As Senior Director, April Mckoy brings over 15 years of leadership, school design, and strategic planning to Springpoint’s Transformative Leaders of Massachusetts Fellowship. Her experiences include ensuring high-quality teaching, leadership and team development, fostering student-focused school culture and institutional reform.

April began her career in education as a Social Studies teacher at Brooklyn College Academy, an early college school for academically accelerated students. After 8 years of teaching, she became an assistant principal at Bushwick Community High School, a transfer school that served over-aged, under-credited students at risk. Using what she learned from both schools, April founded the Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology in 2011. UA Gateway, a sought-after and thriving school, became a model for subsequent schools in New York City. In 2018 she became a turn-around principal for City Polytechnic High School, a grade 9-14 PTech early college school. At City Polytechnic, she led schoolwide redesign initiatives to close achievement and opportunity gaps for students with disabilities. Under her leadership, both schools successfully reached graduation rates of 100%, with differentiated post-secondary opportunities including Ivy League universities, private colleges, SUNYs, CUNYs and work training programs.

As both a founding principal and a turn-around principal, April has had the opportunity to work with hundreds of diverse educators to reimagine the student learning experience. With the unwavering goals of strengthening student belonging, increasing achievement and ensuring the holistic well-being of the students she served, her educational philosophy is based on the uncompromising belief that “good teaching is miraculous.” (Delpit)

April earned her Bachelor’s Degree in History from Hampton University and a Master’s Degree in Education from New York University. She has earned building and district administrative certifications from the College of St. Rose and Baruch College, respectively. April was a New Principal Support Coaching Fellow in 2017 and was in the first cohort of the NYCDOE Advanced Leadership Institute in 2018. She has served on the advisory council for the Urban Assembly, and is currently on the steering committees for her former schools.