­­­HOLYOKE –  After serving as the acting receiver/superintendent for several months, Anthony Soto has begun his tenure as leader of the Holyoke Public Schools.

Soto was appointed by Jeff Riley, who serves as Commissioner of Education for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), to serve as acting receiver in March and officially began as the next permanent receiver this month. Soto said his passion for Holyoke was, in part, due the fact that he was born and raised in the city.

Soto said he was born at the Providence Hospital and attended Holyoke Public Schools from kindergarten until he graduated high school. “I started in kindergarten over at Kirkland then transitioned to Lawrence Peck and then moved on to Dean Tech,” he said. “I graduated in ’99 and was fortunate enough to be salutatorian.” This, he said, earned him nearly a full scholarship to attend UMass Amherst where he attended the Isenberg School of Management.

Following his graduation from UMass, he said he was employed by a company that also paid for him to continue his education through the university and earn his master’s degree through their accelerated management program. Soto said that job took him to Boston, however soon, he said, he found himself missing his hometown.

“I got homesick, wasn’t a fan of the big city life. I missed my family, missed my hometown,” he said. So he moved back to Western Massachusetts where he “worked for a smaller firm.”

“I feel like those two jobs helped develop a real strong work ethic. Working until 12:45 [a.m.], the last blue line train runs at 1 [a.m.] and I would come back and do it again in the morning,” he said. “I really developed a strong work ethic, but felt empty in terms of what I was doing.”

That is when he began his journey in the educational field, taking a job with the Springfield Public Schools system. “I landed a job in the Springfield Public Schools in 2008 as a senior financial analyst. I got to work under some really good leaders and worked my way up to budget director,” he said. “They brought in some really talented people that I was able to be mentored by.”

When current Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Daniel Warwick was hired into the position, Soto said he developed a great relationship with him. “I was fortunate enough to be put in a position to work closely with the superintendent a lot,” he said, adding that he “continued to have a really good, solid relationship” with Warwick over the years.

During his time working for Springfield Public Schools, Soto said former receiver/superintendent Stephen Zrike began recruiting him to work for the Holyoke Public Schools district. “Dr. Zrike recruited me. He called me a few times, I said no, Springfield was offering me the opportunity with a promotion,” he said. Soto said he wanted to continue the work that he was doing with the team in Springfield.

“We were running a well-oiled machine, and there was hesitancy to leave something I felt like I built. To leave that was a little hard for me,” he said. However, Soto said eventually he felt drawn to return to Holyoke. “Saying no to Dr. Zrike I felt bad and felt like I was taking the easy route, felt like I was turning my back on the community I loved,” he said. After about the third time Zrike called, Soto said he felt he could “take some of the work I’d done in Springfield and apply it to Holyoke.”

During his time working with Zrike, Soto said he had the opportunity to learn a lot, including attending a state-led program aimed at increasing the “the number of superintendents of color in the state.” He said, “I learned a lot about race and equity, different things you need to learn as superintendent.”

When Zrike decided to move on from Holyoke Public Schools, Soto said Riley approached him about applying for the position. “Before Zrike left, the commissioner asked me to apply for the receiver position. I respectfully declined, at the time we did a lot of work over the past five years on the operations side and I felt strongly that someone with an academic and teaching background was what Holyoke needed at the time,” he said. He said he felt as though he had more to learn and felt that “the next time the seat opened up I’d be better prepared to push that seat forward.”

However, after six months with a new receiver, once again Riley approached Soto about applying for the position. “We brought in another receiver and things didn’t work out. The commissioner tapped me again and said please reconsider at least taking it in the interim. I recognized the strong team we had around us and the good thing we had going in the last few years,” he said. “I knew this is what Holyoke needed at the time, for me to step up, get kids back in person [and] continue on the momentum we’ve been building on the past few years.”

Soto said he felt his commitment and love for Holyoke set him apart and would be an asset. “It’s not just about me, we have a really strong team in place, a strong chief of academics. Now is the time to shift focus on instruction and getting better output for students. Me being from Holyoke, I bring a perspective to this role that not many people have had,” he said. “I’m super committed to only doing this work here. If anyone asked me to be a superintendent at this point in my career anywhere else, I would have said no. The only reason I’m doing this is because it’s Holyoke. I hope to retire from here, that stability is important.”

