Student Advocacy Center of Michigan’s Board of Directors announced Friday that it is moving to a Co-Executive Director model as it begins to celebrate its 50th year supporting students struggling with school discipline and other academic challenges. This change means that Anell Eccleston, who has been with SAC in a variety of roles for 8 years total, will join Peri Stone-Palmquist in leading the organization.
“I’m passionate about serving the community and passionate about SAC’s mission,” Eccleston said, “I’m excited to partner with Peri, our board, our team, our students and community to continue to work towards a world where young people are really loved, heard and supported in their schools.”
Peri Stone-Palmquist has been the sole Executive Director of SAC for 12 years and watched it grow from a 4-person, 2-county office with a budget of about $300,000 to a 25-person, 3-county office with a statewide helpline and budget of $2.8 million. In that time, SAC has gone from serving less than 100 young people annually to more than 900, including many who receive intensive, long-term support. The organization has gone from providing mostly education advocacy and family support to also providing an evidence-based academic mentoring program and youth organizing opportunities.
“As the organization’s geographic and program footprint grew, we believed it was important to explore other leadership structures that would be more sustainable and supportive,” said Keisha Blevins, board chair.
The Board’s Executive Committee appointed an Ad Hoc Committee, which spent more than a year conducting research, talking to other nonprofit leaders and carefully studying the best leadership structure to support SAC in its next 50 years. The Board voted unanimously to move to the Co-Executive Director model and to appoint Anell Eccleston into that role with Stone-Palmquist.
Anell initially came to SAC in 2014 as a Check and Connect mentor focused on students in Ypsilanti Community Schools. He also supported SAC’s Youth Action Michigan program, which supports students wanting to become leaders in fighting for better schools. His work with one of his mentees was featured in a documentary that can be seen here, https://vimeo.com/380639049. In May of 2018 he was promoted to a program manager. He left in the fall of 2019 to work as a probation officer to further work to end the school-to-prison pipeline and was warmly welcomed back in 2021 as the Director of Care and Sustainability. He has been with SAC for 8 years total.
Anell has a BSW and MSW. He was born in Ypsilanti, lived in Ann Arbor, and grew up in Muskegon. During his school years in Muskegon, he was very active in sports, particularly football at Muskegon High School. After winning a state championship his senior year, he found that many of his teammates (Black and brown boys) never returned to school.
“I would see my former teammates in the community and they would share that they were now attending the alternative school in the district,” he said. “Many of them I didn’t see at graduation. Some ended up incarcerated. Some are no longer with us. This really sparked my own passion for ending the school-to-prison pipeline.”
Anell is the first man and the first person of color to lead the Student Advocacy Center, which predominantly serves boys of color. “I take great pride in being an inspiration to our Black and Brown young people, who now can see themselves as leaders in their lives, homes, and communities,” Anell said.
Student Advocacy Center has a proud history rooted in racial justice. It was founded in 1975 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by a grassroots, multi-racial group of community members, including members of the Ann Arbor NAACP. Founding executive director Ruth Zweifler, Ann Arbor mayor Albert Wheeler and his wife, Emma Wheeler, Willie J. Simpson and Dorothy Simpson, and many others were deeply concerned about how Black students were being treated in their largely white schools.
“SAC has, from its beginnings, felt that all children are valued members of our community whose needs and dreams should be respected,” Ruth Zweifler says.
Ruth recalls her son’s kindergarten teacher came over, ostensibly to show Ruth the deplorable gym shoes that she had sent for her son. In truth, the teacher seemed much more concerned about the Black family who had moved in across the street in the emergency rental property. She told Ruth that the children were coming to school without breakfast! “What kind of mother would send her children to school without breakfast?!” she scolded with judgment. Ruth promptly visited the family and invited the children to have breakfast at their house. Thus began a lifelong, loving relationship — but it also inspired the now routine district-wide breakfast program.
“Ruth taught me to read at the kitchen table and she also gave me a lot of my social skills,” says Robert Curie, an Ypsilanti resident who is considered SAC’s 1st client. “Without Ruth, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve a plumber’s journeymanship, electrical journeymanship, and a journeymanship in maintenance. Thanks to Ruth and her family’s ability to love me.”
