GREENFIELD — Though they’ll both tackle different aspects of public education as the Greenfield Public Schools’ two newest administrators, both have backgrounds in helping at-risk and special education students succeed.
Dianne Ellis has been hired as the department’s new director of pupil services and Elizabeth Pratt has accepted the role of assistant to the superintendent for curriculum, instruction and professional development. Both started this month.
Ellis, a Montague resident who’s most recently worked as a principal in the Athol-Royalston school district, will step into the recently vacated pupil services role, replacing outgoing director Adam Garand.
Ellis got her start 20 years ago as an early childhood educator before moving into the community mental health and human services field after receiving a degree in psychology.
There, as a licensed mental health clinician, she worked with children in summer youth programs and advocated for adults with mental health issues and adjudicated youth.
She was eventually drawn back to education because she felt limited by only being able to see a client here and there for an hour or so.
“Those systems have since evolved, but I really thought about getting into school counseling,” she said. “You see kids 30 hours per week, they spend the majority of their waking hours at school.”
She began working to help them feel more positive about school and navigate their academic life, especially for those who had divorce, substance abuse or other risk factors in their personal lives.
“It felt like the right shift,” she said. “It was a more systemic approach that allowed more time, if you could create supportive systems in the schools where the children felt success.”
Her first position in that role was as an adjustment counselor at Ralph C. Mahar Regional School in Orange. She soon moved up to become the student services director, where she stayed for five years before taking a job with School Based Services, which supports public schools with at-risk youth and special education needs, before re-entering public education as an assistant principal in Vermont, then as principal at Pleasant Street School in Athol.
Ellis said she looks forward to continuing to develop the local school system as a positive force in student’s education and development.
“I think public school is one of the best publicly-organized resources we have to improve outcomes for kids,” she said. “It makes more sense to invest in education, the alternative is investing in treatment systems or correctional systems. It’s been very exciting coming to Greenfield, a lot of the pieces are in place, with Discovery School as an Innovation schools, the Math and Science Academy, extended learning at Newton School.”
Pratt, a Princeton resident, will lead the district in developing and implementing curricula and broadening the department staff’s skill for next year as the new assistant to the superintendent for curriculum, instruction and professional development.
Pratt said education has been in her blood since she can remember — her mother was a career school teacher.
“We lived the school calendar, we participated in her job, put up bulletin boards,” she said. “I witnessed her be one of those teachers who at Christmas time made gingerbread cookies for all the students.”
After two years studying physical therapy in college, she decided to apply those skills to a career in education instead.
“The education part is what I really liked more than anything else,” she said.
She started her own teaching career in Roxbury at Mission Church High School. That job and the family environment among the staff and faculty that came with it instilled within her a collaborative management style that persists to this day, she said.
“I’d never had that in my own personal academic experiences, and to know that everyone worked together and covered for each other if people were out,” she said. “It just was such a welcoming environment and it’s something I’ve identified that I need to have and create.”
She said she was lucky to get the job at the time, amid a economic environment when most schools found themselves in budget crunches, and quickly began pursuing a master’s degree. That helped her land a position at Fitchburg High School teaching health, where she helped develop alternative programming for at-risk students suffering from substance abuse problems, homelessness or teen pregnancy.
Years later, a chance encounter in a restaurant with a former student of that program, now a professional plumber with a young daughter, let her glimpse the fruit of those efforts.
“It’s those moments of knowing that you had an impact, and you don’t know when they’re going to come … but you know that’s why you keep up with this stuff,” she said. “You have an impact, you know it matters.”
She continued working to create innovative programs in other districts, including Leominster.
In Greenfield, Pratt said she’s excited to see an active level of community involvement in the school system in just her first month on the job.
“I’ve already met a couple of nice women from Greening Greenfield, who are doing the composting program, and the food service department is just great,” she said. “I see a real caring part of the community and look forward to embracing that.”
She said her new position, which will allow her to have an impact on shaping both teachers and students, is a high point in her career. She also looks forward to harnessing state education data and presenting it to teachers in a usable format to improve their classrooms.
She also hopes to expand programming and specialized instruction to offer the students who might otherwise leave the district for other schools.
“We can look at the culminating events to see what caused them to leave, and make sure that doesn’t happen anymore,” she said.
Ellis said she, too, looks forward to working to bolster in-district programming.
“There’s definitely ways we can retain more of our kids with added supports,” she said.
You can reach Tom Relihan at: 413-772-0261, ext. 264
or trelihan@recorder.com
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