In pre-K, a young Claire wowed her mother, DeNeil, by sounding out letters before her first day in kindergarten. DeNeil, like any mother, wanted her daughter to soar. But Claire’s teachers in the Providence Public School District stuck to the curriculum despite DeNeil’s best efforts. Claire struggled to read in her first and second grades.
The pandemic upended everything. DeNeil, then working from home while caring for two young children, watched her daughter’s education veer off course. Hoping for another option, she placed Claire on a charter school waitlist, but no seat ever opened.
Finally, in 2021, Claire was accepted to a school. But that same year, the Rhode Island State Senate passed a charter school moratorium bill, which then needed approval from the state House. Parents ultimately defeated the legislation, but not before DeNeil’s family paid a price. Amid the uncertainty, Claire’s seat was rescinded.
The following year, she joined the Excel Academy charter middle school. Now she’s entering Classical High School, a selective exam-based public school ranked first in Rhode Island and 166th in the United States.
Five years later, Rhode Island’s General Assembly voted for a charter school moratorium again, as Gov. Dan McKee (D-RI) seeks support from labor unions in a treacherous reelection campaign. The bill has reached his desk, and he now has 10 days to follow through on the veto promise he made to families so long ago.
“As the parents of the most vulnerable students evaluate learning opportunities and their options available to their kids,” McKee said during a 2021 press conference, “the General Assembly is considering placing even stricter limits on their choices.”
McKee said that there was “no room for compromise” at the time. Nothing has changed. There shouldn’t be room for compromising student success today, either.
Charter schools operate under a “charter,” or customized academic plan, and are held accountable to rigorous state standards. Rhode Island funds its 24 charter schools through a student-based model, meaning public dollars follow students from their assigned district schools to the charter schools they attend.
That tailored approach has produced impressive results. A study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that Rhode Island charter school students gained the equivalent of 90 additional days of learning in reading and 88 additional days in math in a single school year compared with their peers in traditional public schools. Rhode Island’s district schools, meanwhile, have shown little meaningful improvement on standardized tests for the better part of a decade.
More impressively, Rhode Island boasts the most effective charter sector in the country. Its charter students even eclipse their peers in New York, who command an additional 75 days in reading and 73 days in math. Low-income charter school students in New York City often make national headlines with their stellar performance compared to neighboring schools.
But the proposed three-year moratorium on charter schools would lower the charter cap from 35 to 28. Worse, the legislation would rescind the just-approved De La Comunidad Bilingual School, the state’s first K-12 school serving Black and Hispanic children who are multilingual.
“The precedent it sets is particularly troubling,” says Chiara Deltito-Sharrott, executive director of Rhode Island League of Charter Public Schools, a charter school membership nonprofit organization.
“The general assembly stepped in halfway through the state’s approval process and rescinded an approval midstream,” she continued. “That should concern everyone, regardless of how you feel about charter public schools.” The original bill would have blocked the successful Greene School from expanding its service to middle school children.
Parents’ demand for public charters makes Rhode Island lawmakers’ hostility towards them baffling. While 9,372 children vied for just 3,170 available seats, prospective students could apply to multiple charters. In Providence, students average almost five applications for a chance to receive the city’s premier education. In total, Rhode Islanders submitted an astonishing 30,202 applications for the 2025-26 school year.
Many spend their childhoods trapped on waitlists, like Janie Segui Rodriguez’s daughter, Daisy, who waited years before attending Achievement First in Providence.
Rodriguez wanted to partner with her local school, but her daughter’s teachers often dismissed Rodriguez’s concerns. Daisy underwent a neuropsychological evaluation and received a 504 step plan for accommodations. Still, her school never provided an individualized education plan.
“She didn’t get an IEP until fifth grade when she was at a charter school,” Rodriguez says. “Within three months, she went from not being able to write a proper sentence to writing a perfect essay.”
Rodriguez founded Stop The Wait, a nonprofit organization focused on lowering wait times for charter school enrollment when the state senate proposed the 2021 moratorium. Her personal experience waiting for the charter school miracle galvanized her advocacy. Smith Hill’s legislative timing would have unjustly rescinded seats for which students so eagerly waited.
State legislators argue charter schools siphon tax dollars from their traditional public schools. Supposedly, the State House needs three years to bandage district public schools’ financial bleeding from charter schools’ popularity.
The General Assembly must suffer from severe amnesia. It passed a record-setting $15.2 billion budget Tuesday, cramming $24 million more into K-12 education than McKee’s original request.
The legislature’s concerns ring hollow, especially as Rhode Island public school enrollment has fallen 5% since before the pandemic. Providence Public Schools recently announced plans to eliminate more than 100 staff positions, citing a $16.5 million budget shortfall driven by declining enrollment. The district attributed just $400,000 of that gap to increased charter school tuition, a mere 2.4% of the shortfall.
But Rhode Island legislators do not care.
“We simply cannot afford to run two school systems,” said Rep. Joseph McNamara (D), the chair of the House Committee on Education. Rhode Island’s charter schools, which serve just a tenth of the state’s student body, are hardly a second school system.
But McKee had a better rebuttal back in 2021.
“It’s a public school,” he said in the same press conference. “Those dollars that are leaving the public schools go to another public school.”
“It’s public money and it belongs to the families and it belongs to the kids,” he continued.
He’s right. To reiterate more plainly, the number of students in charter schools frankly does not matter if parents demand more.
DeNeil is distraught with the General Assembly’s decision to halt charter schools. “My daughter just barely got through the door,” says DeNeil. “It just feels wrong that our legislators are shutting it now.”
She’s not the only one. According to a Pete Brodnitz poll commissioned by Deltito-Sharrott’s charter group, 58% of parents oppose the moratorium.
THE HIDDEN DRIVER BEHIND SCHOOL CHOICE: ADVANCED LEARNERS ARE VOTING WITH THEIR FEET
Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz has called the charter school movement “the civil rights issue of our time.” McKee has already shown he understands the stakes. His decision on the charter school ban will now offer a clear test of his character.
Will the governor cave to union pressure, or will he keep his promise to Rhode Island voters?
All names of minors have been changed to protect their privacy.