It is often persistent small acts that ultimately create big changes.
The Coordinators in the Forest Park neighborhood of Springfield, Massachusetts, exemplify this ethos.
“I believe that even small acts of support and connection can have a ripple effect,” said Imani McCoy, a Coordinator at Beal Elementary School.
Small acts, like providing a winter coat, can create those ripples that lead to a child’s sense of being valued and cared for, more focus in the classroom, improved academic scores, and more. Those ripples become amplified when carried out in a school and in an entire community.
City Connects has been implemented in Springfield’s public schools since 2011 and is currently in 41 schools. The Forest Park neighborhood runs along the Connecticut River in the southern part of Springfield. The neighborhood contains City Connects schools like Washington Elementary, Beal Elementary, Sumner Avenue Elementary, White Street Elementary, and Kensington International School. Their shared proximity allows Coordinators to more easily connect and work together to create more opportunities for students.
“Being strong members of the community helps us meet the needs of the kids in a variety of ways,” said Jennifer Maccarini, a Coordinator at Washington Elementary School.
A good example of how Coordinators use their presence in the community to help their students is Springfield’s Spring Party. The Forest Park Coordinators volunteer for this event and help with promotion beforehand. The party, organized by the Springfield Lodge of Elks #61, includes a community breakfast and an Easter egg hunt.
“Everyone deserves access to the resources and support they need to survive,” McCoy said. “With events like the Spring Party, we try to make it inclusive to families who don’t celebrate Easter. We also adapt what we do to the community’s needs. During 2020 and 2021, that meant moving to giveaways via a drive-through, so we could safely social distance ourselves.”
“When we think about working in the community, we think about supporting family,” said Molley Shea, a Coordinator at Sumner Avenue Elementary School. Sometimes, that support involves a community event: a chance for Coordinators to work side-by-side with community members, build relationships with families, learn more about their students outside of school, and create more community connections that bring resources and opportunities to students. Many Forest Park community events are held at the local Elks Lodge, including the Spring Party, the Springfield Together Holiday Party, a Trunk-or-Treat, and a Fishing Derby.
For the Springfield Together Holiday Party, Coordinators from multiple schools in Forest Park joined together to organize the event.
“We planned (the Springfield Together Holiday Party) for months,” said Maccarini. “We had school and community volunteers help us set up beautiful decorations, serve pizza and hot cocoa to families, prepare cookie decorating and crafts stations, and give away puzzles and candy canes. We hired a DJ to set a festive mood.”
All the Forest Park Coordinators are members of Springfield Together, a nonprofit whose mission is to “improve realities of life by providing opportunities to achieve success through youth development and education, and athletic and social and community engagement with youth and families.”
The organization helps all of the small persistent acts of Coordinators in their community to ripple out in stronger and stronger waves.
“Springfield Together is what has allowed us to organize this [community] work,” Maccarini said. “This work is so meaningful to us as Coordinators as we strive to bridge gaps. Not only are we able to provide the children in our schools with enriching experiences to share with their families and friends in an accessible and safe space, but we’re also able to partake in these experiences with them, which is an amazing feeling.”
Shea and the other Forest Park Coordinators, including Tiffany Liddell of Sumner Avenue Elementary, Kelli Kefalas of White Street Elementary School, and Patrick Lavoie of Kensington International School, see these community events as key to strengthening the impact and implementation of City Connects.
For example, Coordinators are building relationships with families and community leaders at these events. When it comes time to develop individualized, tailored plans for each student’s strengths and needs, those established relationships help the adults at home, in school, and in the community work more closely together to benefit the student.
Those small acts have also resulted in big results for Springfield Public Schools. Since launching City Connects in 2010, Springfield schools have seen increased graduation rates, decreased dropout rates, and closing achievement gaps “in every subject and student category, establishing Springfield as the highest performing urban school high-poverty district,” according to our blog post in 2024.
City Connects achieves these outcomes by addressing each student’s strengths and needs in four domains: academics, social-emotional-behavioral development, physical health and wellbeing, and family. Within each of those domains, a child may benefit from different types of interventions. Supports and opportunities are organized into three levels: prevention and enrichment (Tier 1), early intervention (Tier 2), and intensive/crisis (Tier 3).
Shea said that giveaways of food and clothing can be classified as early intervention, for example.
“The Spring Party is an example of a Tier One intervention for us,” Shea said. “It’s the same tier as the drama studio community partnership we have for students. A good example of our Tier Two interventions is tutoring students one-on-one.”
These tailored plans and supports help connect students to their community and often prevent needs from getting more acute.
“That community work does tie into our school buildings,” said Kefalas. “It’s important to utilize Tier One and Tier Two interventions to support students before they potentially experience a Tier Three issue. By finding the right resources through these community events, we can keep a student’s needs from escalating.”
Being part of so many events is one way that Coordinators’ persistent small acts make a big difference: they build connections across the community, and with students and their families, that help prevent crises. By working closely with families and community members, Coordinators can find the resources and opportunities that set the stage for students to learn and thrive.
