Year: 2025

Taking Back Control

Anthony Soto, interim school superintendent and former receiver in Holyoke.

As he talked about the Holyoke Public Schools’ emergence from a decade of receivership last month, Anthony Soto said that accomplishment results from several factors, but the overriding dynamic has been leadership.

That applies to the receiver’s office, the commissioner of Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE), Holyoke’s School Committee, the mayor’s office, and within the ranks of the city’s teachers, principals, and other administrators, said Soto, who has been the receiver for the past five years and is now interim superintendent in Holyoke, adding quickly that leadership will ultimately determine how this district performs moving forward.

And on that front, there are some question marks, he said, noting everything from the upcoming election this fall, at which every seat on the School Committee will be contested, to the superintendent’s office (a nationwide search will soon commence, and Soto declined comment on whether he will be a candidate) to the ongoing challenge of retaining teachers and principals everywhere, but especially in Holyoke.

Indeed, when asked if he was worried about backsliding from the systemic changes and resulting progress that enabled Holyoke to emerge from receivership, Soto said, “not with the leaders we have in place.”

He added, “I would worry if we suddenly had seven principals leave and three or four district leaders leave — then I would be very concerned. I’m confident with the School Committee that we have, but the unknown is what worries me.”

While there are questions about the future and what will happen with this school district, Soto and Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia certainly wanted to take a moment and reflect on Holyoke’s ability to emerge from receivership — something the two other districts placed in that same state (Lawrence and Southbridge) have yet to do.

“This had never been done before; there was no blueprint for this, and I believe that Holyoke has perhaps created a blueprint,” said Garcia, who made emergence from receivership a campaign pledge when he first ran for the office more than three years ago. “This is a big win for Holyoke; we’ve proven to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that we’re capable of self-managing our public schools.”

Soto agreed and said this return to local control is an accomplishment marked by dramatic improvement in the graduation rate — 52% to 77% — and progress on other fronts ranging from early literacy to reduced suspension rates; from restructuring of the schools in a middle-school model to the building of a new middle school, the city’s first new school construction in nearly 40 years.

Mayor Joshua Garcia

“There’s a commitment from the district to continue our turn-around plan so that we don’t untangle any of the work over the past 10 years and go backward.”

That project was achieved despite the extreme challenge of a global pandemic that arrived as progress was building, isolating students and setting the district back several years, in Soto’s estimate, as it went about the work of transforming its schools, while also exacerbating a laundry list of stern societal challenges that have historically taxed students, families, teachers, and administrators alike.

“In a community like Holyoke, the pandemic just hits much harder,” he explained. “This community is already plagued with a high percentage of families living in transition or that are housing-displaced. We have a community living in poverty and with a high level of drug addiction … the things that our students have to go through in the community definitely have an impact when they walk through our doors. It’s hard; this isn’t a walk in the park.”

Garcia agreed, noting that, beyond the accomplishments in the classroom — where there is certainly still room for considerable improvement — Holyoke emerged from receivership by showing it has the commitment and leadership to manage its own schools and not slide back to the conditions that resulted in the state taking control.

“There’s a commitment from the district to continue our turn-around plan so that we don’t untangle any of the work over the past 10 years and go backward, and there’s a commitment from our committee to make sure we stay the course on that turnaround plan and continue the strategies that have achieved the progress we’ve seen,” he said, adding that these factors have enabled the city to earn the state’s trust when it comes to managing its schools.

“The Commonwealth can say, ‘the changes were made, they’re on a good path, they’re showing notable gain, there’s some strong leadership in their form of government,’” he went on. “Those buckets are what allowed the Commonwealth to say, ‘it’s time to transition to local control.’”

“When I first got here, there were 150 kids at Dean, and it was a dumping ground and at risk of closing. We have since invested in Dean and completely brought it to life; we now have over 400 kids attending, with more than 100 on the waitlist.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at how the Holyoke school system fell into receivership, how it emerged, and what happens next.

School of Thought

Soto was certainly familiar with Holyoke’s schools when he became the third receiver to oversee the system.

Indeed, he grew up in the city and graduated from Dean Tech High School. After working in Springfield Public Schools for several years, he became the chief of Finance and Operations for the Holyoke schools in 2016, soon after the system went into receivership.

When the first receiver left after more than five years in that role to take a position closer to home in the eastern part of the state, Soto was asked to take on that role, but declined, saying he didn’t think he was ready. But when the second receiver lasted only seven months, he was again asked to step in, and this time accepted the challenge.

And a stern challenge it was. Indeed, Holyoke met the basic criteria for entering receivership — chronic underperformance and not showing any improvement over time — and had the lowest graduation rate in the state and one of the highest drop-out rates.

“The state conducted reviews and determined that there needed to be some serious intervention to fix the systems and make sure there’s a foundation for high-quality instruction and to give our kids a shot,” said Soto, adding that he was working in Springfield when the Holyoke schools went into receivership, but was well aware of the factors that led to that decision.

