The City of Holyoke, Massachusetts is inching closer to regaining control of its school district – nearly a decade after it was placed under state receivership.
Since 2015, Holyoke Public Schools have been one of a handful of districts in receivership in a bid to reverse trends ranging from high dropout rates to low test scores and more.
Now, with progress made on multiple fronts and after lengthy discussions with state education leaders, the city is poised to regain control of the district – barring a few more hurdles school officials have been mapping out.
“The big question that folks ask me all the time is ‘Alright, so when are we getting out of receivership? Is it going to be tomorrow? Is it going to be the start of the school year?’” Mayor Joshua Garcia said during Monday’s Holyoke School Committee meeting. “Well, so it's going to be as quickly as this board can move in capacity building.”
For the past five months, the state’s acting commissioner of elementary and secondary education, Dr. Russell Johnston, has been meeting with school committee members, hashing out what needs to happen before the state returns HPS to local control.
During one of the first meetings in March, he announced the official start of the transition process.
Over a series of meetings between Johnston and a subcommittee, a transition plan came together, with a focus on training the school committee that would be at the center of a future, locally-controlled district.
Leading the subcommittee meetings was Dr. Yadilette Rivera-Colón.
“We're focusing on, really, capacity building, so being able to have training in what is hiring and evaluating the superintendent, policymaking - we're going to have a whole overhaul of our policy with MASC, and moving forward then to budget, finances, and the most important part for me every time is how to engage the public.”
The plan was formally approved by the school committee Monday night.
When entering receivership, the local school committee lost much of its powers as a state-appointed receiver and a new superintendent took charge. Ever since, a turnaround plan was developed, and over time, improvements began to show.
With graduation rates rising 15 points to almost 75 percent in 2021-22 since the start of receivership, investments in school infrastructure and other factors, the school committee and mayor continued advocating for exiting receivership – leading to Johnston’s meetings and more.
While the school committee has continued to meet while under receivership, significant training in budgeting, personnel and, eventually, hiring and evaluating a new superintendent will be needed.
“Just so that the public understands - a lot of the members here, on this side of the table, haven’t been on a board while we were in control, and there is a level of responsibility to it that is critical to support the day-to-day operations of the district,” Garcia explained. “Stumbling in that process, there’s no time or room for that, so, we want to make sure we’re fully-prepared, capable and ready when that transition starts - that we can be as fluid as possible.”
As Rivera-Colón explained to WAMC, the final decision to end receivership rests with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, with no firm date established.
Instead, in the year ahead, the committee will be tasked with completing various trainings while checking in with DESE periodically.
All the while, the district will be making history as the first one in the state to go about transitioning back to local control.
Holyoke Public Schools was second-ever district to enter receivership, coming under state control after Lawrence Public Schools and before the school district in Southbridge.
5th Hampden district State Representative Patricia Duffy noted that history Monday. The Democrat tells WAMC that what happens in Holyoke could be a model for the rest of the state.
“Here we are, forging the path forward,” Duffy said. “It's a challenge and it's an opportunity, because Holyoke is the first public school system in Massachusetts to come out of receivership, and we get to forge the path.”
