out the rest.

“We began to see kids being boarded in emergency departments. That never happened 20 years ago…There were just not enough services in the community.”

Margaret Holland McDuff leads the coalition’s public policy committee and is also CEO of Family Service Rhode Island, which hosted the event. She started her career as a home-based clinician — an example of the community-based care often referenced in calls to reform behavioral health care for children. It’s a holistic approach that means “having a clinician, a case manager, whatever support that you need, within the setting that you need,” McDuff said.

A community-based clinician can observe more deeply a child’s routine, life experiences and formative traumas, McDuff said. The community-based care model allows for collaborations with schools to intervene and offer support when needed.

“Whether it’s a coach or an art teacher or whatever, to say, ‘You know, we know that you’ve been having challenges. Let’s all work together as a team, wrap around this child to be able to get the supports that they need,’” McDuff said, “It’s about being out of the office and being in the community with family.”

McDuff arrived at that perspective after working in residential treatment, which she found lacked the perspective of family life.

“I really felt like I wanted to work with the whole family and not just the child while they were an inpatient, and then send them home, and then see them come back,” she said.

But McDuff noted that organizations like Family Service can’t compete with the wages offered by managed care organizations.

“People have to make a living,” McDuff acknowledged. “And so the two tracks that really became available were institutions or outpatient.”

Similar statewide or cabinet initiatives for kids’ behavioral health already exist in states like . McDuff said the state has seen a reduction in hospitalization rates.

“The biggest predictor of if a child is going to be in a psychiatric hospital is if they were in a psychiatric hospital before,” McDuff said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

But on Nov. 5, voters have the power to give the situation a makeover.

Failing urban students is a time-honored habit in Rhode Island, first documented exhaustively in the . The equally depressing also focused on toxic provisions in the Providence teachers contract.

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But unlike those two reports, the May 2024, led by Sen. Sam Zurier, a Providence Democrat, dug deeper, delving into certain state laws that function like concrete shoes, drowning any hope for pro-education teacher contracts.

Most of these laws are antiquated legacies from the 1960s and 1970s when teachers first unionized. They wanted better pay, but also protections from insults like getting fired for being pregnant. At the time, unionization advocates turned to the already established labor contracts in the auto industry for examples they could adapt.

Back then, the historical context was radically different. In 1950, the public school dropout rate was 52%. But, no problem. Young people with limited education could get good middle class jobs in the then-booming manufacturing economy. No longer.

Auto labor and management negotiated salary, benefits and work conditions. But most work conditions were built into the design and function of assembly lines. Loyal, competent workers, doing similar if not identical work, got annual step raises as well as assurances that senior members had first dibs on advancement. Fair enough.

But teachers are college-educated professionals whose work conditions are unique to each school and its student population. Most of their work conditions should be decided by them, in conjunction with the school community.

The Zurier commission heard expert testimony about how these tired old laws prevent unionized schools from entering the 21st century. Schools can’t improve the quality of their personnel or deploy resources to meet the needs of their kids.

As a result, it doesn’t matter who controls Providence’s ungovernable school system.To stay focused on the city’s kids, the commission’s legislative recommendations apply only to Providence schools. They are:

General Law . Suspension because of decrease in school population — Seniority — Reinstatement.

For unionized teachers, hiring by seniority is the law. When the student population decreases – – or a district’s budget is stressed for whatever reason, administrators have no say over who stays or goes.

This practice is also known as LIFO, or Last In, First Out. Usually awarded after three  years of teaching, tenure gives solid job security to sub-par teachers. LIFO can also erase efforts to diversify the workforce because many teachers of color are new to the profession.

Wise, willing labor and management leaders can negotiate whatever they want in a three-year contract, but the law makes their decisions easy targets for lawsuits. One expert told the commission about how a new Providence superintendent dismantled Hope High School’s lauded redesign to appease those who resented Hope’s flexibility and subsequent success. The law was on their side.

RI General Law . Minimum salary schedule.

Municipalities and their school districts must establish “a salary schedule recognizing years of service, experience, and training for all certified personnel regularly employed in the public schools and having no more than twelve (12) annual steps.”

Also known as “lock-step” pay, each year teachers get a “step pay” bump (as well as a raise, usually), no matter the teacher’s performance, which the law makes irrelevant.

Administrators can’t adjust salary to make hard-to-fill positions more attractive or reward teachers for taking on more responsibility. Choices about deploying fiscal resources are off limits for incentivizing or, yes, disciplining anyone on staff.

RI is only one of 14 states that still has a lock-step salary statute.

Statement of cause for dismissal — Hearing — Appeals — Arbitration.

Under this law, terminating a non-performing teacher opens a Pandora’s box of such onerous demands that efforts to dismiss are literally not worth it. The sub-par teacher holds all the cards, forcing administrators to choose between putting up with a “bad apple” or spending their career trying to remove a dead spot in kids’ education.

The commission cites an example of a teacher terminated for cause in 2014. After the initial, evidence-laden termination letter, the case went to a second district hearing and then “an appeal to a hearing officer, a review by the Commissioner, a second review by the Commissioner, an appeal to the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education and an appeal to the Superior Court which upheld the termination.”

The matter might still go to the Supreme Court.

Little has changed since the 1960s, thanks to these legacy laws.

So, given the legislature’s reluctance to free schools from these laws, the only avenue forward is to approve , which asks voters if Rhode Island should hold a constitutional convention. The question comes up every 10 years. The last such convention was held in 1986.

Bear in mind that the “Vote No” fliers coming to our houses are funded by teachers unions, mainly the D.C-based Sixteen Thirty Fund, run by a former leader from the National Education Association, the largest public-services union in the U.S. Teachers unions wield much power in Rhode Island.  Their job is to fight for the adults, even at the expense of the kids and the state’s workforce.

I’m voting yes on Question #1.  How else are we ever going to get rid of those terrible laws?

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

For the first time since the late 1960s, voters will elect half the school board — picking new members to join the five the mayor will appoint — as the district navigates a minefield of budget woes, declining enrollment, school closures, test scores that are still below pre-pandemic levels, and a demand for more charter schools.

On top of all that, the new board will have limited power and will need to split loyalties between voters and the Rhode Island Department of Education, which took control of the district in 2019 and just extended its control for another three years.

That extension by the state Council on Elementary and Secondary Education last month deflated hopes of some the district would return to the city’s control. A release of state control would have given the new board power to govern the schools, not just be an advisory board to Infante-Green.

