Providence Student Union: A Decade of Student-Led Advocacy for Educational Justice

The Providence Student Union (PSU) has been a significant force for change in Providence, Rhode Island, advocating for student rights and improved educational opportunities. Formed in early 2010, PSU has evolved into a powerful voice for students, addressing systemic issues and pushing for reforms within the city's public schools. This article explores the history, mission, key campaigns, and impact of the Providence Student Union.

Origins and Mission

Providence Student Union formed in early 2010, when students from Hope High School joined together to defend their school’s popular block schedule. These young leaders formed PSU’s first chapter-Hope United-and embarked on a series of campaigns to improve their school. Soon afterward, the group began organizing chapters in additional high schools across Providence, all working together to advance student rights and win an education system that treats students with dignity and respect.

PSU envisions a true “union for students” that increases young people’s collective power and ensures our frustrations, demands, and dreams are heard. At PSU, young people grow as leaders, organizers, and advocates for justice in all forms, today and throughout their lives.

The Driving Forces Behind PSU

Providence students are fed up with schools that don’t work for them:

Students face racist and arbitrary discipline practices, including police violence in and out of school.
Students have no structural role in designing their own education.
Rhode Island has decided again and again that students have no guaranteed “right to education.”
Students’ buildings are in disrepair, with no satisfying food and clean water available.

Early Campaigns and Growth

PSU’s very first campaign at Hope High School aimed to keep a 90 minute block schedule, which allows for more electives and teacher planning time. PSU has also been involved in numerous smaller, school-based campaigns. Though these have been more targeted, they reflect the values and goals at the root of PSU's work.

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The organization's initial efforts focused on local school issues. However, it quickly expanded its scope to address broader systemic problems within the Providence public school system. This growth was facilitated by the involvement of politically minded undergraduates from Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service, Aaron Regunberg and Zack Mezera, who helped launch the fledgling group.

Over the next nine years, the organization has seen steady growth. Though participation varies from year to year - one hurdle is the fact that the most committed members take turns as union delegates and then leave for college - there are now PSU chapters in six Providence high schools.

Key Campaigns and Initiatives

PSU runs youth-led campaigns to advance educational justice and improve students’ well-being. Our major long-term campaigns include Counselors Not Cops, Student Bill of Rights (SBOR), and civic education. Due to member concerns after recent developments in Providence, we are supporting the Save RIPTA campaign and the Save 360 campaign last school year. The Save RIPTA campaign is focused on addressing the budget shortfall for our state’s public transportation system that Providence students rely on. The long-term goal is to expand access to high-quality public transit. The Save 360 campaign is a student-led response to PPSD’s plans to close the tight-knit 360 High School and displace their teachers.

Walk in Our Shoes

In a campaign that dwarfed the hubbub over Hope High’s class schedule, union members challenged local politicians to complete a three-mile walk to the city’s Classical High School in the February cold. The demonstration was a protest against a city policy that provided free bus passes only to students whose commute to school was greater than three miles. The effort, waged cannily during the 2014 Democratic primary season, drew the participation of myriad public officials, including candidates for both mayor and governor.

Fix Our Schools

A young student wears a yellow construction cap holding a sign which reads, “Forget thinking caps! Crumbling buildings, deteriorating infrastructure, and unsafe health conditions have been a fact of life in Providence high schools for too long, adversely affecting students' health and education. In 2015, PSU launched a campaign to Fix Our Schools: calling for an end to the moratorium on school construction in RI, and for greater investment in school repairs.

Ethnic Studies for Providence

Over 90% of Providence students are youth of color, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the Providence Public Schools curriculum. Without culuturally relevant coursework, students struggle to see themselves in the material and as important voices in our world. So, in 2016, inspired by similar fights in California, Arizona, and Texas, Providence students decided it was time to fight for Ethnic Studies in their schools.

StrategyStudents worked with the school department to create a curriculum that was reflective of the community. Through a series of student-facilitated meetings with different constituent groups, PSU addressed the lack of representation and covert racism in our school's history curriculum. Together, students, community members, teachers and school department officials continue to work collaboratively to bring about a new vision for education in Providence. Through pushing this conversation forward PSU hopes to bring the community into the classroom, and to give every student the visibility they deserve.

Actions so farPSU members kicked off 2016 with the first big action around this campaign. On January 20th, over 75 students and other supporters students rallied outside the Providence School Department around the slogan #OurHistoryMatters. Students made their desires of creating a curriculum relevant and compelling to non-white populations known. They urged district administrators to create a full-credit course where students could analyze history from multiple angles and learn about their histories. A petition aimed at the Providence School Board, titled "Ethnic Studies for Providence NOW!" gathered over 750 signatures.

Over the course of the next six months, PSU members and district representatives collaborated in committees to develop a proposal for a full-year, credit bearing ethnic studies course open to all Providence high school students. Committee members designed four units, covering Un-learning Your History, Communities Histories, Oppression & Power and Community Organizing/Social Justice.

PSU's advocacy and partnership with the Providence Public School Department led to the piloting of Ethnic Studies in 5 high schools during the 2016-2017 school year. The courses focused on engaging students in personally relevant discussions, activities, and hands-on projects. In the Fall of 2016, students formed the Ethnic Studies Task Force. Consisting of 8 students, the Task Force began regular bi-monthly meetings with teachers to inform their teaching process and review the curriculum. These student leaders, along with community members, continue to work on Ethnic Studies courses today.