With receivership, the receiver essentially takes on the duties of both the superintendent and school board, said Soto, which eliminates bureaucracy and politics, but places an enormous amount of power in the hands of one person, which may or may not work out depending on how committed that individual is and how much leadership that office provides.

How Holyoke emerged from receivership a decade later is an intriguing story, one that involves what both Garcia and Soto called a true partnership with the state, and especially with Russell Johnston, the former interim commissioner of ESE, to create a blueprint where none had existed before — and, even more importantly, to follow that blueprint.

“He came to every meeting of the local control subcommittee of the school board to map out a plan, and once we mapped out a plan with clear benchmarks, we executed,” Garcia explained, adding that this execution prompted the state to remove a provisional transition to local control this spring and make it permanent. “We hit our benchmarks, and we did what we said we were going to do.”

That sentiment applies to everything from progress in the classrooms to a capacity-building plan that would assure a smooth transition to local control and enable the city to hit the ground running on July 1, to a commitment to strong, local governance that would hopefully prevent a return to the conditions that put Holyoke in receivership.

As he talked about those improvements registered in the classroom, Soto said there have been many, including curriculum changes, a sharp reduction in drop-out rates, and improvement in graduation rates, attributable to creative efforts to keep students from falling through the cracks.

“Overall, we have shifted our mindset as a district that we are not giving up on our kids and doing everything we can to re-engage them when they are at risk of dropping out,” he said, citing initiatives such as the Opportunity Academy. This is designed for students who are “over-aged and under-credited,” said Soto, adding that, in the past, these students would just drop out, but now they can re-engage through a more personalized path that enables them to attain credits and graduate.

There has also been what he called a revival at his alma mater, Dean Tech. “When I first got here, there were 150 kids at Dean, and it was a dumping ground and at risk of closing,” he told BusinessWest. “We have since invested in Dean and completely brought it to life; we now have over 400 kids attending, with more than 100 on the waitlist.”

Another dramatic change was the restructuring of the city’s schools (accompanied by rezoning), moving away from the long-entrenched K-8 model to a middle-school model, punctuated by the building of the new William R. Peck Middle School, which will serve 550 students across grades 6-8.

Grade Expectations

As he offered BusinessWest a tour of the new facility, where construction crews were working on the finishing touches, Soto said there were certainly some growing pains with the restructuring and rezoning, but those changes are starting to pay dividends.

Garcia agreed, and said the building of Peck, as well as other investments made in city schools, represent a change of tone within Holyoke and provide more evidence that the city is ready, willing, and able to manage its schools.

“The fact that we got unanimous support from the City Council for that project … that never happened before,” he said. “I was on the school board when I was 23, 24 years old. The amount of investment we’re doing in our public school buildings, including building the new middle school, was never done before; it was always ‘let’s kick the can down the road.’ It wasn’t prioritized.”

There are many new priorities, said Soto, citing, among them, professional development and other measures to attract and retain teachers and principals and maintain the strong levels of leadership that helped enable the city’s schools to emerge from receivership.

“One of my theories of action is that, if you have a strong principal and you give them the tools and resources, they need to improve the quality of instruction, which will have an impact on student achievement,” he explained. “We’ve invested heavily in developing our leaders.”

These investments, as well as curriculum changes and other steps, have helped create the “Holyoke way of doing things,” as Soto put it.

“This is how we’re going to get out instruction, these are the teaching strategies we want teachers to use, and when we walk through classrooms, this is what we expect to see,” he explained. “Our leaders have been doing a very good job implementing those practices.”

“One of my theories of action is that, if you have a strong principal and you give them the tools and resources, they need to improve the quality of instruction, which will have an impact on student achievement.”

Looking ahead, Soto and Garcia said the plan is to … well, keep following the blueprint, stay on the path that led to the return of local control, build on what’s been accomplished, and address areas where progress has been elusive, such as MCAS scores.

“We’re starting to hit our stride now,” Soto said. “With students, we have a strong focus on early literacy, our graduation rate is up to 77%, we have strong strategies in place … we’ve invested well over $130 million in our schools. We’ve been working on all those things over the past three years, and we’re finally starting to see some promising data.”

Garcia agreed. “Are we where we want to be right now as far as performance? No, but have we shown incremental gain and progress? Yes,” said the mayor, adding that the right systems and leadership are in place for continued improvement.

Meanwhile, Holyoke’s progress over the past several years, and its eventual emergence from receivership, has caught the attention of the other two school systems still under state control, Garcia said, adding that the School Committee continued to meet every month for 10 years, despite the presence of a receiver, and it also met regularly with the various receivers.

This commitment and level of collaboration does not exist in Lawrence and Southbridge to his knowledge, the mayor noted, adding that this page is one of many that those communities could, and should, take from Holyoke’s playbook.

Or its blueprint. As he said, there wasn’t one for a community emerging from receivership. But now, Holyoke has created one.