Even so, 17 candidates are vying for five seats representing different sections of the city in this non—partisan election with no primary. Candidates include four current school board members and others who have previously run for city council but lost.

The Providence Teachers Union has endorsed five candidates, one in each of the five races. Stop The Wait, a charter school advocacy group, has in opposition to those who are union-backed.

Both the union and charter advocates are in an ongoing battle over whether to close schools with falling enrollment and turn the buildings over to charter schools. The debate most recently flared this summer over a proposal to put two charters in a recently-closed district school. Advocates say there is a long waitlist of students seeking spaces in charter schools, while the union says charters drain students and money from the district.

District funding is set by the city and state. And the city, not the board, controls who can use old school buildings, a key issue as charter schools seek facilities to grow. Still, contributions are likely to flow into the school board races, helping candidates on both sides. Campaign donations were not available to review in time for this story.

Though the new board members won’t have much power right away, observers and advocates say their role will still be important.

Brown University Professor John Papay, who has helped advise the district, said the new board can counter Infante-Green’s “clear concerns about the board’s current capacity” to govern.

“The Board, both as individual members and collectively as an institution, must fundamentally focus on building their capacity to constructively support the district,” she wrote the city and board after her decision.

Papay said the board can use the three years to learn best practices of how boards work and improve its interaction with the state and others, which has often been confrontational.

“I’ve heard that people are excited for the school board,” Papay said. “Maybe this election will help…do the work necessary to be able to facilitate the return to local control.”

Others, like charter school advocate Janie Segui Rodriguez, are taking a longer view. The board members are all running for four-year terms, which leaves them with a year left when state control ends.

“The board is very limited in their power, but at the same time, this is the board that’s going to receive the schools back in three years,” said Rodriguez, founder and CEO of Stop The Wait. “These are the people who are going to have the ability to implement and voice how we should do things going forward.”

The Providence Public School District, whose board has been appointed by the mayor since the late 1960s, has struggled academically for years and has lost more than 4,000 students over the last 20 years to now have less than 20,000 enrolled in its 37 schools.

A found that Providence lost almost 17 percent of its students since 2019 alone, some to charters, some to homeschooling, dropping out and population loss

The state took control of the district in 2019 after a Johns Hopkins University report found its academic performance and management faulty. Since then, the board has had little control. Infante-Green, not the board, hired and then extended the contract of superintendent Javier Montanez. 

With that control originally planned to end this year, voters in 2022 passed a city charter amendment calling for half of the board to be elected and half to be appointed by the mayor after this year’s election.

Though four current board members are running — Toni Akin in Region 2, Night Jean Muhingabo and Michael Nina in Region 3, and Ty’Relle Stephens in Region 4 — Mayor Brett Smiley isn’t endorsing anyone. He also won’t say if he would re-appoint any of the four if they lose or any of the five current members not running.

He must appoint a member from each region, however, after a nominating committee sends him recommendations.

Loyalty to the mayor or willingness to challenge him looms as a recurring issue for board members, both over charter schools and school funding.

Though Infante-Green placed some responsibility on the board for not governing well, she also delayed ending state control because the city does not give the school district enough money. State law requires Providence — or any city with schools under state control — to increase school funding each year by the same percentage as the state does.

Infante-Green has repeatedly warned the city that it is failing to meet that requirement, but school board members appointed by Smiley have criticized Infante-Green more than Smiley. The mayor even earlier this year, but failed.

The funding issue has flared up again, as superintendent Montanez Oct. 9 that he blamed on too little city support. The shortfall, he said, could force layoffs, and cuts of busing and winter and spring sports.

Candidates have not weighed in on those potential cuts yet. 

The 74 asked every candidate who made contact information available whether the board or other officials were most to blame for Infante-Green not ending state control. All avoided blaming the board and though a few mentioned the budget issues, none assigned responsibility to anyone.

The ability of charter schools to open in the city is another hot button issue. The Rhode Island Department of Education said about 32,400 students statewide — more than 19,000 from Providence — applied for about 2,900 open charter school seats for this school year. To charter advocates, that’s a clear indication more charter schools are needed.

“Despite the fact that there’s growing demand…we probably have the largest wait list in the country…our politicians don’t respond to that,” Rodriguez said.

She added: “We need people who are going to be able to champion what parents and families want, not one system over the other.”

She was frustrated that Providence City Council blocked an agreement earlier this year between Smiley and Achievement First Rhode Island Inc. and Excel Academy Rhode Island to

Stop The Wait has endorsed four candidates — incumbent board member Michael Nina in Region 4, private school administrator Michelle Fontes in Region 2, Jenny Mercado in District 3 and DeNeil Jones in District 5.

The Providence Teachers Union has endorsed Corey Jones, a former city council candidate with several other endorsements from local officials in Region 1, Andrew Grover in Region 2, Heidi Silverio in Region 3 and incumbent board members Night Jean Muhingabo and Ty’Rell Stephens in Regions 4 and 5.

The union did not reply to a request for comment on the endorsements from The 74.

But Muhingabo and Stephens angered charter advocates and strengthened support of teachers when they questioned the lease of the Lauro school to charters.

“This resolution promotes the expansion of charter schools, diverting essential resources from our public schools and undermining our commitment to quality public education for all,” Muhingabo wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We need to protect our public schools!”

Overall, candidates have mostly called for better cooperation between the city, state and schools and for making sure the state can release the district from its control. A few have broken out of that mold by also offering other ideas, including:

• DeNeil Jones, in Region 5, wants to move students in low—performing schools to open seats in higher—performing ones to improve learning and save money. Though not stated, such a change could open schools for charters.
  
• Corey Jones in Region 1 wants state and other social services placed in schools to easily help students.
  
• David Talan in Region 4 wants to make it easier, as students are assigned schools based on openings, for students to attend schools close to them and to open a school in the Washington Park neighborhood.
  
• Mercado in Region 3 hopes to create an app that helps parents with school registration, dual language programs and access to local services.

Medusa’s back at it. 

The cybergang, which has become notorious for devastating ransomware attacks on K-12 school systems, has claimed the Providence, Rhode Island, district as its latest victim, leaking tens of thousands of sensitive student records on its Telegram channel. 

Yet the district remains unaware — or is perhaps unwilling to admit — that students’ private affairs have entered the public domain. Sexual misconduct reports. Special education records. Medical records. Vaccine histories. All are available with a Google search and a few mouse clicks. 