By 1977, SAC collaborated with Michigan Legal Services to bring a successful federal lawsuit against Ann Arbor Public Schools for failing to consider the home language of Black students, commonly known as the Black English case. This remains SAC’s only formal legal action in our history.
Current Washtenaw County Public Defender Delphia Simpson was one of the plaintiffs in that case. She recalls that when she was in 10th grade, she was in advanced English but there were attempts at pushing her out, a common experience for Black students. Delphia told her teacher she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up and the teacher responded “let’s just try to get you out of high school,” and told her not to tell her parents. “That was devastating,” Dephia said, “because I was a good student. My mom was not tolerating that and Ruth was not tolerating that either.” Ruth and Delphia’s mother went to the school and challenged what was happening. “Someone was totally trying to crush me and to have Ruth go in there and say no that is not happening, was really empowering for me. She helped me reach my goals.”
By 1980, Ruth met Ypsilanti advocate Margaret Harner on a statewide taskforce that successfully ended corporal punishment in schools.
“As a volunteer, I was advocating for shunned and disenfranchised students in the Ypsilanti Public Schools and Ruth was doing the same work in the Ann Public Schools,” Margaret said. “Ruth invited me to join her and combine our work at Student Advocacy Center. At the time we were both working from our kitchen tables.”
By 1988, the Center expanded statewide, and Ruth often drove throughout the state to attend disciplinary hearings.
Meanwhile, Margaret was getting more and more cases referred to her by Nancy Wheeler, who had been appointed Probate Judge and assigned to the Juvenile Court.
“Judge Wheeler was troubled by how frequently the children coming before her had been denied public education and were on the outside of the school door looking in, having been removed from their school,” Margaret said. By 1990, the Center received Ford Foundation funds for this work and in 2006, an Interdepartmental Task Force on Service to At-Risk Youth Transitioning to Adulthood recommended to the Legislature that our model be expanded statewide. Washtenaw County made this move in 2007 and the state piloted this statewide in 2022 but has not provided ongoing funding.
One of Margaret’s former clients, Damarcus Jones, now 33, said, “There was not one day or night that I couldn’t rely on Margaret if I needed help or representation. As a child still making plenty of mistakes that meant the world to me. She challenged me to believe in myself. Receiving a high school diploma was our only goal, and we achieved that together when I walked across that stage.”
In 2004, Ruth retired and Leslie Harrington took over, opening an office in Jackson in 2011 and expanding services to include comprehensive, holistic family support.
Peri became the third executive director in 2012 and Margaret retired shortly after. SAC launched the evidence-based Check and Connect mentoring program in 2012, being the first in Michigan to implement it in schools. SAC formally opened an office in Detroit in 2014 and launched our youth organizing programming.
SAC’s youth successfully advocated that Michigan overturn zero tolerance in 2017 after years of increasingly harsh and restrictive state law changes out of step with longstanding research on the damage to young people, their families and school climate.
SAC successfully partnered with The Arc Michigan to roll out a statewide education advocacy program for youth with disabilities experiencing foster care in 2022.
Today, SAC has staff in Washtenaw, Wayne and Jackson Counties, and provides a statewide helpline that helps students in educational crisis get back in school, and get the supports they need to grow.
The Board of Directors began studying leadership structures in 2023 and voted for Co-Executive Director model after much study. The board noted that dividing leadership duties has several benefits:
- It can help reduce burnout and build long-term sustainability in an organization.
- In a multi-county nonprofit, Co-EDs can build a larger network of relationships and deepen relationships with funders, donors and partners.
- Co-executives can bring different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to the job that can help drive innovation and improve decision-making.
- Smaller organizations often cannot afford specialized roles, meaning the Director must have a broad skillset. A co-executive director model can bring broader and deeper skill sets, especially when there is intention with cross training.
- A co-ED model supports and aligns with SAC’s collaborative decision-making model.
Additional information about the Co-Executive Director Model can be found here,