Providence City Council Meeting | May 12th, 2025

Good evening. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to committee and ordinance, the five at 05:43. And today is 05/12/2025. Thank you all for being here.

Madam clerk, will you please call the roll?

Chairman Espinal? Present. Vice chairwoman Peterson is absent. Councilwoman Harris? Present.

Councilman Vargas? Present. Councilor Royas is absent. You have three present and two absent. You have a quorum.

Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to recognize our council colleagues. Council president Miller is here with us, councilman Sanchez, councilwoman Anthea Graves, as well and councilman Gonka who just joined us, as well as, city solicitor, Ethi Schwab, and along with my colleague. Thank you all once again for being here. This is a regular committee, an ordinance meeting, but we will be allowing public testimony.

So if you haven't already, you still have time to signed up if you like to be heard. Thank you. Madam clerk, first item on the agenda, please.

Item number one is a resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into a lease agreement with Excel Academy Rhode Island.

Thank you. And before we get started, I have letters of testimonies, for and against. It's all intended in a motion to enter letters of testimony into the records. Most motion is made by council member Vargas and second by councilwoman Harris. All in favor, aye.

Aye. Opposed? Abstained. The ayes have it. Thank you.

And I also have a sub a. So I'll entertain a motion to enter substitution a into the records.

So moved.

Saved by councilwoman Harris, second by councilman Bottiga. So all in favor, aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it.

Thank you. Okay. Do we have anybody that's going to present on this item here? So we have chief Courtney Hopkins as well as Owen. Thank you.

So when you come up, state your name, for the record, please.

Hello. Good evening. My name is Courtney Hawkins, and I serve as chief operating officer for the city. Chairman and committee members, thank you for allowing me to present tonight. I'm gonna keep my remarks brief, but wanted to make what I believe are three important points about the lease that's before you.

So first, this lease is truly a compromise. We were before you many months ago with a different version. We heard a lot of feedback, and we worked hard to make it better, for the city, for the district, and for Excel. First, it provides money that benefits PPSD. So it includes, $2,500,000 that will go to the renovation of this building to benefit PPSD.

That money, if not allocated through this lease, will have to come from the pool of money that is going to fund the building of a new school for Messer and West Broadway communities. So it means that we don't have to take money from the new school to renovate this old building. The building renovations will be paid for through the context of this lease. The lease also provides $50,000 a year in neighborhood investment funds to be directed by the counselor. And third, it provides ongoing rent income, to

the district's capital revolving fund. This is

a fund we've talked about in other contexts that provides for ongoing maintenance and improvements in schools across the city. Currently, there is not a regular income stream into that fund. So this lease, the rent associated with it can be allocated to the CRF. In the later years of that lease, it's a million dollars a year to benefit district school maintenance and improvements. There are also additional compromises in the sub a that you just received.

The most important, I think, is that we changed how the extensions on the lease are approved. So after the initial thirty five year term, subsequent extensions will come and have to be approved by the mayor and the council at that time. There are also some changes that clarify some issues around sublease that some of you raised for us and some other small changes. All of those were directed by conversations that Owen and Mike had with the council. Second important point, this conversation has gotten wrapped up in conversations around charter expansion, which while I understand, I would offer is not really the challenge that is in front of us today.

This school is approved for these charter seats. If they don't access this building, they will access another building. They will likely pay rent probably to a for profit company. It will likely take another building in the city off the tax rolls because it will be a school. It's not about Excel's existence.

It's about whether or not we're gonna offer this building and whether the use of this building as a school makes the best sense for the city. And I'm telling you, having spent a lot of time on it, I do believe that it does. Thirdly,

on

that point, if Excel doesn't move into this building, it has some significant financial implications for the city and the district I want you to consider. First, as you probably know, PPSD is going to move into that building in September for a period of five years. As a part of this lease, Xcel has agreed to sublease the building half of the building to PPSD. If Xcel doesn't move into the building, PPSD will then be the sole occupant, which means they'll be responsible for all the maintenance and upkeep of the building, all of the utility bills. You know, if the roof fails, PPSD and the city will have to pay for that without support from anyone else.