So why won’t the district acknowledge to parents and students that their information was stolen? It’s a refusal I’ve seen repeated again and again while reporting on school cyberattacks over the last few years. 

Earlier this month, the Providence district spokesman told reporters that an ongoing investigation had uncovered that any personal information for students has been impacted.” Yet when The 74 presented the district this week with evidence to the contrary, he doubled down. Third-party consultants are conducting “a comprehensive review” to determine what files were stolen, he told The 74 without uttering the word “student.” 

The files have been available for download for nearly a month. The state education department spokesperson told me — in an unsolicited phone call this week after catching wind of my latest investigation — that nobody (except me, apparently) was previously able to access the breached records. 

“No one had actually gone in to see the files,” he said. 

Click here to read my latest story on the K-12 ransomware beat. And thank you to our partners at The Boston Globe our story Friday.

In the news

As Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City and a former police officer, faces not one but four (!) criminal investigations, federal agents searched the offices of the city police department’s school safety division. The raid was part of an inquiry into a possible bribery scheme involving a company that sells panic buttons to districts nationwide. |

‘Black girls were always the ones who got disciplined’: Black girls face harsher and more frequent disciplinary actions than their white female classmates — in the same schools and for similar behaviors — according to a new Government Accountability Office report on racial disparities in student suspensions. | The 74

Kids who are removed from their homes for abuse or neglect routinely find themselves sleeping in the offices of child protective services. Here’s how often it happens in Indiana. |

‘I’ve got to finish up my school shooter outfit, just kidding’: Prosecutors say the father of a teenager accused of unleashing a deadly mass shooting at his Georgia high school knew the boy was obsessed with previous gunmen — and had a shrine above his bed to the school shooter in Parkland, Florida. |

Specialized schools in Michigan that serve students with complex behavioral issues routinely call the cops for backup. The frequent calls, critics argue, offer evidence the schools are failing the kids they’re designed to help. |

How DACA helps everyone: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — the Obama-era policy that provides deportation relief to undocumented immigrants who entered the country as young children — is a boon for U.S.-born kids, a new study suggests. The program “improves test scores and educational attainment not only for those directly eligible, but also for their peers.” |

How a 15-word statement led to the arrest of a 10-year-old boy with autism at his Texas elementary school. |

The Massachusetts attorney general’s office has sued TikTok, alleging the social media company knew its service was addictive to teens and was associated with sleep disruption, depression and anxiety. |

Nov. 5 is approaching … And schools worry about the safety of their students when their campuses are used as polling locations. |

Utah lawmakers earmarked $100 million for schools to meet new security requirements, including panic buttons, locks and armed guards. The actual price tag? $800 million. |

ICYMI @The74

1st Federal Survey of Trans Students: 72% Feel ‘Hopeless,’ 1 in 4 Tried Suicide

L.A. Housing Crisis Hits LAUSD as Number of Homeless Students Continues to Grow

NYC Schools Launch Anti-Hate Hotline as Antisemitism and Islamophobia Reports Rise

Banned Books Find Shelter in Maryland ‘Sanctuary Library’

Emotional Support

Leo, who lives with my colleague Jo Napolitano, came prepared for school photo day.

A ransomware gang uploaded those and other sensitive student information to an instant messaging service after Providence Public Schools did not pay their $1 million extortion demand, an investigation by The 74 revealed. Though the files have been available online for nearly a month, parents and students are likely unaware that their private affairs have entered the public domain — and district officials have denied the leaked records exist. 

Earlier this month, the school district notified 12,000 current and former employees that personal information, such as their names, addresses and Social Security numbers, had been compromised and offered them five years of credit-monitoring services. But the letter never made mention of students’ sensitive records and, district spokesperson Jay Wégimont told reporters at the time that an ongoing investigation had uncovered that any personal information for students has been impacted.”

An analysis by The 74 of the stolen files — posted by the threat actors to the messaging platform Telegram  — indicates otherwise. Included in the 217 gigabyte data leak are students’ specific special education accommodations and medications. Other files offer detailed insight into district investigations into sexual misconduct allegations naming both educators and students. 

In one complaint, a middle school girl accused a male classmate of showing her unsolicited sexual videos on his cellphone, lifting up her skirt, snapping her bra strap and pulling her hair. In another, a mother accused two high school boys of putting their hands into her disabled daughter’s underwear. After one incident, a boy uttered a threat: “Don’t tell nobody.” 

In a statement to The 74 on Wednesday, Wégimont said the district has “been able to confirm that some files” stored on the district’s internal servers were accessed by an “unauthorized, third party,” and that “security consultants are going through a comprehensive review” to determine whether the leaked files contain personal information “for individuals beyond current and former staff members.” 

Wégimont’s statement doesn’t acknowledge that students’ records had been compromised. 

The district’s failure to acknowledge the breach affected students and parents — even after being informed otherwise — is “a massive violation of trust with communities,” student privacy expert Amelia Vance told The 74.

“People should be aware — especially when particularly sensitive information is being released in ways that could make it findable and searchable later,” said Vance, the founder and president of Public Interest Privacy Consulting. As cybercriminals turn their focus beyond financial records to sensitive information like sexual misconduct allegations, breaches like the one in Providence “are likely to have a substantial impact on people’s future lives, whether it be their opportunities, their ability to get a job or their relationships with others.” 

The school district acknowledged in an Oct. 4 letter to the state attorney general’s office — and in letters to the individuals themselves — that the sensitive information of 12,000 current and former employees was “potentially impacted” in the attack. A spokesperson for the AG’s office shared the letter that Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez submitted “as required by statute,” but declined to comment further on the students and families who were also victimized in the breach.

Under the , schools and other municipal agencies are required to notify affected individuals within 30 days — but the breach “poses a significant risk of identity theft.” Covered records include individuals’ names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial information, medical records, health insurance information and email log-in credentials. 

It’s unclear how the district determined as many as 12,000 current and former educators were affected. Nobody, including the school district, was previously able to access the breached records, Victor Morente, the state education department’s spokesperson, said in a phone call on Wednesday. 

“No one had actually gone in to see the files,” he told The 74, although the district had said it was conducting an ongoing analysis. 

The state took control of the 20,000-student Providence district in 2019 after a report found it was among the lowest performing in the country. State education officials are “working closely with the district” on its ransomware recovery, Morente said. 

