<body><div>Editor’s note: EG News will accept opinion pieces about the local 2024 election through Tuesday, Oct. 29. Email your submission to [email protected].I love Rhode Island. It is the only place I can truly call home. The ocean, the air, the people – it all comes together to make for an incredible place to live. As I traveled and worked around the world, I proudly defended the state when people would poke fun at it for its size, accent, or bureaucracy. But now that I have returned after 18 years away, I’ve found that there are certain elements of Rhode Island that are simply indefensible. Among the most glaring is the condition of Rhode Island’s public school system. Rhode Island schools rank near the bottom in almost every metric, and the situation is progressively getting worse, not better. Even the historically reputed schools, like East Greenwich, where I now live, are no longer competitive on a regional or national scale. The evidence clearly shows that the best of Rhode Island schools are now quite average. For example, the decline in our children’s performance on the most consequential standardized test they will likely ever take, the SAT, is a clear signal that we are moving in the wrong direction. Over the past five years, the average SAT score in East Greenwich has plummeted by 72 points, dropping from 1209 to 1137. East Greenwich’s average SAT scores are now 39 points below Barrington’s, 201 points below Lexington’s – a top Massachusetts district – and only 12 points above that of a Rhode Island neighbor, Seekonk. While East Greenwich has the second-highest average scores of Rhode Island’s 47 districts, it would rank 101st out of 288 if it were in Massachusetts. Another major concern is our ability to effectively execute on school construction, which is a big topic for many districts across Rhode Island. East Greenwich began the process in 2017 when it formed a committee dedicated to exploring school rehabilitation and expansion. Now, approaching 2025, no construction has begun, and project scope, designs, and locations all remain unresolved. At the last School Construction Committee meeting, we were told that the process would slow further to avoid mistakes, and that each month of delay after construction begins could incur an additional $450,000 in expenses. On top of that, a recent argument between the Town Council and the School Committee over the composition of the Construction Committee escalated to the state level before a solution was found and the escalation was retracted, the project’s OPM was recently replaced, transparency regarding the handling of abutter concerns has been minimal, and the realized and projected financials have not been made publicly available. The taxpayers of East Greenwich should be asking a very critical question at this point: What will our $150 million school construction bond actually get us? In a broader sense, we Rhode Islanders need to look at the deteriorating state of our schools, both academically and physically, as a leading indicator of the long-term direction of our towns and our state. Education often determines plight or prosperity. According to RIDE’s reporting of RICAS scores, 29.6 percent of Rhode Island students meet or exceed expectations in math, and 33.1 percent meet or exceed expectations in English. How can we expect to thrive if future generations can neither read nor understand this very letter? There are no do-overs in education – you get one shot. If we want Rhode Islanders to be among the best and brightest, we need to fix our schools, and we need to fix them now. I do not enjoy sending this message, but we must accept reality if we are to address this catastrophe. While there is no single person or action that can fix this problem, the first step is clear: put the right leadership in place to drive the necessary change. You, the voter, hold the power to choose the right people to take our schools forward.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0PYENn_0vlGBSFS00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0PYENn_0vlGBSFS00" width="640" height="284" ></figure><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0PYQy7_0vlGBSFS00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0PYQy7_0vlGBSFS00" width="640" height="480" ></figure>Schuyler Weiss is a candidate for School Committee.</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Opinion: The Declining State of Our Schools

Editor’s note: EG News will accept opinion pieces about the local 2024 election through Tuesday, Oct. 29. Email your submission to [email protected]. I love Rhode Island. It is the only place I can truly call home. The ocean, the air, the people – it all comes together to make for an incredible place to live. As I traveled and worked around the world, I proudly defended the state when people would poke fun at it for its size, accent, or bureaucracy. But now that I have returned after 18 years away, I’ve found that there are certain elements of Rhode Island that are simply indefensible. Among the most glaring is the condition of Rhode Island’s public school system. Rhode Island schools rank near the bottom in almost every metric, and the situation is progressively getting worse, not better. Even the historically reputed schools, like East Greenwich, where I now live, are no longer competitive on a regional or national scale. The evidence clearly shows that the best of Rhode Island schools are now quite average.