When I became the first person of color to chair the Pawtucket School Committee, I made a promise to lead with transparency, and that my only boss would be the kids, parents and teachers of Pawtucket. But nothing prepared me for my first walkthrough of Samuel Slater Middle School.
Everywhere I looked, I saw how it felt that we had abandoned our children at slater. I saw massive structural cracks in the ceiling, a historic school auditorium that had been completely condemned and locked shut for six years, and ancient plumbing that leaked raw sewage directly into the girls’ bathroom. After that tour, I sat in my car and wept. I wept because the children of Woodlawn, our city’s most economically vulnerable and diverse student population, were being forced to learn in a toxic, degrading environment. And I wept because I knew this was entirely preventable and that we could move forward to help Slater come back to life.
Pawtucket has a historic opportunity to build a state-of-the-art middle school. Under the Rhode Island Department of Education School Housing Aid program, the state stands ready to reimburse Pawtucket for up to 80 percent to 90 percent or more of the construction costs. For every dollar we spend to give our kids a decent classroom, local taxpayers only have to pay a dime.
Yet, when I brought these receipts to City Hall, the political establishment suddenly became creative roadblock engineers. First, the City Council claimed they had “no control” over school buildings and pushed for separation of powers. Then, in a highly calculated power grab, a year later they attempted to change the city’s charter and move to an appointed school board to strip Pawtucket residents of their right to vote desperate to silence the parents and educators demanding accountability and proper funding.
Next, they tried to terrify the public with gross debt numbers, claiming the city was “bonded out” due to school construction. They conveniently left out the real drain on Pawtucket’s credit: the millions in municipal debt and Tax Incremental Financing they quietly approved to bail out private, out-of-state developers for their construction projects, and they blamed the cities debt on our school construction project (that by the way we will be getting reimbursed 91 percent from the state).
When their excuses failed, they staged press tours and sponsored a theatrical Statehouse resolution, pretending they wanted the state to directly fund Slater. As predicted, the General Assembly rejected the bill, the cameras went away, and the mayor and council president went completely silent.
The cost of this political theater is measured in the futures of our children. Slater Middle School is currently in state-mandated “redesign” direct result of being in the bottom 5 perncetof all Rhode Island schools for years. Because City Hall has frozen our school department’s local operating appropriation at exactly $32.8 million since 2020, we have been stripped of the resources to fund reading specialists and math interventionists. Today, nearly 95 percent of Slater students cannot read or write at grade level.
Elected officials love to dismiss this crisis by waxing nostalgic, telling the public, “I went to Pawtucket schools, and they are different now.” Let’s be clear: our children haven’t changed. What has changed is City Hall’s willingness to treat public school funding as a political piggy bank while starving the core classroom instruction of working-class kids.
The city’s own financial advisers have admitted that Pawtucket’s debt capacity clears up enough to finance a new Slater Middle School by 2029. If the math works for 2029, why won’t City Hall make a legally binding commitment to these families today?
Slater Middle School sits at the corner of Mineral Spring Avenue and Lonsdale, the physical crossroads of Providence, Central Falls, Lincoln, and North Providence. Imagine replacing this decaying albatross with the state’s first-ever career and technical education middle school. Imagine a facility where Woodlawn parents can take carpentry and electrical classes at night, while their children are exposed to high-paying trades during the day. Imagine the generational shift in academic outcomes, community pride, and property values.
I am running for the School Committee because I refuse to let our classrooms be sacrificed to pay for bad decisions. Our educators deserve support, our taxpayers deserve transparency, and the children of Slater Middle School deserve a building worthy of their potential. It is time for City Hall to stop playing political games and honor the memory of Samuel Slater and the industrial revolution by financing a building that is worthy of his memory.
Omar Reyes
Pawtucket School Committee
