Dr. Suzanne Scallion
CHICOPEE – Even steady rainfall couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm coming from the MassMutual Conference Center Wednesday, as educators from western Mass. Gateway Cities met to discuss how to improve their school districts.
Gateway Cities are midsize urban centers that anchor regional economies around the state. For generations, these communities were home to industry that offered residents good jobs and a “gateway” to the American Dream. Over the past several decades, manufacturing jobs slowly disappeared. Lacking resources and capacity to rebuild and reposition, Gateway Cities have been slow to draw new economy investment.
William Duval
Educators and administrators from Chicopee, Holyoke, Springfield, and Westfield convened to hear two panel discussions on building “dynamic community wide learning systems” and “bringing new learning models to scale.”
Westfield Superintendent Dr. Suzanne Scallion sat on the first panel, which also included Sally Fuller, project director for the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation; Dr. Adrienne Smith, dean of Engineering Technologies at Springfield Technical Community College; and Paul Hyry-Dermith, assistant superintendent for Holyoke Public Schools.
“The Gateway Cities project has been going on for seven to eight years, and the superintendents met and began to look at the issues of students in the Gateway Cities, because it’s pretty well known that students in these cities have particular needs,” Scallion said. “We have higher numbers of kids that are English learners and kids in poverty.”
Scallion stated that the morning’s focus was on areas such as early childhood needs, social-emotional learning, college and career readiness, with she herself speaking on speaking on social and emotional competancy.
“Gateway Cities have higher levels of crime and discipline issues that impact learning,” she said. “Kids who are misbehaving aren’t learning, kids who aren’t learning are more likely to drop out, kids who drop out are more likely to be a problem in the community, and kids who are problems are going to cost the city money.”
“Even if you’re a cynical, ‘don’t-want-to-pay-taxes’ kind of person, that kid is going to end up costing you $300,000 over the course of their life,” Scallion stated. “A kid that doesn’t graduate from high school and cannot get a job and be self-sufficient is going to have to rely on the support of the community. The way I look at it is that every life is precious. We need to do the best job we can getting kids ready to be self-sufficient.”
Whether a student wants to be a school superintendent, an engineer, or a reporter for The Westfield News, Scallion’s hopes and desires for the Westfield School District hinge on the discipline and guidance of it’s students.
“We spend so much time looking at reading, math, social studies and science, we don’t remember that acheivement is connected to social and emotional competance,” she said. “We were spending time dealing with misbehavior, so we brought in PBIS.”
Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, or PBIS, has been in the Westfield elementary schools for over a year, and Scallion believes it has already had an impact.
“When I was a principal, it (PBIS) transformed my school,” she said. “We explicitly teach the skills kids need to function effectively in a school setting. How do you walk down a hall? We don’t want robots, but we want kids to know how to move through a corridor appropriately. How do you eat a table? What is a ‘table voice’?”
“We want kids to develop perserverance, tenacity, skills they can bring to their families,” she said. “One day when they’re in a relationship, we want kids to know how to resolve conflict without getting in a fight.”
Scallion praised the efforts of Betsy Philpott, who has overseen the PBIS implementation in the district, and said that next year the program will be “taken to the next level.”
“We’re going to be bringing it to our middle schools and make sure that all staff who are in contact with students – food services, custodial staff, transportation – are trained in the language (of PBIS),” she said. “We need to explicitly teach kids how to ride the bus. They’re not taught to keep your bottom on the seat. We might bark orders, but we need to teach it, practice it, and positively reinforce it. So we’re off and running.”
When asked what the continued implementation of PBIS is costing the district, Scallion said that Philpott’s salary accounts for almost the entire cost.
Bill Duval, a member of the Westfield School Committee, was also at the event, and believes that plenty was discussed that could be brought back to the district and be crucial to the district’s current budget talks.
“We have to look at what’s being applied (in other Gateway Cities) and find out ways to do it. There’s no reason we can’t do it,” he said of programs such as PBIS. “There’s a lot of things we could be doing. The Springfield Housing Authority, for example, and the schools have partnerships that train parents to help kids with their schoolwork, helping some of these parents get some education, because a lot of them are undereducated.”
Duval added that, while Westfield’s situation is far less dire then that of other Gateway Cities in Hampden County, that doesn’t mean initiatives wouldn’t be beneficial.
“Research shows clearly that the more involved in schools, the better their kids do,” he said.
