Press Room

Educare Springfield joyously opened our doors and transitioned 141 children, their families and staff beginning January 2, 2020. A few short months later, which seem like a lifetime ago for our community, Educare closed the facility on March 13, 2020 due to the state lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the physical facility closed, our early learning community did not cease serving the children and families of Educare Springfield. We continued to provide services for our families, providing supports and referrals from the family service coordinators. Many families were faced with food insecurity, some required mental health referrals, and others needed learning supplies to assist their children's development. We instituted virtual classrooms for continued learning and enrichment with our Holyoke Chicopee Head Start partners.

SPRINGFIELD — Nikki Burnett, executive director of Educare Springfield, the nation’s 24th Educare early-education center, has been appointed to a number of national Educare-related boards, including the Educare Learning Network (ELN) collaborative fundraising advisory board, which finds opportunities for greater financial sustainability of the ELN through enhanced fundraising programming. Burnett, the first executive director of Educare Springfield, has also joined the Red Nose Day advisory board, which provides guidance over the grant from Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day Fund on behalf of the ELN. Burnett has also joined the Educare Policy Work Group, which guides and supports the collective network’s engagement in early-childhood policy and advocacy, and the Educare Learning Network steering committee, which informs the direction of the annual meeting. Locally, Burnett has also joined a number of local serving boards, including the board of trustees of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, as well as the boards of Holyoke Community College Foundation and Dress for Success. B  urnett was raised in the Mason Square neighborhood, attended neighborhood public schools, and earned her undergraduate degree in leadership and organizational science from Bay Path University. She will be completing her master’s degree in leadership and negotiation from Bay Path in 2020. Read the full story at Businesswest.com

Belsito said his first assignment is to understand what makes Springfield Springfield, and it is ongoing. From there, his job is to pull people together — something the Davis Foundation has always been good at it — and, when possible, move the needle. He’s made it a career to take on such work, and he’s more than excited about what the next chapter might bring. Read the full story at Business West

Editor’s note: This is part of The Republican’s One People, One House community dialogue series sharing perspectives on the issues of racism and policing: We are advised to stretch before jogging or running a race to warm up our muscles and increase flexibility. Without stretching there is weakness and inability to extend all the way. Some stretches are tight and painful, and a trainer will encourage us to continue to move into the discomfort and hold there. After holding the stretch for a few seconds (which ultimately feels like an eternity), the muscles have loosened, feel limber and are ready to conquer the track ahead. We are in times where humanity is running the race FOR its life. It is incumbent upon all of us to get in the starting block and commit to the finish line. Jeremy Heimans, in his TedTalk, “What New Power Looks Like,” tells us that we need “the deployment of mass participation and peer coordination to create change and shift outcomes.” I am experiencing an exponential increase in opportunities to have discussions about race, politics and history in my personal and professional life.  Read the full story at Masslive.com

Springfield celebrates Black History month 2/3/2020 -Springfield- Students from Springfield's Freedman Elementary School sing during the city's 34th Annual Black American Flag Raising ceremony at City Hall to celebrate Black History Month. Read the full story at Masslive.com

“I am a product of early education and care; and my daughter is a product of it as well,” Nikki Burnett told us recently. Burnett’s daughter is currently a student at Howard University. As for Burnett herself she has come full circle. Born and raised in Massachusetts, in Springfield’s Mason Square neighborhood, Burnett worked for over a decade as a senior administrator at the American Heart Association. Now she’s back in Mason Square working as the executive director of the new Educare Springfield center , which just opened this month and is already at full enrollment. Educare is an evidence-based national network of 25 early education programs with the sweeping goal of figuring out “the most effective and the most promising ways to work with each individual child and each individual family, and we do that with excitement and passion for the work,” according to Charlotte Brantley, the president and CEO of the Clayton Early Learning, Educare Denver. Read the full story www.eyeonearlyeducation.org