SPEF 5K WALK & RUN - Stamford Public Education Foundation

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE STAMFORD COMMUNITY

Dear Stamford Community,

For the past 13 years, autumn in Stamford has meant lacing up our running shoes, gathering our schools and families, and coming together in Mill River Park for our annual 5K, founded as the MarcUs for Change 5K Walk & Run. After thoughtful consideration, the Stamford Public Education Foundation (SPEF) has decided that this beloved event has completed its remarkable run, and we will not host the 5K this fall.

At this time of year, our team would normally be sharing registration links, school-spirit challenges, and calls for race-day volunteers. We know many of you have been looking forward to those familiar traditions, and we are deeply grateful for the enthusiasm and care you have brought to the event year after year.

This decision follows deep reflection by our leadership and Board of Directors. The 5K was created in loving memory of Marcus, whose family partnered with SPEF to build an event grounded in connection, perseverance, and support for young people. We are profoundly grateful to the McInerney family, whose generosity and leadership began a 13-year tradition that brought thousands of people together across Stamford. Together, we are proud of all the event accomplished and hopeful about carrying its spirit into the next chapter of SPEF’s service.

As SPEF celebrates its 30th anniversary, our 2026–2030 Strategic Plan calls on us to focus our resources, volunteer capacity, and staff time where our students need us most: directly inside Stamford Public Schools.

While special events bring wonderful energy, large-scale athletic races require hundreds of operational hours and significant overhead. By sunsetting the standalone 5K, we are channeling that energy directly into high-dosage, student-facing programs that address critical learning milestones:

Kindergarten Readiness: Equipping incoming students through Summer Start so they enter public elementary school confident and prepared.
Targeted Mentoring: Providing 1:1 adult mentorship across our middle schools to strengthen attendance, behavior, and academic confidence, while pairing college mentors with elementary readers.
Academic Equity: Delivering intensive, small-group math support to ensure newcomer and multilingual learners build the numeracy skills needed for 9th-grade algebra.
Workforce Pipelines: Connecting high schoolers with local employers for hands-on career exploration and workplace mentoring.
Parent Leadership & Civic Advocacy: Equipping caregivers through the Instituto de Capacitación en Liderazgo para Padres (PLTI) y People Empowering People (PEP) with civic skills, public policy knowledge, and systems navigation to ensure families are informed, active advocates for their children and communities.

While the starting line at Mill River Park will look different this year, the spirit of the event remains woven into everything we do. We are currently working with Marcus’s family on meaningful ways to ensure his legacy and the MarcUs for Change Spirit Award continue to recognize and inspire young people across our schools.

To our multi-year corporate partners, the city agencies who kept our runners safe, our tireless volunteers, and every student and neighbor who crossed our finish line over the last 13 years: Thank you. You helped build a movement of community care that will continue to fuel our classrooms for years to come.

We invite you to join us in supporting Stamford’s students this school year—whether by becoming a volunteer mentor, joining us at our upcoming educational events, or supporting our direct student programs at www.spefct.org.

With profound gratitude,

Magdalena Loucks
CEO
Fundación de Educación Pública de Stamford