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Leadership, Commitment Mark Holyoke Schools’ Emergence from Receivership

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

Taking Back Control

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

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

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.

A Triumph for Holyoke

By
Opinion

Editorial

 

There have been a lot of good stories to come out of Holyoke in recent years, including a wave of entrepreneurship, an emerging clean-tech sector, a cannabis sector that isn’t what it once was but is still prominent, and a more vibrant downtown.

But there was always a cloud hanging over the city in the form of an school system in receivership, a radical step taken by the state when a system is chronically underperforming, local leadership is ineffective, and there is essentially no hope and few alternatives.

This is where the Holyoke schools were a decade ago, with one of the state’s lowest graduation rates, highest drop-out rates, poor MCAS scores, and leadership that seemed unwilling or unable (actually, a mix of both) to do anything about it.

Receivership, as we noted, is a dramatic step. Only three systems across the state have been put into receivership — Lawrence, Holyoke, and Southbridge. And until July 1, no community had emerged from receivership, until Holyoke managed to achieve that feat.

It did so by achieving progress on many on those aforementioned fronts, including graduation rates that have soared from 52% to 77% — not where anyone wants them, but much better than they were.

But mostly, this was accomplished through a commitment to regaining local control — Mayor Joshua Garcia is firm in his belief that receivership should be temporary and that a community should run its own schools, and he’s right about that — and also through partnering with the state, and, most importantly, showing the kind of leadership that was, quite frankly, missing a decade ago in the years leading up to receivership.

Garcia and Anthony Soto — the interim school superintendent and, now, former receiver — like to say there was no blueprint for coming out of receivership, and that they believe they have created one. Its fine points includes everything from continued strong involvement from the city’s school board (even though it had no real power with a receiver in place); investments in schools, such as the new Peck Middle School; hard but necessary decisions, such as rezoning and restructuring away from the K-8 model; and programs designed to keep students engaged and motivated not to drop out.

And, don’t forget, all this happened with the pandemic serving to stifle momentum, isolate students, and add to an already deep list of societal problems that include poverty, homelessness, and more.

Make no mistake, these problems still exist. They make it difficult for students to focus on learning, and equally difficult to attract and retain the talent needed in the classrooms and administrative offices to provide a quality education. And there is much work still to be done to improve MCAS scores and further improve those graduation rates.

But Holyoke has taken a huge step forward, one that bodes well for the community and its business community. The challenge now is to maintain the current momentum — but the black cloud is gone.

The Case for a Receiver

By Contributor
Law Special Coverage

Such a Move Could Bring Order to Cannabis Control Commission

By Scott Foster, Esq. and Johannah Huynh

For business and civic leaders in Springfield, the appointment in 2004 of the Springfield Control Board remains a watershed moment in the city’s fiscal history.

Regardless of how one felt about the city being plunged into receivership by the Legislature through the appointment of the Control Board, the results were unmistakable, as the city went from having an annual budget deficit of $41 million in 2004 to having cash reserves of $34.5 million when the Control Board was disbanded in 2009. Springfield has continued to enjoy the fruits of the newfound fiscal responsibility with an ever-increasing bond rating since 2009.

Bruce Stebbins, a longtime resident of Western Mass., but then a recent resident, was elected to Springfield’s City Council in the midst of the Control Board’s tenure and had a ringside seat to the Control Board’s temporary reign over the city. He continued to serve on the council through the end of the Control Board and then became become Springfield’s Business Development administrator, reporting to the city’s chief Development officer.

Scott Foster

Scott Foster

Johannah Huynh

Johannah Huynh

Stebbins’ experience engaging with the Control Board and helping bring the city to financial stability may prove immensely valuable if the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the top watchdog agency in Massachusetts responsible for preventing fraud and waste and abuse of public funds, get its wish.

In a recent six-page letter addressed to the Commonwealth’s top elected officials, the OIG strongly urged the Massachusetts Legislature to immediately appoint a receiver to run the day-to-day operations of the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) while the Legislature concurrently reviews the CCC’s statutory governance structure.

Over the past two years, the CCC has been plagued by internal turmoil, which the OIG suggested is partially a result of the CCC’s enabling statute failing to clearly define or delineate the duties and responsibilities of the leadership hierarchy. The OIG’s recommendations for the Legislature to overhaul the governance structure seek to address the root of the CCC’s problems.

“Not only might the temporary appointment of a receiver allow the Legislature to resolve the CCC’s governance structure, but it could also better promote the efficiency of a regulatory body, which would be a welcome development for the hundreds of businesses that rely on the CCC’s oversight.”

Since the enabling statute is, according to the OIG, “unclear and self-contradictory with minimal guidance on the authority and differing responsibilities of the CCC’s commissioners and staff,” it’s surprising that the CCC has been able to oversee $322 million in tax and non-tax revenue in the most recent fiscal year.

The OIG was also concerned that, despite spending $160,000 on mediation services since May 2022 to draft a governance charter, the commissioners have yet to release meeting minutes relating to the discussion of the charter, publicly release a draft charter, approve the new charter, or even provide assurance that the mediation process is complete. Even if a governance charter were adopted, the OIG emphasized, such a charter would not have the force of law — only binding the CCC to the extent the commissioners agree.

 

Internal Strife

Acting CCC Chair Ava Callender Concepion has pushed back on the call for a receivership by citing the commission’s recently proposed blueprint of a governance structure in its final stages of legal review subject to a public meeting.

The ongoing lack of an official chair of the CCC was also cited by the OIG as an area of concern. Amidst the suspension of CCC Chair Shannon O’Brien by the treasurer since Sept. 14, 2023, the commissioners have disagreed on who held the appropriate authority to appoint Callender Concepcion to the role of acting chair. Just last month, the CCC voted to relieve the acting executive director, Debbie Hilton-Creek, of her day-to-day responsibilities, leaving the CCC without a duly appointed leader to oversee the operations of the agency.

Even in the absence of clarity on who has authority to do what, the OIG notes that compliance with the Open Meeting Law, which prohibits two or more commissioners from discussing matters outside of a publicly posted meeting, is simply impractical with respect to a large state agency overseeing day-to-day operations.

With such decentralization of management and ambiguous authority at the CCC, the OIG has stressed the urgency of appointing a receiver with the authority to manage the day-to-day operations of the CCC. Specifically, the OIG recommended that the receiver should be expressly authorized to both carry out the daily administrative functions of the CCC and carry out said functions notwithstanding any assertion of by the chair, acting chair, or commissioners under Chapter 76.

If the Legislature were to heed the OIG’s findings, the appointed receiver would have unchallenged authority to carry out the CCC’s administrative operations until the Legislature has resolved the CCC’s governing structure.

In this context, for an agency responsible for bringing in approximately $322 million in tax and non-tax revenue in FY 2023 alone, a receiver that was statutorily authorized to do what the CCC cannot, per the OIG, would be in the best interests of the cannabis industry, its consumers, and ultimately the constituents.

Not only might the temporary appointment of a receiver allow the Legislature to resolve the CCC’s governance structure, but it could also better promote the efficiency of a regulatory body, which would be a welcome development for the hundreds of businesses that rely on the CCC’s oversight.

 

Scott Foster is a partner at Bulkley Richardson in Springfield, and Johannah Huynh is a summer associate at the firm.