Providence Schools have struggled to show any signs of significant improvement over the last five years of state control. Meanwhile, through state intervention of another kind, a group of public middle and high schools in the very poor urban district of Springfield, have thrived. Since 2015, these schools have continued their steady upward progress from the bottom 3% of schools in the state.
By taking a “third way” between traditional district schools and charter schools, the Springfield Empowerment Zone Project (SEZP) has done what other communities under state intervention in Rhode Island and Massachusetts have failed to do: break the cycle of perpetual failure and launch persistent improvement in both test scores and life outcomes for their youth. Springfield’s once-failing urban public school system is now a source of pride and hope.
PVD Eye Visit to Springfield
Senator Samuel Zurier’s Senate Commission on Providence Schools had singled out the SEZP as a model of union-management collaboration in its 2024 report. On March 18 The Providence Eye organized a group visit to the SEZP to find out whether the SEZP was as good as it looks. Wecame away trying to imagine how Providence could follow Springfield’s example.
Here’s what we saw:
- Long-term thinking leading to long-term, measurable success.
- A culture of respect and collaboration that seeks to empower every student, family, teacher and principal to make good decisions and act on them.
- A lean central office (staff of 11 for 16 schools and 4,900 students) focused on support and accountability for self-directed schools rather than instructional micromanagement.
- A flexible union contract that accommodates different building-level agreements between teachers and leaders to meet diverse student needs.
- Teachers as educational leaders and decision-makers in each building, with administrators serving as lead facilitators in support of classroom teachers.
Principal Mike Calvanese and the SEZP’’s Co-Executive Directors Matt Brunell and Colleen Curran and other members of the SEZP and Duggan staffs and faculty hosted our delegation at Duggan Academy, a combined middle and high school close to Springfield College.
Springfield’s “third way” plan
The SEZP was created in the wake of 2010 Massachusetts legislation authorizing state intervention and takeover of “chronically underperforming” districts. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) put the Lawrence school district into receivership in 2011 (both Holyoke’s and Southbridge’s schools were also later taken over by the state) In Springfield, DESE wanted an alternative to a full district takeover. The state turned to Chris Gabrieli, a former biotech venture capitalist and founder of Empower Schools, to design a solution. Empower Schools proposed to focus only on the eight most troubled middle and high schools in Springfield, with 5,000 enrolled students out about 25,000 in the district as a whole. In October 2014, The Springfield School Committee delegated the management of these schools to a new nonprofit organization, the Springfield Empowerment Zone Project.
Oversight responsibility was entrusted to the SEZP’s Board of Directors, made up of the mayor of Springfield, the Springfield school superintendent, the vice-chair of the Springfield School Committee, and four members appointed by the Massachusetts Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education. Chris Gabrieli has been the SEZP’s Board Chair from the inception.
The plan worked
The SEZP focused on building strong, educator-directed school communities with the ability to plan and pursue their own priorities and strategies. Power and funding were shifted from a central office to school teams. Big schools were broken into smaller schools and academies. They actively recruited teachers and leaders of color.
While state takeover districts were struggling to achieve improvements, the SEZP schools have had steady gains in student achievement and school ratings. The SEZP schools’ combined composite school performance scores, a core index of school effectiveness in Massachusetts, has improved 10% or more per year, even during the 2020-2022 COVID pandemic. The percentage of students in “high quality schools” within the SEZP has increased to 50% from zero. High school graduation rate rose from 47% to 86%, close to the statewide average of 90% in 2022. Today, 69 percent of high school juniors and seniors in the SEZP complete college-level coursework and earn college credits.
Matt Brunell and Colleen Curran, Co-Executive Directors of the SEZP hosted The Providence Eye visitors. (credit SEZP)
We had lots of questions:
“How was this even possible?”
Given Springfield’s failing schools,the threat of state takeover provided the proverbial “gun to the head,” that no one wanted, but that would occur without another agreed solution.
