Giving Kids a “Sense of the Possible”

Bill Wall MPA 1991/JD 1991

Growing up in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the scene of both the worst turmoil of Boston’s busing crisis in the mid-1970s, and the most famous fights of the American Revolution nearly 200 years before, Bill Wall MPA 1991/JD 1991 developed an appreciation for education. He knows firsthand that kids need to have a “sense of the possible.

“Education gave me a way to move on, and I’m very grateful for that,” he says. “I grew up a poor kid in the city during the busing days when education came to a halt. Many of the kids I grew up with didn’t go to college, never mind law school or graduate school.”

Wall decided to blaze his own trail, starting with his acceptance to Boston Latin School — the oldest public high school in the country and considered by many to be one of the best.

Despite his own experience in public schools and his dedication to public schools in general, however, Wall doesn’t question his involvement with the Renaissance School, one of Boston’s first charter schools. “I don’t view the Renaissance School as a rejection of the public schools; it’s more of a supplement, a chance to do something different.” Since opening in 1995, the Renaissance School increased its enrollment of only 637 kindergarten through fifth graders to 1,050 students in the first two years.

Wall has been involved with the Renaissance School from the very beginning, from helping with the charter school application to evaluating its budget and finances, from hiring the president to “generally keeping the school on the straight and narrow.” About four years ago, he joined the board, a partnership between its founders and Edison Schools, the country’s leading private manager of public schools.

“The Kennedy School is great for that, teaching you to try new things to improve communities. And working with the Renaissance School is my way of doing that,” says Wall.

You’d imagine that his day job as managing director of Fidelity Capital, where he runs a leveraged buyout group, would be enough to keep him busy. But Wall knew something had to be done to provide a level playing field for students in Boston, since there are only so many seats available in the city’s two exam schools — Boston Latin School and Boston Latin Academy. He wants to help provide an option for those kids who can’t get into “the best schools in Boston.

“Seven or eight years ago, morale was down in the public schools, and something had to be done to help Boston’s inner-city youth,” says Wall. “Opportunities for poor kids at private schools were few and far between, and the politics of the Boston Public School system was stifling innovation in education. Without a school committee, politics is furthermost from our minds at the Renaissance School. Providing a quality education to Boston’s youth is front and center.

“Providing a decent educational environment is one of
the most important ways we contribute in public service,”
says Wall. And he answers critics who say that charter schools merely cream off the best students in the system by insisting that many students at the Renaissance School, which runs a comprehensive special education program, are “amongst the more difficult.

“Instead of creaming off the best students, we’ve found guidance counselors sending troubled students our way,” he says. “Maybe the Renaissance School could join the Boston Public School system one day, when Boston is prepared to offer a wide range of programs. It’s getting close, but the city’s not there yet.”

— Aine Cryts