Remembering MCSM’s Founder – Colman Genn

This 25th Anniversary year for MCSM gives us an opportunity to look back at the extraordinary life of our school’s founder and first Principal, Mr. Colman A. Genn. Most of us have probably never heard of Mr. Genn or know that his picture can be found on a memorial plaque on the wall next to the entrance to Room 126, the College Office.

One of five children in a Brooklyn family, Genn grew up as a Bensonhurst “tough,” looking for gang fights and being, by his own admission, a “very poor” student. After getting a Bachelor’s degree in health and physical education from Brooklyn College and a Master’s degree in the same area from Michigan State, he began his education career in 1958 as a math teacher at Brownsville Junior High, eventually moving on to teach social studies and physical education in East Harlem.

By the 1980’s, Mr. Genn had begun actively working with local superintendents Anthony Alvorado and Carlos Medina to help found three alternative, public choice schools in East Harlem: the Academy of Environmental Sciences, the Harbor School for the Performing Arts, and MCSM. Genn and Alvorado were early supporters of the small school movement for NYC. From 1982 – 1986, Mr. Genn was Principal of the newly-founded MCSM, operating in the old Benjamin Franklin HS building where typical daily attendance was below 50% and graduation rates below 10% before that school was closed. Mr. Genn led MCSM’s first class, the 143 students from the Class of 1986, to a 100% graduation rate that earned our school a front page story in the New York Times.

By all accounts, Mr. Genn achieved his greatest fame as a witness to the Gill Commission, formed by Mayor Koch to investigate fraud and illegal activity in the public school system. While working as Superintendent of District 27 in Queens, he wore wires to record meetings over a period of eight months in which school board members discussed creating phony jobs and filling them with friends. His testimony before the Gill Commission made him a star witness in disclosing to the public the pervasive corruption that permeated the City’s community school boards. His courage in speaking out against corruption won him the great honor of being profiled on a 60 Minutes story.

Even after he retired as a school superintendent in 1991, Mr. Genn remained active in education as a senior research fellow at the Center for Educational Innovation, where he continued to support school reform and helped found more small schools in NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, and Newark. He passed away in 2004 at the age of 68. The NY Times (June 30, 1986) described Colman Genn’s dream for MCSM: “what Cornell University was for Ithaca, N.Y., his high school would become for East Harlem.” It’s up to all of us to make and keep our founder’s dream a reality.