Innovative Educator Brings Success to South Bronx

Edward Tom lets numbers tell his story because, as founder and principal of The Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics in the South Bronx, they have been good to him so far.

In 2009, 83 percent of the high school’s first senior class graduated from the Riverdalian’s new magnet school. That compares with a 52 percent in the Bronx as a whole and 60 percent citywide, he said. Making his brainchild’s success more striking is the fact that there’s no screening process for admission.

Of the 83 percent, 90 percent graduated with Regents diplomas, securing $3 million in Merit Scholarships, and 86 percent attended two- or four-year colleges or universities, Mr. Tom said. Among the highly regarded schools last year’s graduates are now attending are Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, New York University, Middlebury, Syracuse, Fordham and Spellman.

It’s an accomplishment of which he’s duly proud, and it’s one that would surprise many people who looked only at his early career.

“I came from retail,” he said, working as an associate buyer for men’s clothing at Saks Fifth Avenue for a time. It wasn’t the life he wanted. So after about five years he went back to school and got master’s degrees in both education and supervision, eventually leading to a job teaching math at the Manhattan Center for Science and Math, the school that he would later replicate in his hometown borough of the Bronx.

Before he did, Mr. Tom spent some time working in District 6 in Upper Manhattan as a staff developer and then as a regional instructional supervisor. Soon he was missing loud hallways.

“I hated working with adults. I loved working with children. I said ‘I need to get back into a school building and I needed to be around kids,’” he said.

He wrote an approximately 80-page proposal and set off on a nine-month process that he hoped would bring specialties in math and science, as well as high standards and college readiness to a part of the city where such programs can be hard to find.

The proposal set off a political firestorm, he said, because the new institution would force PS 2, an elementary school, to move to another space. But he was comfortable that his school would not displace local residents, as some had suggested, and was spurred on by the students he had met who traveled for hours into Manhattan to get a decent education in math and science. The long commutes left little time for any after-school activities.

“I felt that was a little unjust,” he said.

In 2005 he opened the new school’s doors and success has, so far, come through them. The school’s 470 students are met with a rigorous environment, including the ties and pleated skirts students wear as an expression of their seriousness.

Mr. Tom spends time in hallways and classrooms as well as in his office, and said he is never surprised when students meet the challenges they are faced with.

And he’s discovered challenges he must rise to meet, too.

“As tough as I thought a principals’ job would be, it’s exponentially tougher than I thought,” he said.

Driving to and from Riverdale everyday, he sometimes compares the communities where he works and lives, and hopes he can help families in Morrisania be as influential in their schools as Riverdale parents are.

To help, he hosts workshops to encourage parental involvement in local politics, encourages families to show up at community education council and local precinct meetings and to write and call city council members and state assembly people.

“… It’s a matter of educating parents and the community to advocate for their own child’s education,” he said.