We've negotiated with Excel that large capital investments into the building will be borne by Excel. Smaller things will be shared between the two parties. But if PPSD is in that building alone, they will be responsible just like they are for any other school building. Further, when PPSD leaves the building in five years, it'll come back to the city control, and we will be responsible for yet another empty blighted building. That means, you know, this year we've spent roughly $300,000 keeping that building safe and empty.

That comes out of our regular budget. That is money that could go to water parks or rec centers or other things we all wanna invest in. Instead, we will have to put that money into an empty building until we figure out what it is we're gonna do with it. I'll say just in closing, I'm I'm obviously disappointed. It's no secret I'm disappointed we are where we are on this topic tonight because I think this lease before you is a real example of working together to understand each other's perspectives and trying to come to something, that we can all feel proud of, where we move the needle on behalf of everyone's opinion.

And I think the draw to bring this into a bigger conversation that is not gonna be solved, whether this lease is approved or not, is gonna ultimately result in us not doing the thing that is right for the city and not doing the thing that is right for the kids and families that are gonna occupy this building or another building in the future. So I hope that you will all consider that guidance. I will stay through the hearing tonight if there are other questions. And I'd like to turn it over to Owen Stearns for his comments from Excel.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, chairman Espinal and other counselors. I'm grateful to be back here before you all. What we believe is a strong proposal, multiple benefits from multiple parties. As Courtney just outlined, I'm grateful to the city and the council leadership for working with us to strengthen this proposal, including over the last including over the course of several conversations over the past month with many of you.

We've done our best to operate in good faith, and I hope that this new proposal meets your approval. I'm gonna name a tension that Courtney also named that lies at the center of any conversation about charter schools. That tension was created thirty years ago by a state level decision to allow parents to have more choice in where their children go to school, and the associated impact that that decision then has on PPSD. Our conversation tonight is not gonna resolve that tension. But it does do something that's pretty unique, which is provide meaningful wins to the city, to PPSD, and to Excel.

It's hard to come up with arrangements that do that, work for three distinct parties. The deal is not perfect for any one party. If it were, it probably would not work for the other two. But the fact that all three parties are coming to you as a united front saying, yes, this has significant benefits for us and importantly for the children of Providence. Please move this forward.

I think that's important. Last year, when the council voted against this lease, I heard a number of you express disappointment that it felt like we were again pitting charter public school students against district public school students. Why can't we find solutions that serve all students? I believe this proposal does a much better job of doing that. I'm glad that it has superintendent Montanez's support as well.

You'll hear from some, not all, of the over 300 passionate members of the Excel community who are here this evening. Thank you all for coming. And you've collectively received over 200 letters from members of each of your wards expressing their support for this proposal. While we are hopeful for the possibility of helping bring this important building back to life, the most important reason why this approval matters to our community is that 84% of our students live in Providence. They currently are spending nearly an hour a day on a bus to and from our campus in North Providence.

That's over eleven hundred hours per week lost across our 300 students. That missing time translates to less time for enrichment and extracurricular activities, less time just being at home connecting with family. We would love for them to be going to a school much closer to where they actually live. I just wanna underline something Courtney spoke to, which is that Accel has been approved by Ride to operate. The decision around this lease approval will not accelerate or impede our growth.

If not approved, we will secure a lease at a commercial property, which will have the additional impact, as Courtney said, of reducing tax revenue for the city once that building gets reclassified as a school. We estimate that impact is another $200,000 a year of the city's tax rolls. So there's 300,000 a year to maintain the building. There's our minimum of $200,000 a year rent up to a million dollars, and then another $200,000, of the of a new building taking credit off the city's tax rolls. So to vote against this, you're voting against $700,000 a year to the city's coffers.

And from what I hear, that may be needed right now. Let me close with a story that gives me some hope. A week ago, tonight, there was a rather contentious community meeting at S. A. Messer, partially due to my not reading the room correctly and missing the mark in some of my comments.