Mayor Domenic Sarno positioned the SEZP as “a partnership, instead of a takeover, an enhancement, not a punishment.” With a takeover looming, he told hesitant community and union leaders, “You want power? Then you’ll have to share it.”
The Empowerment Zone became “an offer they couldn’t refuse,” according to Sarno. The Springfield School Department, Mass DESE, the Springfield Education Association teacher union and SEZP signed a Memorandum of Agreement committing to the SEZP for 10 years.
Mayor Sarno credited this long-term commitment, plus leadership continuity, with much of the SEZP’s success. “If you only have a three year plan,” he said, “Don’t bother.”
“What does educator-directed mean?”
Duggan Academy’s full seven-member Teacher Leadership Team (TLT) came to join us about midway through our visit. The TLTs have teacher representatives from each grade level, and must include the union building delegate.
“We take data from the top down and from the bottom up,” a TLT member told us. “We set priorities for the year, working with our grade level teams. And we never get it totally right. You have to be able to pivot.”
Each school’s TLT discusses and votes on annual goals for their school’s Continuous Improvement Plan which includes academic priorities and strategies as well as all teacher working conditions, from schedules for bus duty to parent communication and after-school obligations. The TLTs organize additional teams, like the Instructional Team, to handle some issues.
The school principal and the SEZP administration have final authority, but the SEZP contract and culture make a strong commitment to shared decision-making. Members of the Duggan TLT confirmed that this commitment was met.
Principals are expected both to lead truly collaborative teams and get results. Getting the right principals in place has been one of the SEZ’s biggest challenges.
“The Teacher Leadership Teams are a crucial part of our culture, the drivers of change,” Matt Brunell told us.
“What role does the teachers union play?”
The Springfield Education Association (SEA) negotiates one contract for SZEP teachers and a separate one for other Springfield District teachers. The contract for SEZP teachers is just 44 pages long, compared to 207 pages in SEA’s District contract. It lays out broadly agreed principles, commitments and rules of the road for continuous dialog and re-negotiation of teacher working conditions at each school through the TLTs.
The last time around, contract negotiators spent a lot of time working out the structure and role of Teacher Leadership Teams. There are seven pages on TLTs in the final agreement. With that framework in place, TLTs and union delegates can address most teacher concerns in their buildings. SEA President Tracy Little-Sasanecki has had just one grievance in the SEZP during her tenure.
SEA also negotiated very different pay scales in the two contracts, reflecting the added hours and responsibilities of SEZP teachers. A fourth year teacher in a traditional district school earns a base salary of about $49,000. A fourth-year SEZP teacher earns almost $65,000.
“Where do you find the time?”
The basic work year for a SEZP teacher is 1,475 hours, compared to about 1,300 for a Springfield teacher in other district schools. Much of that extra time is committed to family engagement and other activities beyond the school day, but it includes a guarantee of nearly six hours of self-directed non-teaching time every two weeks as well.
To make time for TLTs, GLTs and other teacher teams, the school engages community partners to run programs during the school day. These in-school “enhancements” create a two-hour block for GLT and TLT meetings.
“Who controls the resources?”
Every Springfield school gets the same per-capita funding, determined by state and local contributions, about $19,600 per pupil for the current school year. The district holds back 15% from SEZP schools to cover core services like busing. The SEZP administration office receives 3%.
The balance (about 80%) is committed to individual SEZP schools. The principal and the TLT determine how discretionary funds will be allocated among options like extra services for students and families, supplies, after school programs or other needs. By contract, the TLT (and all teachers) have access to the school’s full budget and staffing plan by June 30 to guide them in their decision-making.
“How do you hold teachers accountable?”
The SEZP contract does not change fundamental job protections for public school teachers with more than three years of tenure (“professional status” in Massachusetts). These are set in state legislation.
State law dictates the teacher evaluation process and rubric used by the SEZP. As in Rhode Island, teachers with less than three full years of service can be terminated (“non-renewed”) based on observations with a minimum of due process.