Thousands of students impacted

Included in the leak is the 2024-25 Individualized Education Program for a 4-year-old boy who pre-K educators observed had “significant difficulty sustaining attention to task” and who “wandered around the classroom setting without purpose.” Another special education plan notes a 3-year-old boy “randomly roamed the room humming the tune to ‘Wheels on the Bus,’ pushed chairs and threw objects.” 

A single spreadsheet lists the names of some 20,000 students and demographic information including their disability status, home addresses, contact information and parents’ names. Another includes information about their race and the languages spoken at home.

A “termination list” included in the breach notes the names of more than 600 district employees who were let go between 2002 and 2024, including an art teacher who “retired in lieu” of being fired and a middle school English teacher who “resigned per agreement.” Another set of documents revealed a fifth-grade teacher’s request — and denial — for workplace accommodations for obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and panic attacks that make her “less effective as an educator if I am not supported with the accommodations because I can not sleep at night.” 

In one leaked April 2024 email, a senior central office administrator sought a concealed handgun permit from the state attorney general, noting they “have a safe at work as well as one at home.”

Threat actors with the ransomware gang Medusa, believed by cybersecurity researchers to be Russian, took credit for the September attack. The group, which has repeatedly used highly personal student records as part of its extortion scheme, posted Providence public schools to its dark web blog where it demanded $1 million. 

While ransomware gangs have long restricted their activities to the dark web, according to the cybersecurity company Bitdefender. After Medusa outs its latest target on its dark web “name and shame blog,” it then previews the victim’s stolen records in a video on a faux technology blog that appears to be directly tied to the attackers.

The files are then made available for download on Telegram. While the dark web requires special tools and some know-how to access, the preview video and download link to the Providence files and those of other Medusa victims are available with little more than a Google search. 

Medusa’s many tentacles 

The Medusa attack and Providence’s response is similar to those of other school districts in the last two years. After Medusa claimed a 2023 ransomware attack on the Minneapolis school district — what officials there vaguely called an “encryption event” — the threat actors leaked an extensive archive of stolen files, including school-by-school security plans and documents outlining campus rape cases, child abuse inquiries, student mental health crises and suspension reports.

In St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, school officials waited five months to notify people their information was stolen in a July 2023 Medusa cyberattack — and only after a joint investigation by The 74 and The Acadiana Advocate prompted an inquiry from the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office. 

The Providence district records available on Telegram are extensive, totaling more than  337,000 individual files and 217 gigabytes of data. Even the 24-minute video preview exposes an extensive amount of personally identifiable information. Though the group focuses on the theft of sensitive records — like those pertaining to student civil rights investigations, security plans and financial records — a tally of the total number of affected Providence district data breach victims is unknown. 

Personally identifiable information is intertwined with more mundane documents housed on the breached school district server, including veterinarian bills for a high school teacher’s German Shepherd named Sheba and a recipe for pulled BBQ chicken sliders with pineapple coleslaw. 

Indicators of a cyberattack on the Providence district first appeared in September when the school system was forced to go several days without internet due to what “irregular activity” on its computer network but on whether they’d been the target of ransomware. In — and the same day that Medusa’s ransom deadline expired — Superintendent Montañez acknowledged that “an unverified, anonymous group” had gained “unauthorized access” to its computer network and claimed to have stolen sensitive records. 

“While we cannot confirm the authenticity of these files and verify their claims,” Montañez wrote, “there could be concerns that these alleged documents could contain personal information.”

Three days later, on Sept. 28, hundreds of thousands of files became available for download on Telegram.

This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Providence public school officials last Friday were about to finalize a credit monitoring agreement to provide protection for district teachers and staff after a recent ransomware attack on the district’s network.

Then over the weekend, a video preview of selected data allegedly stolen from the Providence Public School Department (PPSD) showed up on a regular website. The site is accessible via any internet browser — what’s sometimes called the “clearnet” — unlike the dark web ransom page where cybercriminal group Medusa first alleged to .

While a forensic analysis of the breach continues, the credit monitoring agreement with an unspecified vendor was finalized as of Thursday and the district was drafting a letter to go out to the staff “very soon” with information on how to access those services, spokesperson Jay G. Wégimont said in an email.

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“First and foremost, the safety and security of our staff members is of utmost importance, and the District continues to make decisions with that in mind,” Wégimont said.

“We will also continue to explore any additional services we can offer to protect the security of our staff members and students.”

Meanwhile, the data breach has yet to be formally reported to the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office, said spokesperson Brian Hodge. requires any municipal or government agency to inform the AG’s office, credit reporting agencies, and people affected by a breach within 30 days of the breach’s confirmation.

PPSD first used the wording “unauthorized access” to describe the breach in a Sept. 25 letter from Superintendent Javier Montañez, although the Providence School Board had used the term “breach” in a public statement on Sept. 18.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley was “encouraged” the district was advising potentially affected staff and finalizing the credit monitoring agreement, spokesperson Anthony Vega said in a statement emailed Tuesday to Rhode Island Current.

The Providence City Council declined to comment, said spokesperson Roxie Richner in an email. Gov. Dan Mckee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Robert’ makes a video

Ransomware group Medusa first took public credit for the pirated PPSD data on Sept. 16, when it demanded a $1 million ransom to be paid by the morning of Sept. 25.

Rhode Island Current previously reported that the alleged ransom landing page did not provide access to files, but did show file and folder names, as well as partially obscured screenshots of the allegedly stolen data.

The clearnet-hosted leak includes a 24-minute screen recording in which someone clicks through an assortment of the allegedly leaked files and folders on an otherwise empty Windows desktop. The post sports a disclaimer that its author is “not engaged in illegal activities” and showcases leaks only for “possible information security problems.”

The author signs off: “Traditional thanks to The Providence Public School Department for the provided data. Do not skimp on information security. Always yours. Robert.”

While the uploader does not explicitly brand themself as affiliated with Medusa, the “Robert” source appears to share all the same leaks Medusa does, and both sources use the same encrypted messaging address, according to threat researchers at Bitdefender.

Ransomware attacks, and Medusa’s methodology as well, have long been associated with social engineering — like getting people to click phishing links in emails. But it’s becoming more common that outdated hardware or software are to blame, said Bill Garneau, vice president of operations at CMIT Solutions in Cranston.

