Rhode Island Report

More than 200 years ago, Jamestown, R.I., had the largest percentage of enslaved people in the state. What happened to the Black community there? A local historian has been working to bring that history to light. That’s just one segment in the most recent episode of the “Our Town” series on Rhode Island PBS. RI PBS Arts and Culture Producer Ross Lippman joins our host, Ed Fitzpatrick, to talk more about the series.

Winter is here, thousands of Rhode Islanders are experiencing homelessness, and there are not enough shelter beds. The state’s largest provider of housing for homeless individuals thinks building apartments, not just opening more shelters, is the answer. The Globe’s Steph Machado sat down with Michelle Wilcox, the president and CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island, to hear about the plans.

This week, families can start applying for spots in Rhode Island’s charter schools for next school year. The demand is high – far exceeding the number of available seats – as families seek alternatives to traditional public schools. And yet, some advocates say Rhode Island should limit the expansion of charter schools. Chiara Deltito-Sharrott from the Rhode Island League of Charter Schools joins Steph Machado to talk more about the future of these schools.

Ed Fitzpatrick sits down with the Globe’s Steph Machado and Jim Hummel, the host of “A Lively Experiment” on Rhode Island PBS, to debrief the election results.

Last week, the Rhode Island chapter of the American Federation of Teachers elected Maribeth Calabro as their new president. She now heads the largest teachers union in the state. It represents 12,000 members in districts such as Providence, Cranston, Warwick and Pawtucket. Steph Machado spoke with Calabro for an episode for Rhode Island PBS Weekly.

With the election less than a week away, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and deepfakes are raging online. University of Rhode Island Professor Sara Sweetman is working to help young people sort fact from fiction. She finds they are often better at reading and interpreting visual data than the generations who came before them. There’s a lot that we can learn from them, Sweetman says. She joins host Ed Fitzpatrick to talk more about bringing media literacy to Rhode Island’s students.

Aquaculture. Pipe fitting. Firefighting. These are just a few of the careers high school students can learn in hands-on courses across the state. Our very own Steph Machado’s most recent story in collaboration with “Rhode Island PBS Weekly” is about the growth of career and technical education programs - or CTE - which have more than doubled since 2017. She joins Ed to dig into how this approach is changing the landscape for Rhode Island’s students.

Who should have access to the shore in Rhode Island? It’s an escalating fight between property owners, towns, and the public, more than a year after the passage of the state’s landmark shore access law. Isabella Jibilian, a producer at Rhode Island PBS Weekly, and Alex Nunes, the South County bureau chief at The Public’s Radio, recently collaborated on two episodes about this topic.

Rhode Islanders headed to the polls yesterday to vote in local primaries, and the night belonged to incumbents. Ed breaks down the results with Globe RI’s own Steph Machado and Jim Hummel, host of A Lively Experiment on Rhode Island PBS.

What happens when a patient sues their doctor for a medical error? A new documentary film, “A World of Hurt: How Medical Malpractice Fails Everyone,” tells the story of patients and doctors who’ve gone through this process. The documentary was directed by Brown University medical students Alex Homer and Viknesh Kasthuri. We talk to the producer, Dr. Mark Brady, and Dr. Gita Pensa, one of the featured experts.