If Gilbert Stuart saw the dilapidated state of the Providence school that bears his name, he’d paint himself out of the picture.
The famed Rhode Island painter, best known for preparing portraits of the first six presidents of the United States, is more than deserving to have a school named after him. But his namesake middle school in Providence fell into disrepair years ago, and was shuttered entirely in 2023.
The plan is to build a brand new pre-K-8 school in its place, a state-of-the-art facility that children in Providence can be proud of, and where they might actually want to attend as opposed to the crumbling building that had a 43.8 percent chronic absenteeism rate among the students the year it closed.
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But the bricks-before-kids movement remains alive and well in Rhode Island’s capital city, and adults are once again only thinking about their fetish with asbestos, apparently.
In an op-ed published by The Providence Journal last month, a group of neighborhood activists and preservationists had the audacity to refer to the 500,000-square-foot 95-year-old facility as a “beautiful and culturally important building.”
“As usual, we are told that the building is a useless relic,” the authors wrote. “This reasoning has not fooled community members who remember a recent past when the school looked marvelous and parents felt proud to send their children in through its majestic columns.”
Majestic columns.
More like a monument to peeling paint and broken promises.
The demolition of Gilbert Stuart and construction of a new building is projected to cost $63 million, but the advocates are crying foul because they say it would cost $12 million less to rehabilitate the existing building.
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But city, state, and district leaders worked with a design team to determine that a rehab wasn’t feasible, especially when considering the goal of building a dual language school for elementary and middle school students.
But forget the studies. Just say it aloud. Why is it “good enough” to subject Black and brown children from poor families to school rehabilitation when children from more affluent communities across the state are getting to attend new schools?
Thankfully, the complaints are largely falling on deaf ears.
The Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission isn’t getting in the way, and the attorney general’s office all but laughed at a last-ditch effort asking them to intervene. Providence City Councilman Juan Pichardo tried to author a resolution blocking demolition, but it was tabled when he realized city leaders mean business on this issue.
That’s the sad thing about this whole affair.
The Providence School Department is undoubtedly a national case study in dysfunction, and the 2019 state takeover of the district has done very little to improve the lives of students and teachers.
Except for one area: School construction.
Mayor Brett Smiley, the Providence School Department, and the Rhode Island Department of Education have embarked on an effort to spend billions of dollars building new schools and rehabbing old ones in the coming years, and everyone agrees that children in the Elmwood and West End neighborhoods of Providence deserve to attend a beautiful new school.
The school that would be built on the current Gilbert Stuart site is tentatively scheduled to open in September 2027, and by 2030, there will be enough seats for every student in Providence to attend a new or like-new school by 2030, according to one presentation made by district leaders in June.
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That’s legitimate progress.
But here’s why the opposition, however fringe, to the Gilbert Stuart demolition matters: It’s damn hard to work to improve student outcomes for children in Providence, as the most recent depressing round of RICAS scores shows.
If city and state leaders are going to be met with tone-deaf opposition over schools held together by nostalgia and duct tape, then the important work that actually needs to happen in classrooms is never going to have a chance.
If we can’t even agree to tear down a building that failed generations of kids, then it’s no wonder we keep failing them.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.