PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Rhode Island’s education commissioner says Providence students will likely have to move to other buildings while their schools are fixed.
The Boston Globe reports that Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green says she’s looking at the former St. Joseph’s Hospital in South Providence as potential “swing space.”
The state gave Infante-Green the authority to turn around the district after a scathing independent report this summer laid out issues of rampant bullying and fighting among students, deteriorating facilities and a tangled bureaucracy.
Infante-Green says she’s in the early stages of discussing an arrangement with the building’s owner, former Mayor Joseph Paolino.
Paolino plans to meet with her, but says other organizations and developers are interested.
Paolino wanted to build a social service center and housing for homeless people, but neighborhood activists opposed the project.
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