Educator leaves retirement behind to lend expertise to Charleston Collegiate

When a man has been working his whole adult life, the prospect of retiring can be daunting.

Such was the case for Bob Shirley in 2000 when his 22-year tenure at the helm of Heathwood Hall Episcopal School in Columbia came to an end.

His retirement lasted about three weeks.

"Retirement is something that terrifies me," says Shirley, 71. "I've been working full time since 1955, and I can't imagine not working."

He turned to the thing he knows best: private education.

Shirley, who grew up in Greenville attending public schools, started working in private education in 1965 after three years in the Marines and another three at Wachovia Bank. He taught English and was the school's business manager and bus driver at Summit School in Winston-Salem, N.C. He left as assistant head in 1978 to take the position at Heathwood Hall.

So in 2000, when retirement didn't become him, he became a consultant, helping private schools with tasks such as planning, fundraising and searching for new leaders. He filled in as interim head at Gaston Day School in North Carolina and at Boston's Brimmer and May School, and spent a year as director of the Columbia Museum of Art, conducting its hunt for a new chief.

A stabilizing force

In 2004, he was consulting with Lowcountry schools Ashley Hall, Trident Academy and Charleston Collegiate. When Charleston Collegiate's head, Jim Robison, resigned, Shirley agreed to fill in until someone else could be found.

"I came here intending to stay one year, and it looks like I'm going to be here about five years," Shirley says. He started in July 2005 and recently signed a contract for three more years.

"I think it will take longer than a year to stabilize this school," he says. "I thought if I could be here longer, I could help them be stable and then help them find the person to take over for the next 10 years."

The Johns Island private school, which changed its name from Sea Island Academy in 2002 with an eye toward changing its reputation, made great strides under Robison. Average SAT scores went up by more than 300 points, passing rates on Advance Placement exams tripled, and the school earned membership in the National Association of Independent Schools.

But Shirley acknowledges it's still "a work in progress. It's overcoming the reputation of 'we'll take anybody' to a reputation of 'we want to be very restrictive for a while,' and now we want to put together kids who want what we have and help bring out the best in them. I'm hearing good compliments in the community about the direction we are going."

Enrollment has doubled to 280 students under Shirley's tenure, thanks in part to the addition of a preschool program "that shows a commitment to education," and a learning center geared toward students with mild learning differences, he says. Shirley expects the school to grow to 500 within a decade.

And they are willing to spend the money to get the students they want. About $650,000 of the school's $3 million annual budget is awarded in financial aid to "make a student body," he says. "You've got to spend it wisely and carefully on people who can add to what you're doing and enhance the education of all the people here."

Shirley feels it's important that the school be reflective of Johns Island's ethnic makeup.

"In the 21st century, schools must be diverse, and that means financially, racially, in every way," he says. "The most important thing kids have to do is to learn to work in the world they find themselves in. There are several different populations on Johns Island, and we have representatives from all of them. We are beginning to get set up well for what we are trying to do."

A diverse student body starts with a diverse leadership. The 32 faculty members at the school include four blacks and two Hispanics. "That makes an environment kids can identify with," he says. "An independent school is a marvelous place for minority kids to be part of the majority."

In fact, Shirley felt so strongly about integration in 1966, when he was the assistant headmaster of Summit School, that he and the headmaster paid the tuition of the first black student out of their own pockets.

His chairmanship of the New Morning Foundation, a Columbia-based nonprofit dedicated to reducing adolescent pregnancies in South Carolina, has "given me a broader view of Johns Island," he says. Through the foundation, he has worked at Baptist Hill, St. John's and Burke high schools.

"I am interested in Johns Island beyond this school," he says.

'Learning engineers'

Influenced by Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools and as the founder and executive director of the National Center for Independent School Renewal, Shirley believes education has to be individual.

"Student learning is what schools are all about, not teachers teaching. We try to become learning engineers as opposed to the sage of the stage."

The students have to learn to think for themselves.

"It's not about what you make on a spelling test," he says. "It's what's in you as a person. People in private schools are basically privileged people. They have lots of support behind them. The question is not whether they get an education, it's what in the world are they going to do with it. And given the privilege that the person is given, what difference are they going to make. It's how you give to society that makes a difference."