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Warwick will spend about $19,000 per student in the 2018-19 school year. We are told repeatedly that this is an "investment". 12.79% of Pilgrim students are proficient in Math, and 33% are proficient in Reading according to the most recent data from RIDE.

In contrast, over 70% of East Greenwich High School students are proficient in both Math and Reading. The Town of East Greenwich will spend about $15,100 per student, or 20% less than Warwick.

I can hear it now... "But EG is a wealthy community..." Fine. So let's consider our neighbors to the west. West Warwick will spend $15,300 per student next year, in a community that has a poverty rate considerably higher than both Pilgrim and Tollgate. Yet, 32.7% of WW students are proficient in Math, and 40% are proficient in Reading, levels that are significantly higher than both Pilgrim and Tollgate. Bottom line: Warwick continues to spend more, in many cases much more, than neighboring communities in exchange for vastly inferior measurable outcomes.

So as we ponder the idiocy of whether the city's schools need a pr firm, some navel-gazing members of the school committee may wish to question the relative "return" on "investment" on behalf of taxpayers, as well as the economic implications of an unprepared workforce in the near future. The anticipated silence from the SC would have me continuing to short WPS Inc.