Teachers with more than three years have extensive rights requiring a lengthy process of documentation, warnings and chances for improvement before notice of termination. Even after notice, teachers have rights to mediation and legal appeals that can make a termination very lengthy and expensive.
Co-Director Matt Brunell said the SEZP doesn’t need to pursue this process. Principals focus on making sure new teachers are fully qualified before they earn tenure. Teachers who don’t want longer hours, greater responsibilities and more participation in the school community don’t apply to the SEZP. SEZP teachers can transfer to other Springfield schools.
In case of layoffs due to budget or enrollment changes, tenured teachers have preference over non-tenured teachers. Length of employment other than tenure is only a tie-breaker between teachers with similar qualifications.
“What role do parents play?”
As in any urban district, families with lower incomes or limited English often lack the time and confidence to get involved. Kisha Morgan, the SEZP Chief of Student Support and Services, helped launch monthly Family Empowerment Councils two years ago. More recently, they’ve engaged the Coalition of Empowered Black Educators, mostly retired Springfield educators of color, to help. Their faces are familiar to many families, which helps to create trust and comfort. The goal is “to get a coalition of families behind us.”
“Is it really that different here?”
The teachers on the TLT that we spoke with certainly felt a huge difference from other teaching jobs they’d held.
One teacher said, “These last four years at Duggan feel like a 180-degree turn from the 10 years before when I worked at other middle schools.”
Another teacher told us that he drove an hour from his home in Vermont to Springfield every morning for the last 10 years only because of his involvement and commitment to the TLT. “We feel involved. We are the voice for our colleagues.”
“The thing that works so well,” said a third teacher, “is that we have a shared vision of what we want to be as a community. Within that shared vision, we create our own way to get there.”
We spent three hours in a classroom with adult leaders and teachers. We didn’t speak at length with students, families or community members beyond a brief student-led tour. From what we saw in our brief time, that same feeling of ownership and pride extended to Duggan’s other staff and students. Everyone looked us in the eyes and greeted us as we passed in the hall. Some stopped to ask who we were and to share points of pride in the school, such as their senior murals.
With consistent progress over 10 years, the SEZP has recently become Massachusetts’ highest-ranking state school intervention. (credit SEZP)
What did our visitors say?
For Providence teacher Brandi Tucker, the biggest impression of her visit was that “every single person we talked to had the same vision: it was all about the kids, and the future of their city.”
Aubrey Johnson, a Providence parent who spends many hours in school buildings, said,” I felt a lot of good energy in the building. Our student guides were wonderful, totally engaging with us and other adults in the building.”
RI State Senator Sam Zurier said, “I was pleased to observe the culture of collaboration that existed among the educators, in which they showed their commitment to putting students first. I also appreciated the mayor’s strong personal investment in the success of the empowerment zone.”
Could an empowerment zone work in Providence?
The Springfield Empowerment Zone works. Its schools get better every year. Still, there are many reasons why people might say no to an empowerment zone in Providence. Many questions still need deeper exploration, including a deeper dive into the SEZP’s outcomes data.
The biggest sticking point would probably be that members of the traditional Providence school power structure would give up day-to-day control of schools to our teachers, principals and a new entity with more autonomy than traditional district schools.
After five years of powerlessness, that might be a bitter pill to swallow for our elected officials, our newly appointed/elected hybrid School Board, the Providence Schools Superintendent and central office administrators. In an empowerment zone, they would have less power than six years ago, Classroom teachers and building leaders would have much more.
The question for Providence is whether we have any vision for the day after RIDE hands the keys back to the city. And who should we empower to realize that vision – the same school managers we’ve empowered for decades or, maybe, teachers and principals?
Jonathan Howard is Co-founder of Cause & Effect, Inc., a consulting company that provides strategic planning facilitation, fund development planning and board strengthening to mission-driven organizations. He is a long- time resident of Providence.
