Providence Teachers Union Pickets Over Freezing Classroom Conditions
On an unseasonably warm Wednesday in November, members of the Providence Teachers Union (PTU) gathered outside the Providence Public School District (PPSD) offices on Westminster Street. The informational picket, characterized by a sense of urgency regarding infrastructure safety, follows a series of reports from educators and students describing classrooms where temperatures have dipped as low as 53 degrees. The action highlights a deepening divide between the district’s “newer and fewer” facility policy and the daily reality for students and teachers currently occupying aging buildings.
“The irony doesn’t escape me,” PTU President Lindsay Paiva said during the picket. “It’s 75 degrees. But we’re not just here about the schools’ heating conditions. We’re here to talk about how money has been mismanaged and moved in ways that don’t support safe schools for students and teachers.”
The Infrastructure Crisis at Hope and Nathaniel Greene
The heating failures are not isolated incidents. According to the PTU, 13 schools reported heating issues last week, with many buildings struggling to maintain basic habitability. At Hope High School, the situation has become a seasonal expectation. Caleigh Rockwal, a social science teacher and the union’s secretary, described a recurring routine of keeping gloves and a jacket in her classroom to prepare for the district’s delayed activation of heat. She also noted that a broken window in her room—unfixed for three years—precludes any hope of insulation, forcing her to occasionally run air conditioning in the dead of winter when the system finally kicks in and overheats the space.
The district’s attempt to mitigate these cold-weather failures has, at times, exacerbated the problem. PPSD provided space heaters to select classrooms, but the aging electrical systems in schools like Nathaniel Greene Middle School were not equipped to handle the load. Jessica Pollard, a teacher at the school, recounted how the heaters frequently tripped fuses and overloaded outlets, forcing teachers to choose between powering essential technology and keeping a room warm. “We can’t power our computers. We can’t power our printers and run a heater at the same time,” Pollard explained.
Student Health and Academic Disruption
The impact of these conditions extends beyond physical discomfort, directly affecting attendance and academic performance. Elijah Guzman, a student at Hope High School, described a classroom environment where students are frequently absent due to illness brought on by the cold. “I’ve seen my friends drained of color, just pale, and their teeth chattering; they can barely focus,” Guzman said. He added that the inconsistent temperatures—swinging from freezing to sweltering—make it nearly impossible for students to maintain focus during critical assessments, including the SAT.
The lack of oversight is a point of contention for parents as well. Gabe Long, a parent at Asa Messer Elementary School, shared his experience struggling to get simple maintenance requests addressed by the district and its facilities partner, ABM Industries. He pointed to a lack of exterior lighting around the school as a safety hazard that went unaddressed despite his repeated attempts to provide low-cost, effective solutions. For Long, the issue is one of prioritization: “We have money for i-Ready. We have money for transition officers. We have money for everything that Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green can point to on a PowerPoint… And we don’t have money for the very basics that our students need to learn.”
Demands for Accountability and Representation
The PTU is calling for more than just emergency repairs. Their demands include the public release of maintenance plans for all current buildings, clear policies for handling unsafe classroom temperatures, and the disclosure of service contracts for the district’s boilers.
As the union prepares for its broader contract campaign, the picket serves as a warning that the status quo of “newer and fewer”—which prioritizes future construction over the maintenance of existing learning environments—is failing to meet the immediate needs of Providence students.
“A school in Barrington or East Greenwich would never have to deal with this,” Pollard said. “To me, it’s a civil rights issue. These families, who are poor, do not get the same attention, and their children do not get the same treatment.”
