From youth, new school chief driven to succeed

This article was reported by Globe staff writers Tracy Jan and Michael Levenson in Boston and Maria Sacchetti in Rochester, N.Y., and was written by Levenson.

At age 14, after his lung was punctured in a car accident, Manny Rivera went out for the school track team. It did not go well. After one lap around the field he was out of breath, and the coach told him to rest. Doing calisthenics on the sidelines, Rivera watched the other teenagers speed by until the practice ended and everyone had left. Rivera stepped onto the deserted track and ran the laps he had missed. And more.

A few weeks later, he won a junior varsity dash and was soon competing with the varsity runners. His senior year, he won the national championship in the half mile. At Brandeis University, he was a nationally ranked runner.

``He was amazingly dedicated, amazingly energetic, and extremely highly motivated -- way beyond training that someone could design for him," said Norm Higgins, his coach at New London High School in New London, Conn.

That intense drive made Rivera a force in public education. At age 39, the self-effacing, soft-spoken Rivera, who had been raised by his mother in an apartment heated by a stove, became one of the youngest urban school superintendents in the nation. At age 54, he has been tapped to lead Boston's public schools.

Molded by his experiences, he wants to focus not just on correcting students' deficits, but on pushing them where they show promise so they can experience the joy and accomplishment he felt on the track four decades ago. In an era of intense focus on testing and ratings, Rivera takes a more expansive view.

``You can turn the life around of anybody. You just got to find the right formula," said Rivera, who will retire as the Rochester, N.Y., schools superintendent to come to Boston in July.

Named the 2006 national superintendent of the year, Rivera faces his most daunting challenge as the next leader of Boston's 57,000-student public school system. Boston has won praise for improving student achievement under Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant, but the majority of students are not able to read or do math at their grade level. Black and Hispanic students, who make up most of the school system, consistently lag behind white and Asian peers on state tests. Nearly a third of Boston high school students drop out .

Rivera can speak credibly about the hurdles poor and minority students face because of his life story. He also shows a willingness to listen and an easygoing charm that have endeared him to colleagues and helped him disarm union leaders, parents, and politicians. Rivera's personality also helped unite educators and others to improve the schools in Rochester, a racially and economically diverse district that is nearly half Boston's size.

It's a style he honed only after stumbling in the early 1990s in his first stint as a superintendent, also in Rochester.

Like Boston, Rochester has struggled with a widening gap in academic achievement between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian counterparts in the upper grades. Rochester, however, has narrowed the gap in the elementary grades.

``In many important ways, student achievement has improved here," said Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association. ``To Boston and the teachers of Boston and the students of Boston, I would say, `Lucky you.' "

The youngest of four children born to Puerto Rican parents, Rivera recalls sleeping on a couch in the kitchen in his family's apartment in New London. His mother and three sisters shared a bedroom. His father divorced his mother, Iris, a nurse's aide, when he was a baby. When he was 8, the family's apartment was condemned and slated for destruction. Rivera was shocked. ``We didn't realize we were poor," he said. ``We didn't think about it at the time. We thought everybody didn't have hot water or heat or a bathtub."

When he was 11, he was playing baseball on the sidewalk when a car struck him. Hospitalized for weeks with a punctured lung, his family was awarded an $8,000 settlement, moved to a more spacious apartment in New London, and put some of the money in a college fund. His mother said she bought encyclopedias because she wanted her children to know about the world, and spoke to them in English because ``that's the language they speak at school."

``Education was necessary to live, to survive, I used to tell them," said Iris Rivera, 88, who still lives in New London.

As a young student, Rivera excelled in math and recalls getting A's and B's.

In high school, he practiced for track twice a day and bought newspapers from other towns so he could track other students' times. Nicknamed ``El Esqueleto " -- the skeleton, in Spanish -- he had the right build for the sport.

``I was always very competitive. I wanted to win, and I wanted to do well," Rivera said.

Also popular, he was elected freshman class president.

``New London was very diverse, but Manny in particular interacted with everyone, across all those lines," said high school friend Richard Foye, now the headmaster of Woodstock Academy in Woodstock, Conn.

