Principal To Support Failing Bed-Stuy HS With One That’s Thriving

Dr. Michael Wiltshire, born and raised in Jamaica, West Indies, is principal of both Medgar Evers College Preparatory School in Crown Heights and Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Wiltshire, who attended Teachers College at Columbia University receiving his Doctorate in Mathematics and Education, believes one plus one equals one. Dr. Wiltshire’s plan is to move all Medgar Evers students into Boys and Girls.

Medgar Evers College Preparatory was voted one of the best schools in Brooklyn by the New York Daily News in both 2007 and 2008. The School’s Dual Enrollment program was acknowledged by President Barack Obama in 2009 and in 2010, won a College Board Inspiration Award. 97% of Medgar Evers students graduated within the last six years. The school has no metal detectors and students regularly attend classes in uniform.

One Brooklyn neighborhood away, Boys and Girls High School, in 2013, earned the lowest mark on its city progress report and became one of two schools ever to receive an “F” (failing grade) three years in a row. The school once bustled with as many as 5,000 students. That number has dwindled way down to under 1,000. Students do not wear uniforms and struggle with attendance. The graduation rate rose to 47.5% from 24.4% through the dedication and hard work of dynamic past principal Frank Mickens. Mickens retired in 2004, and the graduation rate has not significantly risen since then.

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At first glance, the number of vast differences between these two schools might make a progressive coexistence seem impossible. However, when Dr. Wiltshire became principal of Medgar Evers in 2001, it was not the success magnet it is today. He got to work right away with a no-nonsense approach and replaced unqualified teachers, increased school hours, and strengthened the curriculum. “We changed the dynamic completely,” he was quoted as saying in a Wall Street Journal article.

Given a chance, Dr. Wiltshire can also successfully and strategically strengthen Boys and Girls, the oldest public high school in Brooklyn. He can raise standards, encourage student participation and achievement, and ultimately improve the graduation rate. Medgar Evers honors students can assist as well, in his new peer support program.

Medgar Evers Preparatory College was named after the civil rights activist who organized voter registration drives and boycotts of white owned companies practicing discrimination. On June 12, 1963, he was murdered in his driveway. Evers said, “I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart. And I would die, die gladly, if that would make a better life for them.” In keeping with the spirit of Medgar Evers, let’s make life better for our children here in Brooklyn.