“What we’ve started to see in terms of ransomware is, it’s not only business email compromise,” Garneau said. “Threat actors out there are really pursuing systems that are out of compliance.”

That could mean equipment at the end of its manufacturer-supported lifespan, or software that needs to be patched. Garneau’s company uses a crafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. One of its standards is to patch devices within 30 days of the patch release, before threat actors can exploit the vulnerabilities patches are meant to fix.

“If there’s a patch available, it’s because there’s a bad guy out there that knows that there’s a vulnerability, and there’s somebody that’s knocking on doors trying to find it,” Garneau said.

To insure or not to insure?

Cyber insurance policies can cover some costs incurred by attacks. But they can’t prevent future threats or suddenly make insecure networks better, Garneau noted.

“Insurance is great, right? But that’s not going to solve any problem,” Garneau said.

PPSD has not responded to requests about whether the district has cyber insurance. According to Lauren Greene, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, no public entity would disclose that information anyway. “As you can understand, it poses a security risk for municipalities to disclose if and what type of cybersecurity insurance that they have,” Greene said in an email.

“Municipalities continue to prioritize training for their staff in order to mitigate risk and draw awareness to the constantly evolving threats,” Greene added, and noted that a community’s IT staff may work across multiple areas or departments like public safety and schools.

A released Monday, however, showed that states-level IT officials and security officers are not feeling confident about the budgets for their states’ IT infrastructure.

“The attack surface is expanding as state leaders’ reliance on information becomes increasingly central to the operation of government itself,” Srini Subramanian, principal of Deloitte & Touche LLP, said in an with States Newsroom. “And CISOs (chief information security officers) have an increasingly challenging mission to make the technology infrastructure resilient against ever-increasing cyber threats.”

Those challenges were reflected in the survey numbers, which found almost half of respondents did not know their state’s budget for cybersecurity. Roughly 40% of state IT officers said they did not have enough funds to comply with regulations or other legal requirements.

That finding echoes a , which scores and analyzes municipal bonds. “While robust cybersecurity practices can help reduce exposure, initiatives that are costly and require a shift in resources away from core services are a credit challenge,” wrote Gregory Sobel, a Moody’s analyst and assistant vice president, in the report.

Moody’s also noted that one survey showed 92% of local governments had cyber insurance, a twofold increase over five years. But that popularity came with higher rates: One county in South Carolina went from paying a $70,000 premium in 2021 to a $210,000 premium in 2022. Those higher costs are also in addition to stricter stipulations on risk management practices before a policy will pay out, like better firewalls, consistent data backups and multi-factor authentication.

Douglas W. Hubbard, the CEO of consulting firm Hubbard Decision Research and coauthor of “How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk,” told Rhode Island Current in an email that schools should exhaust the low-cost, shared or free resources available to help them manage cyber risk. Examples include (CISA) or a by the Federal Communications Commission for K-12 schools.

“For specific cybersecurity recommendations…there are a few things that are so fundamental that administrators don’t really even need a risk analysis to get started,” Hubbard said. They include training staff and students on best practices including strong passwords or avoiding mysterious links. Multi-factor authentication is “probably the single most effective technology a school could implement,” even if it involves an upfront cost, Hubbard said.

“The fundamental responsibilities of the schools should include at least using the resources which have been made available to them through the programs I mentioned,” Hubbard said. “If they aren’t doing at least that, there is room for blame.”

This article was corrected to show that Rhode Island state law requires municipal agencies to notify affected parties and the state Attorney General within 30 days of a data breach. The article originally stated 45 days, which is the timeframe required for individuals to report a breach. 

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

The Providence School Board typically broadcasts its meetings to .

But Wednesday evening’s board meeting would not be televised.

Less than five minutes before the scheduled start time, school board President Erlin Rogel to express his regret that a weeklong internet outage at Providence schools would also affect the board’s regularly scheduled programming. But the portion of the meeting most germane to the network issues wouldn’t have been broadcast anyway, since it met in executive session.

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In a statement issued Thursday, Rogel described the executive session as “regarding the recent breach of the district’s network.” It included a presentation from the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) and the Providence Public School Department (PPSD).

“While I cannot disclose the specific contents of our discussion, I can state that the district is awaiting an analysis of this breach to learn more about its severity and the degree to which any information was exposed,” Rogel wrote. “While we await the results of that analysis, PPSD continues to mobilize every resource available to ensure that learning proceeds with as little disruption as possible.”

Rogel did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Rhode Island Current.

The school board president’s use of the term “breach” differs from the district’s official language, which has tiptoed around the problem’s exact nature. A to the PPSD community described “irregular activity” on the district network, which ultimately led IT staff to shut down internet access across district offices and schools. Internet remains largely absent in Providence schools, aside from a fleet of enlisted to provide connectivity in the main network’s absence.

A sent from PPSD to community members said a forensic analysis was still ongoing and that “there is no evidence that PPSD data has been affected.”

But on Monday, for the “irregular activity” with a post to its publicly accessible ransom blog that purported to include 41 watermarked, sometimes partially obscured, screenshots that preview the contents of the 201 gigabytes of data the hackers claim to have stolen, with identifying information — like alleged serial numbers for employee cell phones and parents’ contact information — included.

After penetrating a system, Medusa ransomware and amasses exploitable data. Once the bounty is big enough, it will encrypt files and make them inaccessible to users. A ransom note is then delivered to victims, with files held hostage unless a ransom is paid. Medusa hackers also employ a “” method, meaning they not only steal files, but will sell or release the data publicly if payment is not received.

The ransom page suggests PPSD can recover or delete its data by paying $1 million. A $100,000 payment would extend the timer by one day. The deadline is the morning of Sept. 25, according to the hackers’ countdown timer.

Specifics about district kept secure

Jay G. Wégimont, PPSD spokesperson, did not respond to numerous requests for clarification or comment on Friday.

Forensic analyses , meaning those answers won’t be available immediately. But it’s still unknown whether the school department has a cyber insurance policy, or the possible costs associated with the usage of hotspots that are currently substituting for a dedicated network. Also up in the air is whether the district successfully awarded a 2024 contract that would for copies of security software Cortex XDR Pro, a product from Palo Alto Networks that promises with proper installation.

Wégimont did not provide information as to the status of the district’s senior director of information technology, for which a has been online since May. The role is also vacant according to a Jan. 2024 . The contains 13 full-time information services roles for PPSD, down three from the previous year.

