A principal tests his principles
Luckily for Shuldiner, youth is not his most dazzling trait. No, there might be a handful of 20-somethings running schools in this country, but there stands — without question — only one who was also a life-size Jell-O Pudding Pop.
You have read that correctly. Benjamin O. Shuldiner, Harvard alum, dignified principal and co-founder of the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn, was a life-size Jell-O Pudding Pop (the vanilla kind).
Perhaps because it would only overshadow his ensuing achievements, Shuldiner's résumé does not include: FOOD, FROZEN. But back in 1986, as a 9-year-old part-time child actor with Howdy Doody-red hair and gotta-pinch dimples, Shuldiner was cast alongside Bill Cosby in Jell-O's commercial for the new Vanilla Swirl Pop. Decked out in a life-size white Popsicle outfit, young Ben marries a chocolate chip.
Seventeen years later, the Pudding Pop is sitting behind a desk, his red hair long faded into male pattern baldness, the foamy white outfit replaced by a dark blue suit and black dress shoes. When reminded of his theatrical breakthrough (thanks in part to the Jell-O gig, he later appeared in a sketch alongside Tom Hanks on "Saturday Night Live"), Shuldiner blushes, then chuckles. It is not something he brings up often these days. "I want to be taken seriously," he says. "But when ... "
Shuldiner pauses. The sentence is easy enough to finish: "... you're youthful, it's rough." Yet this is not the route he takes. Shuldiner never — ever — mentions age. That's been his philosophy since a year ago September, when the dream of starting his own school first came into focus. At the time, Shuldiner was in his third year as a history teacher at Erasmus Hall High in Brooklyn, one of the city's lowest-performing schools. One day, Charles Majors, the district superintendent, called Erasmus' staff into the auditorium. "I've got bad news," he said. "We're closing this place down at the end of the year. But don't worry — we'll be opening up some brand new schools. So jobs might be available."
From the ground up
Amid the collective groan of potential unemployment, one man's smile was broadening. Eight new schools! Had Shuldiner heard correctly? That night, he called Marisa Boan, a literacy coach at Louis Armstrong High in Queens. In 2000, Boan and Shuldiner had met at Baruch College, where both were studying to attain their principal certification. For one class, the two had to team up to write a 20-page proposal for a new charter school. Theirs was an A paper on a place that would stress strong educational values, combined with an emphasis on public service. "Marisa," Shuldiner said. "Get that proposal out from under your bed right now. We're starting a school!"
For the next six months, the two attended weekly meetings organized by the Brooklyn superintendent's office and New Visions for Public Schools, an academic reform organization hired by the city to create innovative small schools with personalized learning environments and rigorous educational programs. Thanks in part to a $50 million donation from Bill Gates, New Visions was in the process of accepting bids for eight new city charter schools. Fifty-five groups submitted proposals. By February of this year, it was down to 16.
Shuldiner and Boan described to decision-makers "a city upon a hill" — a school where academics would mesh with bigheartedness; where 50 hours of community service would be required each year, internships would be mandatory and kids would learn the value of planting trees and aiding senior citizens and picking ice-cream wrappers off the ground.
On April 1, New Visions officially accepted the School for Public Service. It would occupy seven rooms on the third floor of decrepit Wingate High, and its first class would hold approximately 120 freshmen.
Its principal was a Pudding Pop.
A born fighter
When Benjamin Shuldiner was born at New York Hospital, the date was April 19, 1977, and something was wrong: He was diagnosed with hemophilia, a blood defect characterized by delayed clotting and a difficulty in controlling hemorrhage after even minor injuries. Throughout his life, Shuldiner has endured numerous trips to the emergency room. As with many hemophiliacs in the late 1970s and early '80s, Shuldiner received quarts of blood from donors untested for the HIV virus. In the mid-1980s, Shuldiner had his first AIDS test. It came up negative.
Strangely, young Ben was never concerned. Or deterred. He played organized basketball with gusto, banging under the boards, diving for loose balls and obtaining more than a normal share of elbow gashes and knee butterflies. When the family moved from Manhattan to Los Angeles in 1990 so his father could take a job as director of the Los Angeles Housing Authority, Benjamin found he excelled in another passion — chess. In junior high, Shuldiner was the California 13-and-under state champion.
