Ben Shuldiner is an American social activist and educator. Shuldiner is currently the superintendent of Lansing Public Schools in

Lansing Lansing () is the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is mostly in Ingham County, although portions of the city extend west into Eaton County and north into Clinton County. The 2020 census placed the city's population at 112,644, makin ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

Early life and education

Shuldiner (b. April 19, 1977) was raised in New York City, though his family moved considerably when he was a child due to his father Joseph Shuldiner's involvement in the movement to improve public housing (Joseph Shuldiner eventually became an undersecretary of housing in the Clinton Administration). When Ben Shuldiner attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

as an undergraduate, he became involved in labor activism and was selected to join the inaugural class of the

AFL–CIO The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million ac ...

's Union Summer, where he worked organizing day care workers in urban

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. On campus, he co-founded Harvard's Progressive Student Labor Movement to fight for living wages for university employees and also served as a sports writer for ''

The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...

''. In addition to his primary study of History of Science, he took graduate-level education courses to earn his teaching credentials and graduated magna cum laude in 1999.

Foundation of HSPS

In 2002, Shuldiner and co-founder Marisa Boan received a grant from the

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was ...

to build a high school that better reflected their vision of a fair public education system, and the High School for Public Service: Heroes of Tomorrow opened on the George W. Wingate High School campus in

Crown Heights, Brooklyn Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue to the west, Atlantic Avenue to the north, Ralph Avenue to the east, and Empire Boulevard/East New Yo ...

in the fall of 2003. The school was founded as one of eight New Visions schools opened in Brooklyn that year in an effort to replace failing high schools with smaller, more successful ones. When the school opened, Shuldiner became the youngest public high school principal in the history of the state of New York. The school enjoyed rapid success and today boasts extraordinary passing rates on the Regents Exams, a 98% graduation rate in 2010, and a unique on-campus urban farm program.

Political aspirations

Shuldiner was one of six Democratic candidates in the 2006 election to defeat incumbent

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

Sue Kelly for the

19th Congressional District 19 (nineteen) is the natural number following 18 and preceding 20. It is a prime number. Mathematics 19 is the eighth prime number, and forms a sexy prime with 13, a twin prime with 17, and a cousin prime with 23. It is the third full r ...

of New York. His campaign was focused on ending

No Child Left Behind The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based education ...

and creating a single payer national health care program. Shuldiner lost the nomination to fellow Democrat

John Hall John Hall may refer to: Academics * John Hall (NYU President) (fl. c. 1890), American academic * John A. Hall (born 1949), sociology professor at McGill University, Montreal * John F. Hall (born 1951), professor of classics at Brigham Young Unive ...

, who went on to beat Kelly in a close election.

Awards and honors

A lifelong hemophiliac, he was selected as the keynote speaker for the 2003 annual conference of the

National Hemophilia Foundation The National Bleeding Disorders Foundation (NBDF) is a United States patient advocacy organization for the care and treatment of inheritable blood and bleeding disorders such as hemophilia and von Willebrand disease Von Willebrand disease ( ...

. In 2005, he was chosen from a nationwide pool as the recipient of the prestigious

Jefferson Awards for Public Service The Jefferson Awards Foundation was created in 1972 by the American Institute for Public Service. The Jefferson Awards are given at both national and local levels. Local winners are ordinary people who do extraordinary things without expectation ...

, "Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under." In 2011, he was an Honoree in the Outstanding Young Educator program by ASCD. Shuldiner is also an adjunct professor at

Baruch College Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the college operates unde ...

References

External links

High School for Public Service website

Shuldiner discussing the problem of student homelessness

Shuldiner talks to City Limits Magazine about education reform
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shuldiner, Ben 1977 births The Harvard Crimson people Living people Harvard College alumni Baruch College faculty