“We also want to note that our student and staff information systems are also separate from our network,” Superintendent Javier Montañez wrote in a Sept. 16 letter to the PPSD community.

Wégimont did not clarify what this means. Typically, large networks called domains offer varying levels of access for different types of users across IT services for big organizations like school districts.

Back-to-school for threat actors, too

Perennially underfunded school districts nationwide are a favorite among ransomware actors. A report published in Oct. 2022 cited research that over 647,000 K-12 students were potential victims of ransomware attacks as of 2021. Resulting learning loss ranged from days to weeks, while it took districts’ infrastructure anywhere from two to nine months to recover.

Providence officials have not confirmed ransomware as the source of their network woes. The alleged hack comes at an inopportune time for PPSD, which has been under state control since 2019 and will remain so for , state education officials announced last month.

If Medusa leaks the PPSD data it claims to have, and it contains private student information, the leakage could be in, a federal law meant to shield confidential student data. Best practices determine that affected school districts contact authorities once a breach is suspected. (Schools do not, however, have to contact the U.S. Department of Education about ransomware, although it is so they can receive federal resources.)

“As is standard operating procedure, the District and their professional third-party IT agency contacted RI State Police, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last Wednesday,” Wégimont said in a Sept. 18 email.

Kristen Setera, a spokesperson for the FBI Boston Division, declined to comment.

“Generally speaking, we do not comment on specific incidents because victims should feel confident that, when reporting a crime to the FBI, their status as ‘victim’ is paramount to the investigation and that their identity will not be disclosed,” Setera said in a Thursday morning email to Rhode Island Current. “If a victim wants to disclose our involvement, we leave it up to them to do so.”

In the meantime, Providence schools have made do with older technologies. Maribeth Calabro, president of the Providence Teachers Union, did not acknowledge requests for comment from Rhode Island Current, but did previously speak with multiple news outlets about the effects on the district’s teachers. Some are confused about which devices they can or can’t use, Calabro told the , and have opted to teach the old-school way instead, without computers.

A Tuesday on a social media post about the potential Providence hack seems to voice one student’s concern: “Bro.. I just want the school wifi back.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

A Connecticut-based school bus company awarded an expanded contract to provide transportation for Rhode Island students is apologizing for service disruptions that left families scrambling to get their children to and from school in the first couple weeks of school.

Service disruptions attributed to a shortage of drivers led the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) to issue a corrective action plan last Friday to DATTCO Motorcoach, the company awarded a three-year, $20 million statewide bus contract in May. The contract expanded DATTCO’s existing service area to span most of the state, from Westerly to Woonsocket, and the majority of the state’s urban core.

It was unclear how many children were stranded without bus service, but they included children with disabilities who were not picked up for school or whose families were called to come get them in the afternoon because bus service became unavailable. The problems drew fierce condemnation on Monday from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Rhode Island and Rhode Island Center for Justice. The advocacy organizations demanded in a that RIDE correct the issues by Tuesday, sooner than the deadline of 10 days RIDE set in its to DATTCO on Sept. 6.

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“DATTCO has left multiple students in wheelchairs for hours at their schools,” Lisa Odom-Villella, deputy commissioner for instructional programs at RIDE, wrote in the Sept. 6 letter outlining a corrective action plan.

Families of kids who were left without school bus transportation may seek compensation for any resulting travel costs, according to state education officials. Parents of affected children have been contacted about the reimbursement process.

“We are deeply sorry to any students or families who were or continue to be affected by the challenges that we faced last week as the school year began,” Paul Mayer, a spokesperson for DATTCO, wrote in an email Wednesday to Rhode Island Current.

Mayer said the vast majority of routes DATTCO services in Rhode Island are running as scheduled, and noted the company’s otherwise successful track record in recent years. 

“We know that it is not acceptable and that our apology must be followed up by action, and to that end we have already made significant progress with each passing day as routes become staffed with permanent drivers and aides.

“Though many of the immediate concerns raised have already been rectified or are in the process of being corrected, we know that our work is not done.”

Morente said two routes would be affected on Thursday afternoon and that parents had already been contacted.

“DATTCO has reported that all morning routes now have drivers, but one route did not run because a driver was out sick,” Morente wrote in an email Monday. “The vast majority of students have not been impacted and DATTCO has sought ways to increase coverage.”

After state officials first became aware of service problems on Aug. 29, they reassigned 26 of approximately 300 bus routes to First Student, which already services parts of Providence and Bristol counties for RIDE’s statewide bussing system. DATTCO admitted they had no way of fully staffing the routes.

“RIDE was under the impression that all the remaining Dattco routes would be covered the week of September 3,” Morente said. But it was clear that was untrue on the first day of school in Providence (school districts start at different times). RIDE became aware DATTCO was having individual drivers do multiple runs, which can slow and complicate service. RIDE took five more routes and awarded them to First Student, who had enough properly licensed drivers.

First Student, a national bussing company based in Cincinnati, will keep the 31 routes for the remainder of the three-year contract, Morente said. The routes run from the East Bay up to Woonsocket.

First Student did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

In May, state officials awarded most of their rezoned transportation districts to DATTCO after a competitive bid process — a move which drew union anger, , as Dattco is mostly non-union compared to First Student.

The ACLU and Rhode Island Center for Justice called on RIDE to immediately fix the problem and develop an alternative plan as a backup should DATTCO fail to provide necessary services again.

“RIDE maintains responsibility for ensuring that students get the transportation required by their IEPs [individualized education programs, which are for students who receive special education] as of Sept. 3, 2024,” the letter stated.

Looking for drivers

Anthony F. Cottone, RIDE’s chief legal counsel, responded to the ACLU letter Tuesday, saying there was “no reason to believe that DATTCO was not capable of performing its contract … at the outset of the 2024-2025 school year,” given that the company had already been providing bus services in parts of Rhode Island since 2020.

DATTCO that there was a licensing issue with its drivers, many of whom are based in Connecticut and lack the proper credentials to drive a school bus in Rhode Island. After news of the bus route issues broke, DATTCO posted to its Facebook page on that it was looking for Rhode Island drivers. A similar notice has been posted on its webpage since at least late August.

“RIDE reached out to other vendors to cover additional routes but there were no more available CDL drivers,” Morente said Tuesday.

Cottone’s letter pointed out that DATTCO’s logistical errors were due in part to sloppy planning: On Sept. 3, the agency received a “transportation plan” from DATTCO which showed over 30 routes would have “double runs,” or one driver serving two routes.

