For those who spend any amount of time in online social media circles discussing East Providence, an introduction to Chrissy Rossi likely isn’t necessary.

Rossi, an East Providence resident of over 50 years and a longtime homeowner in Riverside, has made a reputation for herself as someone more than willing to speak her mind (for better or worse; in-person or via keyboard) on a variety of issues surrounding the city and its school district.

She is also no stranger to politics. Rossi has run for school committee multiple times (winning in 2010, and running unsuccessfully in 2016, 2020, and 2024). She ran for mayor in 2018, and ran for the city council (which she won in 2012 for one term before losing in 2014). Now, she’s making another run for school committee in Riverside’s Ward 4.

You might also have heard of Rossi due to the recent objection she filed over nomination papers regarding her former opponent — current Ward 4 school committee incumbent, Jessica Beauchaine — which although did not end in Rossi’s favor with the board of canvassers, ultimately resulted in Beauchaine dropping out of the race altogether. Now, she faces only one opponent in Anthony Pedulla for the seat.

In a recent interview, Rossi opened up about her personal history and why she is seeking a seat at the table on the committee.

Rossi talked about how she grew up in Kent Heights as a “ward of the state”, with her grandparents and aunt and uncle taking the place of her birth parents, who weren’t in the picture.

“It was like a family project taking care of me and my two sisters. Obviously, I had issues,” she said. “But back then they did not send you to some place to sort out your feelings. So I became that angry child. As I eventually grew up, I am now much better at managing my feelings.”

Rossi said she was admitted into the gifted program in elementary school, which ran until 6th grade when she went to junior high, where she said she “found all sorts of bad kids and hung out with them.” This ultimately led to a major turning point in her life.

“I would have graduated in 1986, but I was a statistic,” she said. “I was pregnant at 16. I got married, and then I went back and got my GED and did some college courses. I took classes, trade school, stuff like that. I got a certificate for hairdressing. I had been waitressing, working two or three jobs all the time as a single mom. It was kind of rough.”

Rossi said that the experience taught her about how important it was for kids to have a stable environment in school, and opportunities to continue to excel.

“That’s what made me who I am today. Because I saw what could happen when you take a kid who has super potential — and I'm not trying to, you know, pat myself on the back. I had other kids in the class. It wasn't just me,” she said. “But when you take a kid like that and you give them opportunities and then you pull the rug out from under them with no more opportunities. They go sideways.”

Rossi said that most of the issues driving her to want to be on the school committee comes down to policies.
“We have bad policies,” she said, bringing up the district’s no-tolerance bullying policy as her primary example.

Rossi said that East Providence’s zero-tolerance policy on bullying prevents kids from defending themselves, which creates a situation where kids become “forever victims”, and bullies don’t face adequate consequences for their actions.

“This is what we taught them in school. Somebody's going to bully you and you're going to get in trouble if you stick up for yourself. And that's wrong. It's so wrong. And that's going to change,” she said. “So, if you're getting bullied and you've gone through all the possible things trying to get it stopped and you decide, ‘You know what? I've had enough. Before I kill myself, I'm going to slap this kid around.’ So be it. That's how it always used to get handled in the school yard. The bully comes at you, you fight back. There's no more bullying.”

Rossi turned to special education in the district, saying the staffing levels were inadequate to give kids on IEPs the assistance and attention they need.

“What happens is they just keep slipping further and further behind. Some of them are nonverbal. How do you tell your parents what's going on or what you're not getting? What do they know about an IEP?” she said. “And the school department just skates on it because we don't have enough people. There's not enough support in the classroom, because there's never any money. But it's not supposed to be about money. RIDE says you have to give everybody everything that's in their IEP. But we don’t.”

Part of the reason for that, Rossi believes, is that the district has been inefficient with spending. She claims that multiple aspects of the new high school construction went awry, including the new track, because site work was done improperly and had to be re-done at the district’s expense. She said that the district has made it impossible to adequately parse through the budget because of how they group cost codes for spending items, and that she has been denied in her requests to get more specific budget information.

“There are savings all over the place. I just can't tell you where they are because they hand us a three-page Excel spreadsheet. That's our budget,” she said. “Everything is cost coded per the cost codes that happen at RIDE. So, they take all of these cost codes and jam them all together to create one line item. It’s an aggregate number. It’s disgraceful what these people pass off as a budget. You cannot analyze it and you cannot get a superintendent or someone from administration to give you a backup…This is why I need to be there. Because then they have to give me the information I ask for.”

Asked if Rossi was more driven more by a desire to tear down the current administration in charge than represent the interests of the school district, Rossi said that she had “no axe to grind”, and was driven by a desire to help teachers, teacher aides, and the children of the district.

“I have no axe to grind. I just want them to have more, and we can't unless we use our resources better,” she said. I'm just moving forward. I want these kids to get the help and the resources they need. That's all I care about. Stop wasting money, let's put it back into the kids instead of doing things three four times to repair a problem.”