Rivera won a full, needs-based scholarship to Brandeis and was drawn to the school by its popular track coach, Norm Levine . College, however, did not go as planned. During his freshman year, Rivera's girlfriend became pregnant, and the two decided to marry. For a time, they shared an apartment above a furniture store in Waltham, and then moved into campus housing his senior year.

``You grow up very fast," Rivera said. ``I had to work and provide for a family . . . That was a critical point in my life, and I have to credit Norm Levine, my coach, who was just so supportive and was just there for me. "

Though he considered dropping out, he stayed in college and discovered a love for teaching when he took a child psychology course. As part of the course work, he worked in a nursery school and analyzed the children's drawings.

``That's the seed of my interest in education," he said. ``It was so fascinating for me to read [Swiss child psychologist Jean] Piaget and to understand childhood development."

After graduating, he was accepted to Boston College Law School and considered becoming an accountant. He decided to attend the Harvard Graduate School of Education and received a master's degree in 1975. Drawn to Rochester by a campus poster seeking minority teachers, he accepted a position teaching fifth- and sixth-graders. Three years later, he became director of bilingual education.

Peter McWalters, Rhode Island's education commissioner, who preceded Rivera as superintendent in Rochester, said Rivera's Hispanic background allowed him to be a role model for students.

McWalters first got to know Rivera in the 1970s when both belonged to a cadre of young Rochester teachers who were pushing the school system to pay closer attention to the needs of poor and minority students.

``It was about social justice, and Manny came in committed to it," McWalters said.

Rivera and his wife divorced six years after they married. In 1981, he married his current wife, Kathleen. In Rochester, he worked in various administrative roles before following McWalters's advice to go to Harvard and enroll in a doctoral program for urban superintendents.

McWalters saw his successor in Rivera.

``He was the kind of person that when you have to send someone to the mayor's office, you say, `Manny, you go,' " McWalters said. ``Someone to go to the business people? `Manny, you go.' "

Rivera became superintendent in 1991. By all accounts, his tenure was disappointing. He cut school librarians to fill a budget gap, causing an uproar. The mayor and the school board were at loggerheads, and Rivera was unable to advance an agenda. He angered union leaders, who felt the schools were unsafe.

``His first superintendency kind of imploded because I think it was too soon," McWalters said.

Rivera agrees. ``I'm not even convinced I was ready for my first superintendency," Rivera said. ``Did I do an OK job? Yes. Was it a spectacular job? No."

In 1994, a friend persuaded him to consider working for Edison Schools Inc., a for-profit company that was looking to run struggling urban schools. Rivera said his first reaction was ``Nope, nope, nope -- I don't want anything to do with that."

Benno C. Schmidt Jr., chairman of Edison, helped persuade Rivera to become executive vice president for development.

``He's the kind of guy who could have gone in a lot of different directions in his career, but he really cares about public school children and the education in particular of disadvantaged kids in urban centers," said Schmidt, a former president of Yale University. ``That's what he wants his mission in life to be, and he's really never wavered from that."

Rivera was on the road two weeks a month, helping to hire staff for Edison's schools and, later, helping to market its model to districts nationwide. Eight years later, as Edison's fortunes tumbled, he returned to Rochester as superintendent.

``He goes back and does what nobody ever does, which is try again in the same city," McWalters said. ``When Manny came back the second time, it's not that his agenda changed, but I think he learned the patience you need to bring folks with you without losing your agenda."

Rivera created schools within schools in the high schools, focused on science and technology, the arts, and other subjects. He set up a ``customer service center" for parents. He combined one of the city's best high schools with one of its worst. He created a ``Children's Zone" to link parents with social services. He helped mend fences with the teachers' union.

``Before Manny makes any final decision that affect teachers, he asks, `What do you know about how teachers would perceive this?' " said Urbanski.

He still runs. He said he is also looking forward to putting his motorboat, the 26-foot Princess Anna, into the harbor to fish.

He is wary of making bold pronouncements until he has a chance to meet with parents, community leaders, and more city officials. He is eager to tackle the job.

``A lot of this has been done on good faith and my gut and instinct about people," Rivera said. ``There is an element of risk here. But I'm convinced that things will work out."

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com, Tracy Jan at tjan@globe.com.