“That would result in children on such routes getting to school an average of 1 hour and 41 minutes late,” Cottone wrote. “It was evident that DATTCO both was short bus drivers and was suffering an internal communications breakdown.”

“RIDE immediately informed DATTCO that it was in breach of its contract…and began brainstorming with the Governor’s Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles about ways to enable licensed Connecticut drivers to operate in Rhode Island,” Cottone’s letter continues. “In fact, DATTCO has since admitted, in writing, that this plan using ‘double runs’ ‘was not suitable.’”

Demands outlined

The ACLU and Rhode Island Center for Justice letter made six demands of RIDE: that the governor issue an emergency executive order, that RIDE’s website post information about affected bus routes the night prior, as well as create an alternate route for each affected route and a dedicated hotline for parents’ phone calls.

The letter urged RIDE to offer compensatory education for any school time missed, as well as travel costs for parents whose kids weren’t able to take the bus. The ACLU specified mileage at the federal rebate rate of 67 cents a mile plus $20 a day for parents who drive, or the cost of any car service used by parents who don’t drive.

Ellen Saideman, cooperating counsel for the ACLU, responded to the RIDE response in an interview Tuesday.

“Basically they said that they’re doing everything that we wanted them to do,” Saideman said. “It does seem like they’ve made some progress. They hired more bus drivers, more routes are covered…I think the point is that there was clearly a problem in this catastrophic start last week.”

Cottone wrote in RIDE’s response Tuesday that eligible parents were notified they could request reimbursements through their resident school district, with the districts later reimbursed by RIDE, although it is unclear if the reimbursements will follow the model the ACLU wanted.

Morente said on Wednesday that all families of affected students had been informed by phone call and email about service delays, as well as information on how to seek reimbursements. Morente also forwarded parents can fill out for reimbursement, and explained the process.

“Districts reimburse parents, Statewide [the RIDE transportation system] credits districts on invoices after collecting the forms, and then payment to the vendor responsible for the interruption for the total month is reduced by the total parent costs,” Morente wrote.

Saideman was still curious why the education department wasn’t more immediately up front about the steps it was taking to correct the problem.

“Why isn’t it posted on their website?” Saideman said about the reimbursements. “I think the point about transparency is… it isn’t that hard to update your website and post information.”

McKee’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

Most districts try to prevent chronic absenteeism through early warning systems that identify students who miss too much school, according to the report by . Districts also conduct home visits, call families when students are out and hire staff who specifically address attendance. 

But those efforts meet with pushback from parents. Some say, for example, that letters sent home nudging students to attend school are “too harsh.” 

“Parents’ overall feelings about the importance of school have changed,” said Jessica Hull,  executive director of communication and community engagement for the Roseville City School District, outside Sacramento. Chronic absenteeism in the district has dropped from its pandemic high point of 26% to 11%, but that is still roughly double its pre-COVID rate.

Some students with family members outside of the U.S. can be gone for weeks at a time. Others frequently miss Fridays and Mondays, while some older children are tasked with caring for younger siblings. 

“I’m generally a very positive person,” Hull said. “But I don’t know that we’ll really dramatically change those things.”

The report comes as more states are showing leadership on the issue. On Monday, Attendance Works, an advocacy and research organization, announced that have committed to cutting chronic absenteeism in half over five years in response to a challenge it issued in July along with the American Enterprise Institute and EdTrust. Chronic absenteeism peaked at 28% nationally in the 2021-22 school year. The Rand survey of nearly 200 district leaders estimates that rates dropped to about 19% last school year, but that’s still above the pre-COVID level of 15%. 

In a statement, Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, said states are “uniquely positioned to alert everyone to the size of this challenge.” 

But the Rand report suggests district leaders feel a sense of urgency to reach families with children who miss the most school now.

“The leaders we interviewed were frustrated because there are chronically absent students for whom their interventions aren’t working,” said Lydia Rainey, a researcher with the 

Center on Reinventing Public Education, which with Rand on the survey. “Some of the leaders had ideas for new programs to try; others were at a loss for what to do next. No one talked about giving up.”

The authors urged districts to emphasize approaches that foster stronger relationships between students and staff — an ingredient that even discouraged leaders say is the key to more successful strategies. Parents need to understand how poor attendance impacts their children’s academic performance, researchers said, and districts should collect better evidence on which methods make students want to come to school.

The U.S. Department of Education last week encouraged similar strategies in for low-performing schools identified as part of states’ accountability systems. The public has until Oct. 4 to provide comments on the draft. In addition, a recently posted  from the Department of Transportation offers other ideas, like teaching students to if transportation is unavailable.

In its effort to address the problem, the Roseville City district supplies gas cards to families who can’t afford to fill up and encourages transient and homeless families to transfer schools if their living situations have changed. 

“One school that works at the beginning of the year might not be the school that works at the end of the year,” Hull said.

Lines of communication 

School leaders sometimes modify district-level practices to keep the connections with parents positive. 

In central Wyoming’s Fremont County district, for example, home-to-school liaisons call families when students miss too much school. But Katie Law, principal of Arapahoe Charter High School in the district, changed the title for these liaisons to student advocate — “so families see that it is an attempt to help.” 

To comply with state laws and tribal codes, the district also sends letters and truancy citations to families of chronically absent students. But Law said those messages are often counterproductive.

“This just made relationships and trust between the school and the parents worse and led to students dropping out entirely,” she said. “It wasn’t effective.”  

Law has tried some of the conventional strategies Rand studied, but she has also added some home-grown ideas, like handing out prepaid phone cards so she can text students when they’re not in class.

“We can open those lines of communication instead of trying to find four different phone numbers that might be disconnected,” she said. 

Food is another incentive. Once a month, the school holds a community day, including a “giant potluck.” Last week, students and staff made pancakes and volunteered at the local food bank. 

“Kids start to feel that somebody’s depending on them the way they depend on other people,” Law said. “It shows them that accountability.”

‘Tricky’ questions

That mixture of approaches demonstrates how schools can connect with students socially. The “next phase” is ensuring families see an academic payoff as well, said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a research center at Georgetown University. She recently examined a to reduce chronic absenteeism in Rhode Island.

“Do students, especially high school students, feel that going to school has value? Is it a good use of their time?” she asked. “We have to start tackling the tricky and sticky questions of what happens within the school day, academically, that makes it worth it for students to stay in those buildings.”

