Candle Still Life
Peggy Aw, Grade 8
Bill joined CEI-PEA after more than thirty years as a teacher, middle school and high school principal and district administrator. He helped to found and later led the Harbor Junior High School for Performing Arts, one of the first small schools of choice in East Harlem's District 4 that began the district's renaissance. Working with CEI-PEA President Sy Fliegel and Senior Fellow John Falco, he went on to supervise the district's network of thirty small schools of choice. In 1986, Bill used the lessons of East Harlem's success to restructure a middle school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan into a complex of seven small schools. While there, he established partnerships with the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Historical Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Teachers' College, among others.
In 1995, Bill became the principal of White Plains High School where he established programs that significantly raised student performance, brought diverse constituencies together and focused the school community on improving minority student achievement. In 1998, he was invited to the White House to honor the success of the school's Pace Hispanic Outreach Program, a school-college collaboration serving newly-arrived Latino students. Bill's work at CEI-PEA focuses on CEI-PEA's Partnership Support Organization.