Founders

Vladimir, Dajeh, Donovan, and their classmates have been the oldest kids in their school, every year since the 6th grade. Since we've built BPCPS one grade at a time, they have been the first to do everything. They've been taught the first draft of every curriculum. They've been the first to experience every ritual. While they have lost classmates over the years--students who moved, or enrolled in selective schools, or left because BPCPS was just too hard--they've seen the school's enrollment balloon beneath them.

This experience has bred a unique class identity. They are proud, but battle weary. They love and hate one another, as only siblings can. They consider the trip to Rome, and their not-too-distant acceptances to college with a funny combination of certainty and disbelief. Nobody has yet experienced BPCPS as they have, and nobody will ever again.

A few years ago, I visited the Hyde school, in Bath, Maine. Hyde serves a predominantly white, middle class population. Yet the school has developed a reputation for helping kids with a history of behavioral problems. At Hyde, character comes before everything else. Coaches deliberately schedule soccer matches against much better teams, because of the power in learning from losing. My student tour guide at Hyde shared his pre-Hyde drug abuse, without prompting. Hyde's Principal explained to me that Hyde alumni typically characterize their experience at the school as one of the key 3 or 4 most formative experiences of their lives--just behind getting married and having children. The principes gained about how to live stay with them into old age. I believe Vladimir, Dajeh, and Donovan may say this as well. But what, exactly, will they say they gained?