Last month at a gala celebration, Paul Williams, former president and CEO of DASNY (New York state’s facilities finance and construction authority) under Gov. David Paterson and then Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was honored and feted for his outstanding leadership and public service to the state and his work in founding and supporting the Eagle Academy Foundation. Friends and supporters of Williams, knowing his passion for the foundation’s work, named a fund supporting the foundation in his honor: the Paul T. Williams Legacy Fund. Each year, the fund will sponsor at least 100 Eagle Scholars.
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“I’m translating the great relationships and network I’ve built up during my professional career to help support a passion I’ve had for 15 years now, in helping to be one of the folks who develop and initiate a terrific innovative model dealing with the education of boys of color in urban settings,†Williams says.
A former president of 100 Black Men of New York, Williams and a group within the organization discussed the abysmal state of public education for black boys in New York. But Williams recognized that the time for talking was over–it was now time to act.
“We had talked about the problems, analyzed the problems, had conversations about the problems–it was time to do something about it.â€
The group wanted to “have a legacy of effectiveness and of implementing something that really made a difference.†There are now six Eagle Academy schools affecting the lives of 2,400 families. “When the schools are at full operation there will be 4,000 students and their families that we’ll be impacting every day, so that’s the legacy I’m trying
to continue to support now, in a different way, by demonstrating to myself, to my family as well as to the community at large, that charity relationships and business make sense. And that’s one way that we can support our own initiatives like the Eagle Academy Foundation.â€(Continued on next page)
Williams describes the launch of the foundation as “a citizen’s action movement from the ground up. We created the Eagle Academy Foundation to be a separate support organization for the Eagle model, so it wouldn’t get lost in the other activities that 100 Black Men pursues. Since 2004, the foundation has been the primary support relationship for all the Eagle Academy schools except the Bronx school, which was launched by 100 Black Men,†Williams says.
A graduate of Columbia Law School, who enjoyed a successful law career heading his own law
firm and also as a partner at a global firm before going to work for government, Williams has an interesting educational background. As a youngster in New Jersey, he competed for a coveted prize: a scholarship to attend a local all-boys private school. “I thought I was a shoo-in, but they gave the prize to someone else.â€Stunned by the loss, young Paul decided, without any parental involvement at all, to research and apply to the best private schools in the country. He was accepted to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he attended for four years, graduating with honors. Going to Exeter convinced Williams that single-sex education works for some people, and inspired him to invest that experience into the Eagle model.
“Many boys need to be able to concentrate,†Williams says in support of the model. “Also, I was raised in a two-parent household and raised my own children in a two-parent household. It’s very different for single-parent households. Young men need positive male role models that they can see, touch, understand, talk to.†Hence the emphasis on strong male leadership in Eagle Academy schools, which send 100% of its graduates to college.
And more is in store. Williams says, “Eagle Academy is and has been phenomenal. But we recognize that we can’t build enough schools to meet the demand. So we’re launching a professional development component that we can take the lessons learned from our efforts and translate them to other environments. We’ll train administrators and educators and they can implement them where they are. So the professional development component can have an impact.â€
For more information about the Eagle Academy Foundation, visit www.eafny.com.