That's not the part that gives me hope, although I do hope I'm better next time. What gives me hope is what happened after things had calmed down, and Excel and Asa apologies. Excel and Asa Messer teachers and staff started talking with each other. Through those conversations, we started to learn a bit more about the amazing work and results they have achieved, something we were aware of but didn't know enough of, moving from a one star to a three star school in a year, exiting over two dozen students from MLL status, amongst other things. It also reminded, at least our team, that we are all connected here by a common goal, how to provide the highest quality education we can to our students.

Regardless of what happens with this proposal, I hope those conversations can continue. I'd like to ask Stephanie Patton, our Deputy Chief Schools Officer, to briefly speak to an issue that's come up before, how Excel both enrolls and supports students with disabilities and multi multilanguage learners, and then happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

This Steph. This is Kelly.

Good evening.

Good evening. Not great with mics, so hopefully you can hear me. My name is Stephanie Patton. First, I wanna say thank you so much for allowing us here to speak. Appreciate the time.

I'm our deputy chief schools officer, which is a role similar to an assistant superintendent. I supervise our principals and manage our middle school programming and have the opportunity to oversee that. I have worked at Excel for twelve years as both a teacher, a dean of students, a principal, and now as in my current role. And something that's really important to excel and has been, while we're only in Providence year three, we've been in Massachusetts for twenty two years, and that is being a neighborhood school. We have operated for over twenty years as neighborhood schools in Massachusetts and really love serving our families in Rhode Island, and with 84% of our students as Providence residents, would love to be in a building that is in Providence.

As Owen shared, the commute to North Providence is tough. Most of our students take the bus and then therefore have less access to some of the opportunities that they would if we were in the neighborhood. So if you were there and you wanna have some extra tutoring for a half an hour, you can't do that because the bus schedule doesn't allow for that to happen all the time. The other piece I think that is really important to name and to get ahead of a little bit is that we're not here to debate charter public schools versus district public schools, but I do wanna share some pieces I often hear that are just not true about Excel. So I can't speak for all charters, but I can speak for us, and we serve any kid who comes through our doors, whether they are a general education student, a student with disabilities, or a multilingual learner, and that is how we have always operated, both in our history in Massachusetts, as well as our school in North Providence.

Our enrollment is based on a lottery, and our lottery system includes name, address, family information, but does not include academic abilities, whether or not a child has a disability, or their language status. The lottery is run. It is a sort of lottery is run as it is any lottery that is a blind lottery is run, and that is how our students get accepted. We do everything we can on the recruitment end to make sure that our student population mirrors that of the sending districts. And with that, we're not quite there yet in Providence.

This year, so this is data from today that we're able to pull based on our enrollment, we have a ten percent student with disabilities population and twenty four percent of our students are multilingual learners. That is not exactly where PPSD is right now. The district's at about thirty eight percent for MLLs and about fifteen percent for students with disabilities, And we are then on that not where we wanna be. We really do open our doors to all students, and I think some of the debate that charters don't serve kids or won't do these pieces actually is part of what gets in the way. In Massachusetts, it took us a number of years to have our numbers match that of the sending district, and we're really proud that they are very close, if not matching, across demographics.

At our schools there, we have our sub separate classrooms at both our middle schools and our high schools. We have an over age program for adults who are 18 to 22 who still need our school support and services, and we are not required by law or by anyone else to run that program. We choose to do so because it is what is best for our kids and our families. And that is our sort of mentality. It's like we are here to support all learners, and that's what we're gonna continue to do.

And so if you hear information that that is not what charter schools do, that's just not who Excel is. We also know that families have a hard time sending their kids thirty minutes on the bus each way, and being in a neighborhood school means we really will be able to serve the students of Providence and ensure that our populations mirror that of the district. I'll be here tonight to answer any questions you have about our academic programming or anything related to school. And I'd like to introduce our last speaker, Kelly Garcia, who will share a little bit more about herself.

Thank you.

And good evening. Can everyone hear me okay?