East Providence School Enrollment is dropping. 

• Dropping enrollment means less funding from the state. 

• It means larger class sizes as the district needs to make decisions to close classrooms, combine classes and lay off teachers becasue they cannot afford to keep two classes for 26 students in a grade. 

  • • Silver Spring Elementary and Whiteknact both lost over 11% of their student population in the last two years. 

    • They both now have multiple grades with 1 classroom and over 25 students in the class. 

EPSD needs to rebalance the schools.  The City of East Providence needs to work to attract more families with school-aged children to be able to continue to maintain the schools we have. 

Families are not opting out of Public Schools, they are not moving here to begin with. 

The population of people under 18 in East Providence shrank from 2010-2020 at more than double the loss rate of the state. The whole Northeast is losing population. That loss is happening faster in EP than RI as a whole.