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Student Bill of Rights

Each of our past campaigns relates in some way to the biggest campaign we've undertaken yet: the Student Bill of Rights (SBOR), an all-encompassing document that unites a range of student demands for a safe, healthy, and engaging education.

For years, Providence Student Union has fought for a better education system. The Student Bill of Rights is a list of our demands that make clear the education Providence students envision and deserve.

The Providence Student Union’s Student Bill Of Rights aims to secure for students a safe, healthy, and engaging school environment. Student leaders began researching this campaign in early 2016, and formally launched the campaign in March 2017.

The Student Bill of Rights includes:

Students have the right to freedom of expression.
Students have the right to wear clothing that is comfortable for them without being discriminated against on the basis of sex or gender.
Students have the right to express their cultural identities and not be discriminated against based on their hair texture, hair style, and/or hair garments, if that style, texture, or garment is commonly associated with a particular race or national origin.
Schools must not rely on one teaching style. Since people learn in different ways, students have the right to pedagogically diverse classrooms.
Students should not be forced to take virtual or online courses to complete credit requirements.
Students have the right to guaranteed access to aid when their health or security of person is threatened or damaged in any way.
Students have the right to freedom from harassment, hazing, or any other form of illegal discrimination or coercion.
Students have the right to a minimum of one (1) well-kept and operational gender-inclusive bathroom and changing room in their school not including the nurse’s office.
Students can not be forced to work in groups with other students if they are not comfortable.
Students have the right to utilize technology such as phones, laptops, computers, tablets, etc.
Students have the right to form and participate in extracurricular groups, clubs, and teams.
Students have the right to access the restroom as they have the need and utilize other break times built into their schedule.
The right to due process in disciplinary proceedings is applicable in all instances where the behavior of the student is being evaluated for possible suspension or expulsion.
Students have the right to an informal hearing involving a combination of appropriate groups including the student, parent/guardian(s), teacher(s), building administrators and a jury of at least 3 of the students peers (if the student deems appropriate). During the hearing, the student and parent/guardian hear the charges, evidence and consequences.
Students and families have the right to translation and interpreter services upon request.
Students and families have the right to an education regardless of migration status. This also includes ensuring all staff understand immigrant students' rights.

Counselors Not Cops

Counselors Not Cops (CNC) is the demand to remove all School Resource Officers (SROs) from Providence schools, and instead, hire health and safety staff focused on alternative measures for conflict resolution.

Jayson Rodriguez, a junior at Providence’s the Met High School and the PSU leadership team director, has been working on a campaign with PSU, ARISE and PrYSM to replace police officers in the city’s schools with counselors. Ninety-one percent of students in the Providence public schools are students of color, and “communities of color, specifically Black and Brown communities, are targeted by police, and especially by police violence,” Jayson told Teen Vogue. The Counselors Not Cops campaign demands that school resource officers are removed, and the funding goes toward hiring people such as counselors and social workers in their place.

Well-Being Aid

Through the Well-Being Aid (WBA) program, PSU provides mutual aid support for Providence high school students experiencing financial challenges and prevents potentially avoidable crises from spiraling out of control. Our youth-led WBA task force manages the application process for the WBA fund and coordinates other mutual aid projects, including an annual back-to-school supply drive.

Advocacy and Impact

PSU members worked furiously against the requirement that students pass a standardized test in order to graduate from high school, coaxing dozens of city and state officials to take the test themselves and parading through the streets dressed as zombies to protest the grim reality of life without a diploma.

PSU students are leveraging this power to remove barriers to student learning.

The PSU has been working for a decade to change the systems that they believe produced the problems raised by the report. The student union has successfully organized campaigns to expand the free bus pass program for students, design and pilot ethnic studies courses in schools, and convince the state to allocate funding for repairs to school buildings, among other measures.

Collaborative Efforts

The PSU is one of a number of student-led organizations in the city working to implement reforms under the framework of educational justice. Other groups, including the Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM) and the Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE) are working with the PSU on reforms to increase student safety and opportunity. This work of planning rallies and walkouts, giving speeches, and writing letters has turned a generation of Providence students into savvy and powerful political organizers.

Challenges and Criticisms

In the debate over replacing student resource officers with school counselors, some Providence teachers believe that ceding to the students’ demands could make schools less safe.

In an interview, Providence Teachers Union President Maribeth Calabro voiced admiration for the PSU’s past campaigns, praising particularly their mobilization around the issue of bus passes.

“‘Counselors Not Cops’ is not necessarily something that I don’t support,” she said. “It’s something we have a disagreement on, because I don’t see it as fundamentally one thing or the other. I think it can be both, and I don’t know that PSU feels that way.

The Future of PSU

The work of advocacy is unlikely to get any easier, whatever notoriety PSU has earned for the moment.

Closer to home, PSU’s voice will hardly be the loudest in the room as Providence approaches a state takeover. Commissioner Infante-Green has announced that she will consider breaking the district’s contract with teachers, which includes stringent due process and seniority protections that have been blamed for the ongoing presence of underperforming teachers. Some observers have wondered whether the two unions could be on a collision course.

Still, the Globe’s McGowan said that the state of flux around Providence schools presents an opportunity for the PSU to advance its goals in one form or another.

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