Supporters of a proposed 35-year lease for the vacant Carl Lauro Elementary School building in Providence to Excel Academy ascend the stairs in Providence City Hall to the council chambers on July 24, 2025. (Photo by Janie Segui Rodriguez/Stop the Wait)
The sorry chapter of the failed Carl Lauro Elementary School lease leaves kids languishing on wait lists and taxpayers on the hook
The drove of parents in yellow T-shirts who trooped up the stairs in Providence’s City Hall to the City Council chambers on July 24 hoped they were heading for the grand finale of months of advocacy for a desirable new school. Their T-shirts were emblazoned with Stop the Wait, a nonprofit that helps parents understand their rights and champions public school options so children from low-income families aren’t trapped in schools they don’t like.
That night the City Council was ready to vote on a proposal to lease the vacant Carl Lauro Elementary School building on Kenyon Street to Excel Academy for 35 years. The deal included $80 million for a full renovation on Excel’s dime, as well as lush ancillary benefits to Providence’s district schools, families, the city, and the neighborhood surrounding an abandoned eyesore residents had put up with for two years. The cost to the city for maintenance and security of the vacant school: $300,000 a year.
Stop the Wait registered each on-the-ground advocate. CEO Janie Sequi Roderiquez said 419 parents made thousands of phone calls and knocked on thousands of doors to solicit support.
While the parents and nonprofit advocates worked, City Council President Rachel Miller negotiated the lease with Mayor Brett Smiley and Excel staff. A July 17 council newsletter outlined the details of the deal that had been carefully vetted with public meetings and a feasibility study.
But the parents knew there could be trouble. Because 24 hours earlier, Miller did a whiplash 180 and insisted the council vote against it.
Despite a new sound system, the council chamber’s acoustics are so bad, participants strain to hear and be heard.
When the vote took place, a triumphal whoop went up. Some families joined the clapping and hugging to celebrate what they assumed was a victory for their kids.
It was not.
The lease died on an 8-4 vote. The applause actually originated with Providence Public School District (PPSD) teachers, dressed in familiar blue T-shirts, who show up at education-related public meetings. As translations and corrections circulated, parents were shocked to learn the teachers weren’t with them after all. A dark sense of betrayal replaced their initial confusion. Tears broke out.
The Carl G. Lauro school building on Kenyon Street in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood has been vacant for two years. The cost to the city for maintenance and security totals $300,000 a year. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
The parents learned the hard way that the lease had little to do with serving the public or shepherding scarce resources. It was about protecting union jobs by vilifying charters with sentiments verging on hatred. Charters are public schools — publicly accountable, publicly supported, though underfunded compared with district schools — that are not necessarily unionized.
Political dignitaries conduct silly “listening tours” but won’t hear the hard data screaming from the charter waiting lists where thousands of families languish. Parents of all economic classes want public charter seats because they’d prefer diverse, effective, taxpayer-funded public schools. Excel will open eventually as soon as it finds a private building that will come off the city’s tax rolls, unlike the disused Carl Lauro building.
You’d think the council would be salivating at the $80 million. Last November, the city lost a $15 million lawsuit brought by the Department of Education for underfunding what the state deemed its share of the per pupil expenditure. This unbudgeted expense forced the city to ask the General Assembly to let it override the 4% cap on raising the city’s total tax levy, per state law. City residents and businesses were outraged.
And lest the taxpayers of greater Rhode Island feel they have no stake in Providence school problems, actually they pay almost half of Providence’s per pupil expenditure and their taxes reimburse 80% of school capital expenditures. The lack of a Lauro School lease is now a state problem.
In a July 23 council newsletter, Miller stated: “The city council will not hand the keys of a shuttered public school building to a charter school.”
Up until 24 hours earlier, the only organization that didn’t like the deal was the teachers union, a private-sector business which, like all unions, exists to benefit clients and not the public mission those clients are supposed to serve.
A teacher’s July 21st Facebook post reads: “We did it guys! It didnt (sic) pass and public school teachers showed up. Excellent Video. We must remain steadfast! … Bravo to ALL who have supported PUBLIC schools that serve ALL students (unlike charter schools)” – which is not only not true, but illegal by state law.
The “excellent video” shows Providence Democratic Rep. David Morales and school board member Corey Jones malign charters with half-truths. They imply that charter schools are not public schools when they are in every respect
At the July 17 ordinance meeting, Providence City Councilor Miguel Sanchez said, “I’d rather have an empty building there, that we’re paying $300,000 for (per year), than to give it over to a charter school system.”
At the same meeting, Councilor Justin Roias said, “We’re giving a few lifeboats away and keeping students in PPSD on a sinking ship…” Councilor, did you hear yourself? PPSD was a sinking ship in the early 1990s when I joined the Providence School Board. Without serious structural changes, the schools have no hope of getting better and never did.
To use Roias’ description of the schools, the obvious thing to do would be to provide as many lifeboats as we possibly can until the sinking ship either sinks or makes itself attractive enough to compete with the desirable schools the council so denigrates.
So, here you are, Rhode Island. These are your tax dollars at work.
Bring on the lifeboats.
First published: RI Current News, September 23, 2025
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