Page 24 - BusinessWest May 26, 2025

“The problem is
uncertainty at
the federal level,
which is leading
to changes in
state funding
priorities.”
effectively utilize it to support learning in the classroom?” Gazda
explained. “That’s been a big area of growth for us.
“We’ve also done quite a bit of work helping districts navigate
difficult conversations. There may be an incident in a school dis-
trict that creates an emotionally charged atmosphere; we’ll go in
and facilitate listening sessions and focus groups and pull people
together to help bridge those differences so that people can have
thoughtful conversations about their differences. We’ve been doing
that work across the Commonwealth as well.”
CES also has an Early Childhood division that serves students
“from cradle to career,” Gazda said — from pre-K education all the
way up through internship programs to help link them to careers.
“Early Childhood, again, works statewide with school districts,
helping them build more robust preschool programs and provide
good services to their preschool students,” he explained, adding
that other CES programs deal in community wellness, local food
policy, and substance-abuse awareness and prevention.
Career Goals
One particularly robust element of the collaborative’s services is
its workforce development programs.
“We partner with school districts, and they plan and implement a
variety of workforce and career development programs for students
— skills trainings, career development, helping students create
and refine résumés, interviewing skills,” Gazda said. “These are all
things we work on with our member districts to help students so, as
they look to go into the workforce or prepare for a career, they have
this skill set.”
One of those initiatives has been a paid STEM internship pro-
gram, helping students prepare for careers in science, technol-
ogy, engineering, and math. Since 2018, the program has placed
265 students in good-paying internships across 28 Western Mass.
school districts.
“These are high-school kids who literally get paid to do work in
businesses. It’s a leg up for the kids, but it’s also a leg up for local
businesses, particularly those in the STEM fields, because it gives
them an opportunity to train these students and generate a future
workforce for them. It’s a win for everybody.”
Placements, typically for between 100 and 270 hours, are typi-
cally done over the summer when students have more time and
opportunity. The fields include biomedical engineering, molecular
biology, biotechnology, biochemistry, polymer science, neuroscience,
oncology, nursing, and other fields within the STEM realm.
“They have paid stipends at the state minimum hourly wage
or higher,” Gazda noted. “And they get training and support in
researching, communicating, interview preparation, cover letter and
résumé writing, and internship performance reviews. They gain pro-
fessional and scientific experience, and they gain references to sup-
port college applications and job applications.”
The STEM program has grown from serving 30 students in
2018 to 69 last year, and 98% of participants complete their intern-
ships. Those results aren’t a matter of luck, Gazda said.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into matching the student with
the employer in the correct field to get that kind of a completion
rate. So it’s a good fit,” he noted, adding that, since 2018, the pro-
gram has served 28 school districts in Western Mass., with 60
employers hosting student interns.
Funding has come from a variety of sources, but the biggest
and longest supporter is the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
(MLSC), which supports internships of up to 270 hours.
“We can coordinate with MLSC to pay for 19 placements at
UMass Amherst,” he said. “In 2024, the Massachusetts Executive
Office of Education’s STEM-focused internship program funded
47 internships and a portion of our director’s salary. Community
partners supported three internships, and a private donor in Had-
ley supported three internships. And we were able to secure pri-
vate donor funding to support 41 students this summer with paid
internships.”
Finding the finances to support this work is always a challenge,
Gazda said.
“The problem is uncertainty at the federal level, which is lead-
ing to changes in state funding priorities,” he noted. “The Executive
Office of Education is no longer offering funding under the STEM
internship program, and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center is
reducing its support for student stipends as well. So this is where
we find ourselves — in kind of a state of flux, funding-wise.”
CES, founded in 1974 and now the largest collaborative in Mas-
sachusetts by membership, geographic size, and revenue — around
$39 million last year — gets funding from grants, contracts, and
fees for service. But much of its money filters through the state
or federal government in some way, meaning it’s vulnerable to the
spending cuts happening in Washington (see related story on page
4).
“If we run short, I can’t go back to a town and say, ‘we need
more money.’ It just doesn’t work that way. We’ve got to earn and
raise and generate revenue to support all of the different program-
ming that we do to support our districts,” Gazda said.
“Typically, when you have a lot of grant-funded programs, there’s
always a certain amount of trepidation about when that grant is
going to end. Will you get another one? Will it be extended? And
now, that’s kind of heightened by that additional question regarding
anything directly from the federal government: are they going to cut
it off with no warning?”
He certainly hopes not, noting that the internship programs have
no real downside, for either the students or the businesses.
“The employer business partners who host school STEM interns
enjoy the re-energizing benefits of mentorship and the additional
support to complete certain projects. Employers are given a seat at
the table in creating a pipeline of future researchers and workers,”
he told BusinessWest. “Having an educated workforce is critical for
our business community to thrive, and this is one vehicle whereby
we can help make it happen.”
Revenue Questions
Gazda was superintendent of schools in Ludlow for nine years
and has been working for 24 years in public education. Before that,
he was an attorney, doing corporate litigation in New York City.
“I just came to the realization that wasn’t the job I wanted or
the life I wanted to live.
So I moved back home
to Western Mass. and
became an eighth-grade
Collaborative
Continued on page 26 >>
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