Eight Empowerment Zone Schools to Return to District Control; Commerce and RISE Highlighted as Challenges

The Springfield School Committee received a lengthy briefing on the transition of eight Springfield Empowerment Zone (SEZP) schools back to district management, scheduled for July 1, 2026. Michael Calvinese, assigned to lead the transition, described the SEZP model's contract and memorandum of understanding as having provided staffing, budgeting and governance autonomies that contributed to measurable gains at multiple schools.

Calvinese said the partnership model used in the zone combined a higher teacher compensation and longer workday with teacher-leadership teams (TLTs) and locally adjusted budgeting. He argued those structures helped drive improvements, for example at Chestnut Park and Vansickle Academy, and recommended the district pursue a local innovation-model prospectus (a Renaissance-style screening process) to capture the successful elements during transition. "The contract that the teachers have under SEZP ... and the MOU with SPS ... have driven success," he said. (Michael Calvinese.)

Committee members focused special attention on the High School of Commerce, where SEZP placed a concentration of low-incidence special-education programs. Calvinese said Commerce currently reports roughly 55% of students on IEPs and that of those, 77% are high-needs/low-incidence programs; Commerce's aggregated accountability score is below the state's tenth percentile when the school's programs are treated separately. Multiple members warned that the way Commerce's performance has been aggregated under SEZP obscures campus-level weaknesses and could complicate the transition. "When you take schools that are operating independently but happen to share the same building, and you lump all their scores together to get to a threshold, ... they're not over the mark," said Mister Collins.

Members discussed options including pursuing donor funding, negotiating an MOU with the union to preserve targeted autonomies, and using the innovation-school statutory process to create a structured screening committee that includes a school-committee designee, union representatives and district staff. Vice Chair Naylor emphasized the need to preserve the instructional programming that schools and staff identify as working, and called for schools' autonomy where it helps students.

No final decisions were made at the meeting; Calvinese asked the committee to appoint a screening representative so local innovation prospectuses can move forward and noted that further negotiations with the union and detailed operational plans will follow. Committee members asked district staff to secure written clarifications from DESE about how Commerce's data will be handled and to provide updated enrollment and special-education placement data.