SYForest Park Middle School Student Support Specialist

Position type: 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 5,000 students in our 16 middle and high schools.

As a “zone” of schools within the city of Springfield, SEZP’s approach draws on a deep and embedded partnership with the school district and local teachers’ union, while harnessing the flexibility and innovation found in autonomous school models. As a result, each school within SEZP is accorded significant school-based autonomies - in curriculum, talent, calendar, schedule, and budget – while being held accountable for realizing achievement gains for historically marginalized students.

In all of our work, SEZP is in pursuit of equity and anti-racism acknowledging the systemic oppression our students and families encounter daily and working to disrupt these provision gaps urgently and courageously.

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.

The Student Support Specialist will work with a team to ensure that students demonstrate dramatic student achievement gains and internalize the school’s values. The Student Support Coordinator will help lead the school’s efforts to create a positive, structured, consistent, caring, and disciplined school culture.

• Assist in supporting student behavior in hallways and classrooms
• Assist in escorting students throughout the building
• Assist in monitoring hallways.
• Assist with monitoring students at breakfast, lunch and dismissal

We are seeking team players committed to the SEZP mission, high expectations, and their own professional growth.

• Associate's degree…