In late March, eighth graders across the Providence Public School District found out where they would be spending their next four years in high school.
To be placed into public high schools in Providence, eighth graders complete a general school choice form in early January, where they rank their top four preferences for high school. From there, students are placed into their top choice school unless there is more demand for a school than there are seats available.
A lottery is then conducted to determine student placement, with preference given to students who live in the neighborhood and those with siblings enrolled.
“We want to make sure that families have the choice to pick what’s best for their kids,” PPSD spokesperson Alex Torres-Perez said in an interview with The Herald. “Each of our schools are kind of unique, and they have their own separate culture.”
“Families have the power to choose where they want their kids to go, where they think their kids are going to succeed,” Torres-Perez added.
All PPSD schools, with the exception of Providence Career and Technical Academy and Classical High School, use the lottery system, according to Torres-Perez.
PCTA offers career and technical education programs, for which students must complete a separate application. To get into Classical, students need to take an admissions test, which is considered alongside other application materials.
Classical accepted 300 of 841 tested applicants for the 2025-26 school year, according to Torres-Perez. Decisions for Classical were released from Feb. 3 to Feb. 7.
Many students find the lottery system to be “really effective,” said Classical junior Alisson Aviles. But Aviles believes that at some competitive middle schools or elementary schools, the system can cause stress among some students.
According to Aviles, many of her friends were able to get into the school that they wanted to. “I think it’s a good process because you can pick where you want to go,” she said, adding she had not heard of students getting their last choice school.
“(PPSD) has made meaningful progress to accommodate preferences in 2025 with 95% of students receiving either their first or second choice and more students receiving their top choice than in 2024,” Torres-Perez wrote in an email to The Herald.
She attributed this progress to improvements in the accuracy of their “enrollment projections,” which has helped the district better “align school capacities with students’ school choices.” Changes in waitlist management have also allowed the district to ensure “students were being moved off the list into their first or second choice schools.”
In 2025, 77% of eighth graders were placed in their first choice high school, an increase from 65% in 2024. In 2025, around 97% of students received at least one of their school choices.
Nate Barkow is a senior staff writer for the Youth and Education beat and a co-chief of The Herald's social media team. He is from New York City and plans on concentrating in International and Public Affairs and Education Studies. In his free time, he loves trying new restaurants and watching Survivor.
