Massachusetts education leaders convened this week at Holyoke High School — whose district is months away from a potential exit from state control.
State-appointed receiver and superintendent Anthony Soto and Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia were once again before the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, this time joined by school committee member Devin Sheehan.
The board held a regular meeting on their home turf Tuesday - a month after announcing Holyoke Public Schools was being granted a provisional release from receivership.
It would make HPS the first district to ever exit state control, a decade after entering receivership due to chronic underperformance.
Soto presented on just what’s changed since then for the district of around 5,000 students – including a 14-point increase in the district’s overall graduation rate, rising to 74.6 percent in 2023.
“… our English language learners and our special education students - the data around their graduation rate is even more impressive,” the receiver/superintendent said. “We’ve grown that by 25 to 30 percentage points… I think that one of the things that’s contributed to this is just being really intentional about engaging our students and re-engaging them and never giving up on them.”
Soto says a major driver for the increase: designing programs that actively seek out students who are thinking about dropping out or have dropped out and creating pathways toward graduation for them.
Other accomplishments highlighted included $200 million worth of investments made in infrastructure, a new middle school under construction, and building a diverse staff in a district where Soto says some 80 percent of the student body is Hispanic.
“I know it's an important initiative of the state, but I feel like we're leading in Holyoke in terms of the number of educators of color,” he said. “And… this is all educators, not just teachers. When you look at just teachers, we went … from 11 percent back in 2015 all the way up to 32 percent and that's intentional … we know that students learn better when they see people that look like them, and the impact that that has on their educational journey.”
Soto acknowledges the district is still trying to close the gap on a number of issues.
As of the end of the 2023-24 school year, Holyoke appeared to have one of the lowest attendance rates in the state at 87 percent – while sporting one of the state's highest chronically absent rates at 45.7 percent.
“… the work around our attendance teams - they're seeing that data every single week,” Soto said. “… we have a family engagement coordinator at every single school now, in Holyoke Public Schools, that sits on the attendance team, with counselors, with leaders in the building and … thinking through the strategies.”
Test results haven’t been great, either. Based on 2024 “Student Achievement” data, the district still lags behind the state in a number of ways - only partially meeting expectations in categories like grade 10 science, math and English language arts.
It was acknowledged by board member Michael Moriarty, a lifelong resident of Holyoke and executive director of the non-profit OneHolyoke Community Development.
“This is a very scrappy and vulnerable community all at the same time, and I just want to say how pleased I am with the overall tone of the presentation we've just heard, the conversation we've heard so far,” the BESE member and former Holyoke School Committee member said. “It's not a celebratory tone, and it really shouldn't be. This is about not celebrating a win, but accepting a challenge, and it is a transfer of a challenge that, frankly, this receivership did not succeed in achieving, which is in the student outcomes. We can't avoid that.”
Moriarty also packed praise for the district’s work in transitioning from a K-to-8 to a middle school model, all while avoiding a fiscal crisis when pandemic-related emergency funding, also known as ESSER funds, dried up – a struggle several surrounding districts encountered.
He also suggested the district spend time on developing a concrete literacy plan, especially for a future superintendent hired after the city regains local control.
That only happens if acting commissioner of elementary and secondary education, Dr. Russell Johnston, finalizes the exit decision in June. According to the Healey administration, that depends a great deal on the “Holyoke School Committee’s progress in implementing its “capacity building plan.”
That includes school committee members being able to lead the district and carry out functions, like searching for a superintendent – years after being disempowered when the district came under receivership.
Johnston, who was involved in the plan’s development, acknowledged more work lies ahead, but also the commitment of the school committee and members of the district.
“They don't ever stop, they don't give up and this is not a time for us to take a bow. It's a time for us to say ‘We acknowledge, we are proud, but we have more to do,’ and I can see your team doing it,” Johnston said to Soto. “You don't have members of the Holyoke team just sitting here and watching they're out working, and I appreciate that.”
