Peck Principal Sarita Graveline will take on a new role as an Executive Director of School Leadership for Holyoke Public Schools effective July 1, 2023. She is filling a position that has been vacant since Stephen Mahoney was named Assistant Superintendent in 2022. She will be working alongside Jacqueline Glasheen, who has served as an EDSL for the district since 2021.
In her new role, Mrs. Graveline will coach and support principals and school leadership teams in their instructional and management work, bringing her expertise at the middle and high school levels as a complement to Mrs. Glasheen’s expertise in grades PreK-5.
Mrs. Graveline has served as a highly effective principal of Peck School since 2018 and has more than 20 years of experience working in public education. As Peck principal, Mrs. Graveline created and improved systems at both the school level and across the district, including a robust and successful system of observation and feedback aligned with the Relay GSE framework. She is also a strong instructional leader with a solid understanding of Common Core standards who recognizes high-quality instruction and who encourages effective actions that teachers and institutional leaders can implement to ensure that students with the greatest level of need have access to the greatest level of resources.
Looking ahead to her new role, Mrs. Graveline said, “I welcome the challenge of translating successful school-specific action to district-level work, and empowering school leaders to engage in the process of developing frameworks for systems that allow a shift from siloed to unified practice. My leadership experience is, and has always been, in urban communities serving populations requiring tiered interventions.”
Mrs. Graveline earned her BA from Mount Holyoke College in 2003 where she studied psychology, education, and spanish. After working at a residential school in a suburb of Boston, she earned her M.Ed. from the University of Massachusetts in 2005. She worked for Springfield Public Schools as an elementary special education teacher supporting students with emotional disabilities. She later was named assistant principal and sole administrator at Balliet Middle School in Springfield, where she helped improve academic outcomes for students who struggled to succeed in traditional school settings.