Our approach is grounded in the experience of our founding staff: The late JoEllen Lynch, an education pioneer, established and scaled the country’s first nationally recognized transfer school model for students who are over-age and under-credited. As a member of Chancellor Joel Klein’s leadership team at the NYC DOE, she helped guide New York City’s school system of nearly a million students to an unprecedented increase in the city’s graduation rates. Read more about JoEllen’s life and legacy here.
Elina Alayeva designed and spearheaded initiatives to fund tech tools and school models to accelerate innovation and drive student achievement nationally. She saw the power of community-designed schools while working on First Nations reserves in Canada. Elina assumed the role of Springpoint’s Executive Director in 2017, to carry JoEllen’s legacy and vision forward.
Seeing the power of intentional and innovative practices in these contexts, we were determined to ensure that any community in the United States could harness intentional design and a belief in their students to reimagine their schools.
Springpoint was originally conceived and funded as part of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Opportunity by Design initiative (ObD). Today, our team of experienced teachers, school leaders, leadership coaches, and network Superintendents draw on their expertise in designing innovative student experiences via classrooms, community partnerships, transfer school models, competency-based education, national charter systems, and innovative district initiatives.
Through this alchemy of perspectives, Springpoint seeks to advance a broader understanding of how intentional school design and implementation can result in life-changing outcomes—a pathway to college and/or a satisfying career—for today’s high school students.
