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New Broward County School Board Chief comes from Trelawny. 
<span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-weight: bold">Broward’s schools chief comes from humble beginnings</span></span>
Robert Runcie, Broward’s new superintendent of schools, plans major changes for the troubled district.
Standing in the lobby of the Broward School District administration building, Robert Runcie saw the parallels between the photos in front of him and what would soon be his new job.
The photos show the building’s wall-to-wall windows before and after Hurricane Wilma in 2005 — and one that shows the building days after the storm, patched up and open for business.
During interviews for the school superintendent job last week, Runcie often referenced the patchwork photo, noting that he was impressed by the scale of the job and the teamwork involved in the quick turnaround.
“I’m sure that story can be repeated over and over in the district,” Runcie told board members. ”We have to take a look at how we harness that energy and put it toward the good of our students ... we must realize that we do have a state of emergency - in education, in Broward and the rest of this country.”
Runcie, 50, hired Wednesday by the School Board, is ready to rebuild public confidence in a district that has weathered different kinds of storms over the past two years.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A CHILD IN JAMAICA</span>
Robert Wellington Runcie, the son of a sugar cane farmer and a doting stay-at-home mom, was born in rural Perth Town, Jamaica, in the country’s Trelawny Parish – home of Olympian sprinter Usain Bolt.
He grew up among the shoots of cane his father harvested. He milked cows and helped his mother collect eggs from the chickens.
A chance encounter changed the family’s fortunes when young Robert was 6 years old. A construction firm owner visiting Jamaica offered Runcie’s father a job in New York.
“The man told him, ‘I can tell by the calluses on your hand that you’re a hard worker,’ ” Runcie recounted. “That was the job interview, a handshake.”
The family — Runcie’s parents, two brothers and sister — moved to Poughkeepsie.
It was his father’s work ethic and his mother’s added push, that motivated Runcie throughout his schooling. Despite having to repeat the first grade, because his family had moved in the middle of the school year, Runcie went on to excel in his classes.
As a student athlete at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park, N.Y., he juggled sports — basketball and cross country — while earning top grades in math and science.
“Public schools, when they do their jobs, transform the lives” of children, Runcie said. “When everything else may not be working, schools provide a cornerstone for a lot of kids.”
<span style="font-weight: bold">Encouraged by his teacher and basketball coach, Runcie applied to several Ivy League schools, eventually deciding on Harvard University, where he majored in economics and met his wife Diana, a literature major and Harvard Law School graduate.
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After college, the couple moved to his wife’s hometown of Chicago, raising their three daughters. Mariama, 21, is a molecular biology major at Harvard; Ayanna, 18, is a sophomore at Spelman College in Atlanta, and Folasade, 15, recently started her sophomore year of high school in Chicago.
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<span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-weight: bold">Broward’s schools chief comes from humble beginnings</span></span>
Robert Runcie, Broward’s new superintendent of schools, plans major changes for the troubled district.
Standing in the lobby of the Broward School District administration building, Robert Runcie saw the parallels between the photos in front of him and what would soon be his new job.
The photos show the building’s wall-to-wall windows before and after Hurricane Wilma in 2005 — and one that shows the building days after the storm, patched up and open for business.
During interviews for the school superintendent job last week, Runcie often referenced the patchwork photo, noting that he was impressed by the scale of the job and the teamwork involved in the quick turnaround.
“I’m sure that story can be repeated over and over in the district,” Runcie told board members. ”We have to take a look at how we harness that energy and put it toward the good of our students ... we must realize that we do have a state of emergency - in education, in Broward and the rest of this country.”
Runcie, 50, hired Wednesday by the School Board, is ready to rebuild public confidence in a district that has weathered different kinds of storms over the past two years.
<span style="font-weight: bold">A CHILD IN JAMAICA</span>
Robert Wellington Runcie, the son of a sugar cane farmer and a doting stay-at-home mom, was born in rural Perth Town, Jamaica, in the country’s Trelawny Parish – home of Olympian sprinter Usain Bolt.
He grew up among the shoots of cane his father harvested. He milked cows and helped his mother collect eggs from the chickens.
A chance encounter changed the family’s fortunes when young Robert was 6 years old. A construction firm owner visiting Jamaica offered Runcie’s father a job in New York.
“The man told him, ‘I can tell by the calluses on your hand that you’re a hard worker,’ ” Runcie recounted. “That was the job interview, a handshake.”
The family — Runcie’s parents, two brothers and sister — moved to Poughkeepsie.
It was his father’s work ethic and his mother’s added push, that motivated Runcie throughout his schooling. Despite having to repeat the first grade, because his family had moved in the middle of the school year, Runcie went on to excel in his classes.
As a student athlete at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park, N.Y., he juggled sports — basketball and cross country — while earning top grades in math and science.
“Public schools, when they do their jobs, transform the lives” of children, Runcie said. “When everything else may not be working, schools provide a cornerstone for a lot of kids.”
<span style="font-weight: bold">Encouraged by his teacher and basketball coach, Runcie applied to several Ivy League schools, eventually deciding on Harvard University, where he majored in economics and met his wife Diana, a literature major and Harvard Law School graduate.
</span>
After college, the couple moved to his wife’s hometown of Chicago, raising their three daughters. Mariama, 21, is a molecular biology major at Harvard; Ayanna, 18, is a sophomore at Spelman College in Atlanta, and Folasade, 15, recently started her sophomore year of high school in Chicago.
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