As part of the Rhode Island effort, the state posts data showing how chronic absenteeism affects the percentage of students meeting math and reading expectations. The state also operates a that is updated every night and gives the public a real-time picture of absenteeism rates.

This year’s data is promising, with the rate declining from almost 29% in 2022-23 to less than 25%. 

Nearby Connecticut, which publishes on chronic absenteeism at the district and school level, has seen a decline from 20% in 2022-23 to 17.7%. 

But few states offer such timely, localized data, and most don’t even release statewide figures until October or later.

That’s part of the problem, Cohen said.

“This should be unacceptable,” she said, “given the agreement on how urgent this problem is.”

Providence will get its schools back from state control, Rhode Island’s education commissioner promised Thursday night. Just not right now.

Angélica Infante-Green, commissioner of the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), supplied her as to whether the state takeover of Providence’s public schools, which started in November 2019, should continue, at a of the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education.

“RIDE does not intend — and I wanna repeat that — does not intend to keep the district forever,” Infante-Green told the council.

But the state does want to hold the district close a little longer: Infante-Green advised that the council extend the state intervention through Oct.15, 2027, and it was unanimously approved by the council.

Infante-Green indicated that there was also a chance local control could return before the end of the three year period, if there’s sufficient progress in student proficiency and other stakeholders’ willingness to work in tandem with RIDE. That didn’t mollify the Providence School Board, the mayor’s office or the City Council, all of whom noted their disappointment in statements following the meeting. 

A premature end to the takeover extension would require council approval, the council’s chair Patricia DiCenso confirmed to reporters after the meeting. But it would not necessitate that the district fulfills everything outlined in the state’s “turnaround action plan” — the guiding set of metrics used to evaluate the takeover’s success. 

During the meeting, a pair of old wooden chairs helped Infante-Green illustrate why the state takeover of Providence public schools isn’t ready to end. 

She motioned to the scratched, chipped and dented seats, which were staged against a wall in an education department conference room. The councilors spun around to look. The chairs once belonged to the auditorium in Providence’s , which first underwent state intervention back in the 2000s and initially saw gains in problem areas before within a few years.

The chairs are normally stationed outside the commissioner’s office — a reminder, she said, of the need to see things through for students.

“It reminds me that we cannot fail them yet again,” Infante-Green said. “The importance of the symbolism of Hope High School is the cautionary example of what happens when the state leaves too early.”

State control not unique

When Infante-Green , the day two progress reports on the takeover were released, she said that all three options — end, continue or revise the takeover — were “still on the table.” 

showed post-pandemic progress in Providence schools compared to similar districts in other New England states. But anyone who read , from education consulting firm SchoolWorks, might have surmised that the school system is nowhere near reaching its turnaround goals.

One example: In the 2022-2023 school year, eighth-graders’ math proficiency was at 6%, which was one percentage point lower than the pre-takeover baseline numbers from 2018. The turnaround action plan wanted 50% proficiency in math by 2026.

In five years, the Providence takeover has drawn much media and legislative attention — including a study commission led by Sen. Sam Zurier, a Providence Democrat and education committee member who often reminisces fondly at state house meetings about his own time in Providence schools. The commission’s in May, concluded that a more lasting solution for the Providence takeover could derive inspiration from other states, like the in Massachusetts that nullified “the threat of an imminent state takeover” with new arrangements for collective bargaining and shared governance of schools.

As Zurier’s commission found, history indeed repeats, and the Providence takeover is . State control has been tested to varied results in school districts big and small. The state of Texas took over in 2023, a big experiment given that the district serves over 194,000 students, a lot more than Providence’s approximately 22,000 students. came under state control in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the city has since transitioned to a distinct model of charter-only education. Even in Rhode Island, Providence’s neighbor Central Falls has had its schools under state control for . The Providence Public Schools building on Westminster Street is where the Providence School Board meets. But the board’s powers have been delimited since the state takeover in 2019, rendering some of their actions — like an Aug. 21, 2024, resolution to end the takeover — statutorily toothless. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)

Underperformance and funding tend to underline the decision to seize control of a municipal school district. Subpar education in Providence was a salient argument in the that predated the takeover: “The great majority of students are not learning on, or even near, grade level,” the report stated.

Rhode Island’s annual proficiency assessments for third- and eighth-grade students will be released this fall, but the recent SchoolWorks data suggests that underperformance is still the norm. 

Tepid reception to takeover

Before the council voted on the commissioner’s recommendation, chair DiCenso pointed to funding as the foremost challenge.

“When this district went into control, they were listed as the worst in the country,” DiCenso said. “And I don’t think it was the families’ fault. I don’t think it was the children’s fault. I don’t think it was the teachers’ fault. I look back at 17 years, or at least 10-plus years, of level funding, no funding from this city to say ‘We believe in our schools.’”

“We just can’t pretend that it’s all about what’s happening at the building level and at the district level,” DiCenso said.

Michael Grey, who chairs the state Board of Education, seemed content with the turnaround plan’s potential for accountability.

“I also think that this is incumbent upon the commissioner, because the weight of this is on her, statutorily, and on us as advisers to be the one that makes the call,” Grey said.

That contrasted the opinion of the Providence School Board, who voted unanimously last Thursday to pass a resolution urging the commissioner to end the takeover — a motion as symbolic as the chairs outside Infante-Green’s office, given that the state takeover has stripped away most of the municipal body’s powers. 

“I have felt, and I think I can speak for some of my board members, completely powerless,” said board member Anjel Newmann last week. “And if we feel powerless, how do our students and families feel? … No shade to the commissioner [but] I want to see the district come back to a community, into a collective, and not be subject to one person’s veto power.”

School board President Erlin Rogel reaffirmed that viewpoint in an email Thursday after the council vote, and called the continued takeover “disappointing” — a sentiment shared by Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller.

“We have also heard from families, teachers and our own city departments that there is still a lot of room for improvement in fostering a climate of collaboration and community that is required to move the district forward on a timeline that our students deserve,” Smiley and Miller offered in a joint statement Thursday, and added that they were “disappointed by the recommendation.”

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Infante-Green characterized her decision as a positive one for Providence students and families.

“This is about supporting the district in a way that could not happen,” she said. “That is the bottom line. I think we all know that mayor after mayor after mayor has tried. I think this mayor’s putting some processes in place, but there’s a lot of work that still needs to happen.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .