Mayor Domenic J. Sarno joined with Matt Brunell and Colleen Curran, Co-Executive Directors of the Springfield Empower Zone Partnership (SEZP) and team along with Duggan Principal Mike Calvanese and Duggan Associate Principal April Robinson along with a panel of esteemed local leaders on Wednesday to welcome a group of educators and leaders from Minnesota as they consider adopting a similar program model.
Mayor Sarno states, “The Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership was established here in 2015 and has made great progress on turning our school’s performance around with graduation and attendance rates increasing and dropouts decreasing. With the SEZP we have also seen a change in the make-up our educators who now better reflect our student population. Our city and school system has seen many benefits from adopting the Empowerment Zone model and are proud to share our story of success with other school districts who are looking to make a change to this model in order to reach more students, more effectively. Thank you to the team at Duggan for welcoming us.”
