Baker lauds Empowerment schools
Gov. Charlie Baker hailed the state’s only Empowerment Zone school district as a model for other states yesterday as controversy continues to swirl over administration-backed legislation that would allow troubled schools to sidestep union contracts under the program.
“The thing I admire most about this is it gives teachers and administrators a mechanism through which they can own reform and do it within the framework of a traditional public school,” Baker said, adding, “admittedly it is early, but you want people to change; you want them to do something different, then come up with a model that gives them a chance to own it.”
Baker’s comments came after he toured several Springfield schools, including High School of Commerce, with Democratic Delaware Gov. John Carney, who is interested in bringing the model to schools in Wilmington.
Nine middle schools and two high schools are in the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership, which was formed in 2014 and is overseen by an independent, joint city-state board. The program allows teachers and principals to develop curriculum and set their own budgets and schedules outside of top-down district mandates.
Many Springfield principals and teachers say the long-struggling schools have been transformed by the partnership.
“It was utter chaos, borderline dangerous,” said Forest Park Middle School Principal Thomas Mazza. “It was not conducive to student learning. It is night and day. The only thing that remains the same is the name.”
Evan Christner, a math teacher at John J. Duggan Academy, agreed.
“We were in the bottom 1 percentile of schools in Massachusetts,” he said. “There was no culture of learning. Education was not the priority.”
But after the Empowerment Zone was formed, Christner said lesson plans changed “dramatically” and teachers began working together as a team.
“I think this is a model for the entire country,” Mazza added. “What educators ask for is time — time with other teachers and to learn from other teachers. There is a teacher voice. It is coming from the front line. They are making decisions that are best for their own particular campus.”
State legislation to expand the model across the state, however, has caught the ire of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has slammed the proposal as an end-run around Question 2, the failed ballot referendum to lift the cap on charter schools. The union argues that the proposal opens the door to charter-like schools, where unions have no control.
But Julie Swerdlow Albino, co-executive director of the Springfield Empowerment Zone, said unionized teachers are an integral part of the system.
“In Springfield, we developed some really positive relationships with the teachers’ union and with the school district,” Albino told the Herald. “These schools are still Springfield Public Schools and are still unionized. The model we’re working with is all about empowerment and putting the decisions of individual schools with principals and teacher leadership teams.”