Around this time, Joseph Shuldiner was invited to spend three weeks at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He took his son along, and when they returned home, Benjamin possessed a crimson-and-white T-shirt, as well as a dream. "I'm gonna go to Harvard one day," he assured his mother. "I promise."
By 1999, Shuldiner was not only a Harvard senior taking undergraduate and graduate courses (he graduated with a degree in history and science), but one of the university's more memorable students. Along with writing for the school newspaper, hosting his own hip-hop radio show, earning a varsity letter in crew and getting placed on probation for dragging a cafeteria table into his dorm room ("it was perfect for playing cards"), Shuldiner was co-founder of the Progressive Student Labor Movement, an organization that regularly led campus protests against the administration. He still brags about Harvard's conservative publication labeling him "Rebel Without a Clue."
Upon graduating, Shuldiner accepted a one-year fellowship to teach history and poetry at the prestigious Stowe School in Buckingham, England.
On one of his first days, Shuldiner asked the class if any of their grandparents or great-grandparents had fought in World War I. "There was a kid in the back looking cool," says Shuldiner, "or at least as cool as a dorky British private-school kid can look. So I thought, 'I'll get this punk first.' " Shuldiner pressed the boy on his ancestry, until the lad said, "Well, my great-grandfather was the head of the British navy."
Shuldiner was perplexed. "That can't be," he said, "because Winston Churchill was the head of the navy."
The punk nodded. He was a Churchill.
'Here the teachers care'
From lecturing the kin of heroes and dignitaries, Shuldiner went straight to Erasmus, the scholastic equivalent of a wad of spit-out chewing gum. Unlike what he calls, "these touchy-feely, hippie-dippy, liberal kids who go to the inner city thinking they can change the world," Shuldiner was a hard-nosed, hippy-dippy liberal kid who went into the inner city thinking he could change the world. "I wanted a challenge, to see if I could handle the worst," he says. In his final year at Erasmus, Shuldiner led two miracles: He coached the school's tennis team to the city playoffs, and, he says, approximately 75 percent of his students passed the Regents exam. "That," he says, "gives you some confidence."
And credibility. Shuldiner admits that being young, white and Jewish in a largely black and Hispanic school district like the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn can raise eyebrows. "The moment I walk into a building and say, 'Hi, I'm the principal,' I get laughed at," says Shuldiner, who lives in Manhattan. "They think I'm from the suburbs. But then when they ask where I was before, and I say 'Erasmus,' everything changes. It's instant respect."
Unfortunately, respect isn't enough to run a high school. Though he administers a $1.2 million budget and will receive an additional $500,000 from New Visions over the next four years, Shuldiner's dream of turning the High School for Public Service into a city upon a hill is a long way off. Until last week, Shuldiner had neither a telephone nor a computer. His office is a bare-boned collection of cheap Staples office furniture and empty bulletin boards. "I've probably spent $1,800 of my own money on supplies," he says. "All the teachers here have done so."
Yet Shuldiner could be no happier were he playing second base for his beloved Mets.
During the final months of the 2002-03 school year, Shuldiner spent much of his time darting from junior high to junior high, talking with guidance counselors and eighth-graders to drum up interest in his school. He hit multiple high-school fairs, and made numerous visits to the homes of students he was otherwise unable to meet in person.
He wound up with applicants like Tacha Cineus from Brooklyn, a math whiz who grew tired of all the classroom banter in middle school. And Diane Gordon, who says, "at my last school, we didn't get enough homework." And Orchid Walker, who dreams of working for the CIA.
And freshman Eon London, who fumed in middle school as the kid who sat next to him in class played GameBoy all day without punishment. "Here the teachers care," says Eon. "They get to work, and they appreciate what you have to say. It's a place for learning."
As he speaks, Eon leans against the grayish brick walls that, on this day, are covered by motivational phrases designed in masking tape. There's "What you do represents who you are" and "A failure is the information you need to succeed."
Behind him is perhaps the most trenchant of all. It reads, "Have you helped today?"