SY26-27 High School of Commerce Early College Coordinator

Positions: Full Time

Start Date: Immediate Opening

Salary: TBD; commensurate with experience

About the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership: 

While Massachusetts is consistently ranked as one of the top states for education results in the country, we have one of the highest and most persistent opportunity gaps. The Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP) - established in 2015 as a collaboration between Springfield Public Schools (SPS), the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and the Springfield Education Association (SEA) – seeks to improve the longitudinal life outcomes of the more than 2,500 students in our 8 middle schools. 

SEZP combines district-based public education with the flexibility of autonomous school models, granting schools meaningful control over curriculum, staffing, scheduling, and budgeting—while maintaining clear accountability for student learning and growth. 

Across all of its work—including school improvement and educator preparation—SEZP is guided by three core values:

• Access: Expanding access to strong learning environments, skilled mentors, and clear pathways for students and educators
  
  
• Belonging: Building communities where people are known, supported, and accountable to one another

• Opportunity: Preparing students and educators to learn, lead, and thrive over time

Job Details
The Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP) is committed to building anti-racist schools by ensuring the work of equity is fully inclusive of and focused on our students of color, exceptional learners, emerging bilinguals, and all families across our schools. A central SEZP strategy for disrupting institutionalized racism lives in our innovation around Early College for high school students. The SEZP pioneered the “fifth year” graduation deferment option for high school seniors to provide enough time for scholars to earn an Associate’s degree or to amass an equivalent number of college credits, thereby significantly increasing the odds of college matriculation and retention, and drastically reducing the financial burdens of higher education on families. The SEZP supports multiple models of early college programming, including wall-to-wall, dual enrollment, and pathways-focused options. This deeply impactful work is made possible through the most robust college partnership strategy in the state, engaging multiple institutions of higher education in course delivery and degree attainment. Our partners include Worcester State University, Springfield Technical Community College, Quinsigamond Community College, Westfield State University, and Holyoke Community College. 

The SEZP calls upon skilled and passionate professionals to trailblaze a new model of early college instruction in which they are dually employed as both an adjunct faculty member of Worcester State University and our SEZP high schools. 

Early College Coordinators will work to ensure linguistic and racial equity through academic rigor and personalized supports that empower students and families in maximizing credit accrual, developing personalized college and career plans, and allowing scholars to obtain an Associate’s degree by their high school graduation, if they choose. ECCs serve to make early college a force for disrupting the institutionalized racism inherent in secondary and postsecondary schools for our Springfield scholars.  

Job Responsibilities

Early College Coordinators will accomplish the following:

• Coordinate early college courses with Worcester State University (WSU), Baypath, other college partners and SEZP staff
• Provide students with language supports during classes so they are able to access key concepts
• Track student asignment progress and support students to make up assignments as needed
• Run intervention progarmming as needed to support students to master early college content 
• Provide support sessions, advising, and office hours to ensure enrolled students have access to intervention and additional resources to ensure success
• Enact anti-racist instructional practices that ensure students own the learning 
• Work closely with a team of student support team members, mentors, and interventionists to amplify student success 
• Engaging with families as partners in the learning around successes, challenges, and problem-solving on behalf of our scholars  

Position Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree preferred but not required
• Strong commitment to the philosophy and efficacy of providing early college access to scholars in marginalized populations required
• Experience in advising in a higher education context preferred
• Experience working with high school-age students preferred
• Bilingual in English and Spanish preferred
• Experience as an active anti-racist or advocate for equity preferred

If you meet some of the qualifications above, we encourage you to apply or reach out for more information. We know that historically marginalized groups – including people of color, women, people from working class backgrounds, and people who identify as LGBTQ – are less likely to apply unless and until they meet every requirement for a job. Therefore, we strongly encourage applications from educators with these identities or who are members of other marginalized communities. 

We encourage you to reach out to Kelley Gangi at kgangi@springfieldempowerment.org if you have questions about the role or your qualifications. We are happy to help you feel ready to apply!

Benefits
Selection as a coordinator in the SEZP recognizes an individual for their outstanding vision, capacity, and commitment to anti-racist school communities.

NONDISCRIMINATION EMPLOYMENT STATEMENT  

The Springfield Public Schools does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, sex stereotypes and other sex-based conduct, genetic information, ancestry, age, disability or military service or marital status. The Springfield Public Schools does not discriminate in admission to, access or treatment in its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, sex, gender identity, sex characteristics, sex stereotypes and other sex-based conduct, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation, disability or homelessness.

NOTICE OF SEX NONDISCRIMINATION

Springfield Public Schools does not discriminate on the basis of sex and prohibits sex discrimination, including sex-based harassment, in any education program or activity that it operates, as required by Title IX and its regulations, including in admission and employment.

Inquiries about Title IX may be referred to the Springfield Public Schools’ Title IX Coordinator, titleix@springfieldpublicschools.com, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights at https://ocrcas.ed.gov/contact-ocr, or both.

The Springfield Public Schools Title IX Coordinator is Katie O’Sullivan, Senior Administrator of Human Resources, 1550 Main Street, Springfield, MA 01103, 413-787-7100 ext. 55428, titleix@springfieldpublicschools.com.

Springfield Public School’s sex nondiscrimination policy and grievance procedures can be located on the Springfield Public Schools website, www.springfieldpublicschools.com/non-_discrimination

To report information about conduct that may constitute sex discrimination or make a complaint of sex discrimination under Title IX, please refer to titleix@springfieldpublicschools.com