A couple hundred high schoolers in Springfield, Massachusetts started their year in a new facility with a view – all part of the city’s Empowerment Zone Partnership.
Discovery Polytech Early College High School has brought its classes to new heights – moving into a new home atop 1350 Main Street downtown.
It was renovated over the summer, and students have been getting used to taking an elevator up to the 16th floor and attending class in the converted space.
With makerspaces, labs and other offerings, the school’s new home offers a vantage like no other – with much of the city and lower Pioneer Valley on display.
“We're trying not to tell students to stop staring out the window - when students stare out the window and they can see their homes and they can embrace the fact that this is their city, that's special,” said Matthew Brunell, co-executive director of the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership.
In its fourth year, Discovery High School was once situated in the Chestnut Middle School building before literally moving up.
The school is a product of the Empowerment Zone – which operates at least 16 middle and high schools in the city while serving about 5,000 students.
A partnership between Springfield Public Schools, the state and Springfield Education Association, the non-profit says it has focused on improving student outcomes at “chronically underperforming” schools in the district since 2015.
Developing its own education models, Brunell says Discovery has been putting a wall-to-wall early college model in action, with some of its first seniors ready to graduate with dozens of college credits already in tow.
Partnering with local community colleges and universities, the 251 students at Discovery are able to earn at least three to six college credits per semester. Students can start earning credits as soon as they get in via a lottery process.
The model also involves students spending part of the week on college campuses, taking courses at schools that have partnered with Discovery. That includes Western New England University, Holyoke Community College and Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester.
Offerings at Discovery put a special focus on STEM-related studies. During the tour, senior Izabella Martinez said she’s looking to continue her college studies after graduating and study microbiology.
“I want to - I don't know how far into like my studies I will go – but, I eventually want to work my way into ... working in a lab and testing different treatments on cancer cells,” she said during a tour of the facility given to city officials Wednesday, including Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno.
Sonny Casiano, another senior, tells WAMC that he previously attended Chestnut Middle School, and enjoyed the convenience of returning to the same building after getting into Discovery.
But with the school only growing since its start – Brunnell says there’s a long wait list – Casiano says the new space has been amazing.
“I knew the lay of the land, but over time I realized we're growing, and it's a little small, and the school just kept growing and growing and progressing, and we realized we needed a bigger space,” he said. “So, they gave us the opportunity of this wonderful building, and it was like a blessing, going from eating in a hallway with like four classrooms to come into our own penthouse for a school.”
Brunell tells WAMC that at first, Discovery had been “shoehorned” into the Chestnut campus. With a move inevitable, he said designing the new high school was a cross-country process.
“We traveled across the country to visit STEM schools and to see how they situated themselves, what they look like, how they felt and what we were most struck by, and as you see when you come to visit the school, is it feels like a tech workplace with a lot of class, with students who are able to engage in really hands-on learning and makerspaces, and we think that that's part of the magic of the school,” he said.
Sarno said he is impressed by the access students have to engineering, robotics and other STEM-related fields.
“I think these kids highlight what I always say, because people say ‘zip code is going to dictate your future’ - they're proving that a zip code is not going to dictate their future, they're going to dictate their own future,” he told WAMC.
