The Colorado Education Initiative has named a St. Vrain assistant superintendent as a Senior Partner, focused on deepening and expanding school and district support for innovation, leadership and system transformation in Colorado and beyond.
Patty Quinones has served as assistant superintendent of innovation at St. Vrain Valley School District since 2016. At CEI, a statewide nonprofit that works to accelerate educational improvement and innovation, Quinones will focus on coaching and supporting career-connected learning, high school redesign and industry and community partnerships.
Quinones has 25 years of experience in education, including 17 as a district executive and high school principal. She was a leader in the design and expansion of the Innovation Center, Race to the Top grant, and system-wide P-TECH and STEM programming.
“Throughout my career, students have always been at the core of why we would implement a program, a practice, an opportunity. My passion for innovation has allowed me to be a catalyst for change in the educational sector,” Quinones said in a release. “Recently one of our first student-designers gave a talk in which she said, ‘I am just an ordinary girl, who had extraordinary experiences!’ I felt at that moment I had done my job in a system. Now, I am excited to be joining the CEI team and continue to contribute to education more broadly.”
CEI announced Quinones’ hiring as Senior Partner alongside George Welsh, superintendent of Canon City School District, who will continue his work to co-lead CEI’s Rural Superintendent Academy and RSA alumni network; providing executive coaching to senior district leaders; working with school boards; and deepening support for career pathways and other systems alignment initiatives.
“We are honored to welcome George and Patty and to bring on such notable leaders in the education and business community to accelerate our mission for reimagining public education,” CEI CEO Rebecca Holmes said. “Much of CEI's 15-year history has centered around identifying exemplar districts and supporting other education leaders to learn from them. These two leaders strengthen our ability to help districts in and outside Colorado learn from key architects in the remarkable systems they each worked to build and lead.”
Quinones will officially start at CEI in July.
