The history of West Warwick schools including biographies of educators and distinguished alumni, photographs, reminiscences, and other items. Please feel free to contact us with any items, comments, or other feedback to help us build this site into a truly interactive one. Please email Jim Monti.

When the town of West Warwick was created from the Pawtuxet Valley portion of Warwick in 1913 it included most of the population and thriving textile industries such as Fruit of the Loom and Crompton Velvet and Corduroy Companies. The diverse ethnic groups of the area included many recent immigrants from countries like Italy, Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden , and French Canada clustered together in villages built around the textile mills. Places such as Arctic Hill, Riverpoint, Natick , and Phenix bustled with activity and the sounds of many different languages. These villages had been growing since the late 18th Century along side the old rural Yankee community. Once West Warwick had been split from Warwick to gain more control over its affairs it inherited the part of the Warwick School System included in its area.

Let’s look back at West Warwick Public School in 1913. Under Superintendent John F. Deering, whose offices were in the Town Hall, 4,900 students (4/5ths of Warwick ’s school population) went to school in eight buildings throughout the town. West Warwick has always been committed to the concept of the neighborhood school and this evident from the very beginning with schools in the villages of Arctic, Natick, Crompton, Centreville, Harris Avenue in Clyde, and Rocky Hill The new town also boasted a new high school building originally used as Warwick High School in the Village of Westcott. In 1905, the Knight family in what was the first of what would become a series of donations to the West Warwick Public Schools provided the land for this high school. All of this was run on a budget of only $69,195.75. Most students did not go onto high school and 87 1/2 % of female students became homemakers. Most students went directly from school into the textile industry.