His time within the district, he said, would also benefit him in the role as he already had connections with community stakeholders. “I think the fact that I’ve been here for five years, I’ve already developed some strong relationships with key stakeholders. I want to leverage those partnerships and relationships,” he said, adding that he already had relationships with the School Committee and some city councilors.

“My goal is ultimately we want the same thing the community wants, I want to make sure every child can achieve their dreams and develop their potential,” he said. Soto said part of his entry plan was to reach out to members of the community, staff and students to seek their input.

“Hearing from them how we can most effectively do this work together,” he said. “I want to make sure our goals reflect feedback from the community.”

While Soto took the reins during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said he was proud to have helped a significant portion of the student population return to full time in-person learning before the 2020-2021 academic year ended. “Some of our students, by the time August rolls around they wouldn’t have been in school for 18 months. That’s a long time, we’re eager to get families back. When I took over in February we didn’t have many students in person,” he said. “We put together a reopening plan to go from hybrid learning to ultimately full in person learning by April 6. We were able to get almost 60 percent [of students] back in person.”

He said they “learned a lot” both from community input and resources needed within the community. These lessons, he said, would be important to remember moving forward and to keep in place. “It starts with assessing how students are at in their learning and develop plans to remediate any learning gaps that may exist,” he said.

Soto said he also hopes to use some of the positives that came out of the pandemic to their advantage and continue to utilize them. “I would hope over the last year we have some positive things that have come out of the pandemic that we can capitalize on. Assessing where our students are and developing an accelerated learning plan is going to be important. We have a lot of resources coming in through extra federal funds,” he said. “A lot of issues people are talking about as a result of the pandemic: poverty, joblessness, a lot of these issues existed in Holyoke before the pandemic. People are paying attention because now it’s happening in places it hasn’t before, we stand to benefit from that.”

Soto said since taking the position he was proud that he and his team had been able to get a significant portion of students back to in-person learning and stepping in when the community he loves needed him. “The fact that we were able to get almost 60 percent of students back is a huge accomplishment,” he said. “It’s an amazing accomplishment, I’m proud of the team planning that went into it.”

He went on to say he was also proud of the relationships he’d been able to repair since taking the position. “At the beginning of the school year, it was a rough transition with the new superintendent. In that process there was a lot of damage done with a lot of different important relationships in the community, some of them principals, city councilors, School Committee members. So I’m proud I was able to really quickly mend those relationships,” he said. “All it took was reaching out and being present. I talked to a bunch of School Committee members, city councilors to repair some of the damages that were made. In a city where they’re already talking about the receivership needing to go away or as a bad thing, it doesn’t help when there’s not a strong relationship between stakeholders.”

Soto said he took on the role in March he made a point to visit each school within the district in person. He said staff and principals had been surprised to see him, and he felt proud he could provide that support and connection. “Some schools didn’t see the superintendents in the six months [he was there]. I’m proud to have principals be supported and have that connection to the central office and leadership,” he said.

Additionally, he said he was proud to have promoted and rewarded some long term staff and Holyoke residents for their hard work. “They’ve developed as leaders within schools. I want to continue to develop them as leaders, they’ve shown tremendous leadership and passion for the Holyoke community. As their leader I want to reward that behavior and growth,” he said. “It pains me every time a principal job opens up, we’re looking externally. We have got to invest in the people that are committed to Holyoke and have been here a long time. That reflects my core belief that we have to invest in our people.”

Moving forward, Soto said he wants to build on the foundation they already have developed. “Now it’s time to focus on instructional leadership and make sure students are getting a quality education,” he said. Soto added that while they have seen successes at high school with decreased drop out rates and increased graduation rates, he hopes to implement that across the district to see success in every school. “I would like to see more of that success, but across all grade levels,” he said.

To do this, Soto said he’d be working to develop a strategy. However, he emphasized he would not finalize any strategy without seeking community input first. “I don’t want to develop a strategy without getting feedback from as many Holyokers as possible, I want my strategy to reflect what the community is thinking,” he said.