The citizens of East Providence, the Riverside section in particular, declare it completely unacceptable that every student in Riverside be jam-packed into one elementary school...Waddington.

We have had enough of the systematic elimination of our neighborhood schools and will not stand for the closure of yet another school in Riverside.  The East Providence School Committee has already decimated our children's ability to walk or bike to their neighborhood school. This is not what we want for our children and we want you to find another way to accommodate your new Pre-K Program.

The closing of Oldham School is going to cause extreme overcrowding at Waddington.

It is discriminatory to the special needs population as the move leaves out integration opportunities of Riverside resident special needs students to interact with their neighboring typical peers.

It is also unacceptable to max out the school's population to the point that any new family moving into the Riverside section of East Providence will be forced to put their child on a bus to another part of the city when their next door neighbor may very well be attending Waddington.

This consolidation is going to exacerbate an already volatile logistics problem of student drop-off and pick-up, compromise student safety and cause gridlock on the neighborhood streets around the school every day.

This plan is ill thought out and should not be implemented in any way, shape or form.

Let us be crystal clear - the residents of East Providence signing this petition are not anti-Pre-K. Quite the opposite, we value our children's education and agree with the need for more of it. We do, however, demand this plan be revoked and a better solution to Pre-K space be explored.

We believe this plan will cause immediate and irreparable harm to over 600 students in Riverside. It will negatively impact their education by overcrowding the school. Every facet of their day will be impacted from lunches to bathroom breaks and nurses visits. This not an acceptable way to create more space for Pre-K students no matter how much of it the State Grant is funding.

We demand you pick an alternate location for the City's Pre-K Program and abandon the consolidation of the only two elementary schools in Riverside.