Page 6 - BusinessWest September 19, 2022

is something she could not have imagined when she first started conceptualizing this concept. Indeed, to appreciate where Veritas Prep is
now, we need to go back to the beginning, and that’s where we find Romano, a frustrated middle- school teacher, looking to find something better for the city and its young students.
“I didn’t have traditional training as an educator, so I came in with the expectations that had been set for me as public-school student myself. And I sort of believed that education was the great equalizer; everyone got a public education, and if you worked hard enough, you could go on to college and do whatever you wanted.”
Actually, the story starts in New York, where Romano was working in advertising sales in 2001, and the terrorist attacks on 9/11, which essential- ly left her homeless and heading back to Western Mass. and her parents’ home in South Hadley. She took a job substitute teaching to essentially get out of the house — “my mom kept nagging me about what I was going to do next” — and wound
up loving the work.
She applied for a full-time teaching job in
Springfield for the following year and wound up at Duggan Middle School, where she worked for six years and experienced what could be called a stern reality check.
“I didn’t have traditional training as an educa- tor, so I came in with the expectations that had been set for me as public-school student myself,” she explained. “And I sort of believed that educa- tion was the great equalizer; everyone got a pub- lic education, and if you worked hard enough,
The cafeteria in the new high school is one of the many aspects of the facility that are state-of-the-art.
you could go on to college and do whatever you wanted.
“And when I began teaching in Springfield, I realized that this just wasn’t true for everyone,” she went on. “My eyes were really opened to the ineq- uity that exists in our public education system.”
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6 SEPTEMBER 19, 2022
FEATURE
BusinessWest