Not since 2015 has the Holyoke School Committee had final say over anything to do with the Holyoke Public Schools. Not hiring teachers, not changing the curriculum. Nothing, 

Jeffrey Riley, the recently-departed education secretary for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, placed Holyoke schools in receivership and was known for not communicating with families or other stakeholders about his plans, playing close to his chest every move to the frustration of committee members and parents.

Finally, this year he resigned and Russell Johnston, former superintendent of the West Springfield schools came on board as secretary and immediately began taking the steps to return the management of the schools to Holyoke.

Since earlier this year, the School Committee and its designated Local Control subcommittee led by Dra. Yadillete Rivera Colón on moving the pieces forward to achieve the return of the schools, have been working diligently every month to design policies, curriculum, programming and more so that Holyoke has full responsibility — and accountability — for how the schools educate its students and supports staff, teachers and other stakeholders.

Unlike the debacle of three years ago when Riley spent tax money on a series on useless “community forums” and “surveys” to get the feedback from the community regarding what kind of receiver it wanted after Szrike resigned to lead the schools in Salem, this era appears to be a serious and concerted effort. In the end, Riley had to remove the  receiver after a handful of disastrous months and appointed Holyoke Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Anthony Soto,  touted by Riley’s office as “one of Holyoke’s own,” a child who grew up in the public school system of the city. But lacking certification to be a superintendent, Soto’s authority although less than a full-fledged superintendent, in the era of receivership, a Boston-appointee still is more powerful than the sum of School Committee members usurped of their own power by DESE’s Riley.

All of which leads to this moment in August 2024, where Holyoke is months away from gaining control of its schools that were taken away because high school graduation rates was abysmal and other education metrics were very low including MCAS scores that education experts characterize as inappropriate tests for the city’s student population.

Among the policies being developed is how to address absenteeism, which represents about half the student body, meaning they miss 18 days of the school year.

Dr. Rivera Colón suggested that instead of the schools only make calls, and send letters and emails solely on the student’s absenteeism, how about all that correspondence also include questions about are there any resources the family might have a benefit from, or leave room for the parent to ask what resources they need for the student to be in school.

“How about five communications about this are resources that we have for families. These are things that we can help you out with before you actually get to the absenteeism, because sometimes what that what happens is that families feel like they got in trouble right in instead of seeing the school as a resource that could help, even if you include in there as the last line, hey, we’re here to help,” said Dr. Rivera Colón.

Dra. Gloria Caballero Roca, another member of the School Committee, asked what types of training are available for teachers to address bullying toward students or themselves.

“One of the things that really add to for them not to go to school is because they are being bullied or harassed. Bullying doesn’t have to be necessarily physical, variable. And there’s so many ways of bullying and harassment also, sexual,” she said. “ All this  creates an environment that is hostile for learning. And, they don’t want to go to school where they see that teachers sometimes get bullied or that their friends get bullied. So my question is, where are the teachers and paraprofessionals getting the training to really detect or know when a student is being bullied or harassed?” 

Receiver/Superintendent Soto responded by saying: “Yes, there is some training, I don’t know that the effectiveness of that training.”

To which School Committee member Devan Sheehan responded: “I just have a question and a comment you just made that you don’t know the effectiveness of the training, but they get it. I mean, let’s get better training then. Okay, I just mean, like, why are we putting something like, are you saying the training that we’re giving isn’t effective?”

Soto: “It’s hard to measure an online training platform on what is required for mandated reporting and what the bullying, you know, all the training that you get around bullying. Like, I don’t even know how to begin monitoring the effectiveness of it. How do you measure whether that worked or didn’t.”

Sheehan: “It doesn’t even matter what the training topic is. But everything that we are putting out you should consider effective. If not, it needs to be changed. So if we’re just going through steps to check a box, then we’re doing the wrong thing. And I would hope that your senior leadership team, whoever’s making these recommendations to you, is putting out training they believe is going to be effective. And if it can’t be monitored, then we need to do something better. “

Soto: “OK.”

Also discussed in this meeting is what to do with the mobile phones students bring in. 

Holyoke High School/Dean Tech School representative on the School Committee Evan Kennedy

After Holyoke High School Dean Campus Student Representative Evan Kennedy pointed out that, “it’s amusing to me that the district thinks that students aren’t going to get their phone passed the searches, staffing also. Yeah, that’s going to be a nightmare.”

The last 2 or 3 times there were searches for phones, it delayed the beginning of the school day by an hour.

The matter was referred to the School Committee’s subcommittee on policies.

Finally, Secretary Johnston shared with the committee his evalutaion of the job Soto has been doing. Soto scored high throughout the evaluation, which looks at leadership, collaboration and student successes, among other salient points. The full evalutaion can be read here.

The School Committee info can be viewed here.