Providence speech-language pathologists say staffing pressures are putting students’ access to mandated services at risk. One therapist with two decades on the job says she is responsible for 78 students, 18 above her contract-negotiated cap. She and other district therapists told the Providence School Board that the city needs to move faster to fill vacant positions and rethink how the work is staffed.
Therapists Describe a Shortage a Decade in the Making
The district’s staffing picture, as reported by the Brown Daily Herald, includes a long decline in the number of therapists. Meredith Alger, who has worked as a speech and language pathologist in Providence Public Schools for 20 years, said her caseload is 18 students above her contract-negotiated cap. She described the shortage as significant and said the workforce has fallen from 38 therapists when she started to 25 currently. Alger also said the district met with her and other speech-language pathologists in July to discuss solutions, but rejected all the actions they requested.
The caseload strain is not new to Providence. A 2019 Johns Hopkins University review that helped prompt Rhode Island's state takeover of Providence schools found speech therapists were already managing caseloads of up to 70 students before the state even intervened, according to the 74 Million. That review also cited crumbling facilities and demoralized staff across the district.
What Therapists Told the School Board
At the Sept. 23 school board meeting, Lauri Chung, who has worked as a speech-language pathologist in Providence for 20 years, testified that students' rights to speech and language services are at risk and that the district faces a significant shortage of therapists. Jessica Pollard, who has worked in the district for seven years, told the board she must serve all 85 children assigned to her building and currently carries a caseload of 55 middle-school-aged adolescents. Pollard said groups larger than four or five students become difficult to manage because students have different goals, and that some students need therapy groups of only two or three to be effective.
Pollard also said the materials available for testing are limited and that she receives none, so she makes or buys her own. She framed her advocacy in ethical terms, saying the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's code of ethics calls on speech pathologists to advocate for vulnerable students, and that speaking to the school board is part of that obligation.
District Points to Recruitment Push as Vacancies Persist
PPSD spokesperson Alex Torres-Perez said the district currently has 16 speech-language pathologist vacancies and is implementing targeted ongoing recruitment to expand its pool of candidates, accelerate placement and strengthen long-term pipelines. Torres-Perez said the district is exploring partnerships with college and university preparation programs to support future recruitment, with priorities including targeted sourcing, prioritizing qualified candidates for school-level review, recruitment events and university-program relationships. The district said it will monitor candidate pipeline growth and hiring outcomes to assess its progress filling the 16 open positions.
One stopgap has been out-of-state virtual speech pathologists, which Torres-Perez cited as one response to the shortage. But Judith Dixon, who has worked as a speech-language pathologist in Providence for nine years, testified that virtual services are not interchangeable with an in-person therapist, particularly for the youngest students. The reliance on remote and contracted providers also comes with a cost: Providence budgeted $803,900 in fiscal year 2025 for third-party contracted diagnosticians, speech therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists, an increase of $405,000 since 2020 tied to workforce shortages, according to The Providence Eye.
No State Cap Leaves Caseloads to the Bargaining Table
Rhode Island sets no statutory minimum or maximum caseload for speech-language pathologists, unlike New York, which caps caseloads at 65 students, or South Carolina, which caps them at 60, per the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The Providence Teachers Union, which represents almost 2,000 teachers, has a new president tied to a summer shift in advocacy around speech-language positions. Union president Lindsay Paiva said the speech pathologists' concerns reflect broader patterns among special-education and hard-to-fill positions, and that staff shortages and vacancies are linked to working conditions, with the district sharing responsibility for addressing them.
Nationally, the association's 2024 survey found the actual median caseload for school-based speech pathologists reached 50 students. New England pathologists averaged 40 students that same year, the association reported, underscoring how far outlier caseloads like Alger's 78 students or Pollard's 85-child building assignment sit above both local and regional benchmarks.
What Past Reviews and Caseload Benchmarks Show
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s 2022 Schools Survey, full-time, school-based SLPs had a median caseload of 48, with regional medians ranging from 36 to 55. The association cautions that a workable maximum varies by setting and by students’ needs, so caseload counts alone do not establish whether mandated services were missed.
Pay, Materials and Proposed Fixes
Speech pathologists are asking for overage pay when assigned more than 60 cases, reinstatement of paid professional development, and more aggressive recruitment strategies to urgently fill vacancies. That professional development request lines up with a 2024 national survey showing 47.1% of school-based speech pathologists paid for their own training out of pocket, while only 19.9% received employer funding, according to The ASHA Leader.
Therapists also suggested graduate-degree tuition incentives tied to a commitment to work a set number of years, along with a $5,500 bonus for nationally certified pathologists, mirroring the bonus Providence already pays teachers who earn national board certification. They additionally advocated for therapy and evaluation materials suited to actual caseload needs, rather than the limited or nonexistent supplies some therapists described.
Legal Stakes and Regional Pressures
Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, districts that fail to deliver mandated speech therapy minutes because of staffing shortages face legal liability and can be ordered to provide compensatory education or reimburse families for outside therapy, according to guidance from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
The pressure in Providence comes as the district works to address staffing shortages.
