Home Current Events Serving on the McDonogh Board: A Retrospective View
Serving on the McDonogh Board: A Retrospective View

Serving on the McDonogh Board: A Retrospective View

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Thirty years ago this month, I attended my first meeting as a member of the McDonogh School Board of Trustees. I won’t forget the luncheon at which I was invited to join the Board. The Board Chair, Tom Petty, informed me that board members of non-profit schools needed to contribute at least two of the three Ws to the institution. The Ws represented work, wisdom, and wealth. At the age of 36, I was fairly certain which two were mine.

My service to the McDonogh Board began years earlier when, as the school’s alumni association president, I was an invited guest to all Board meetings from 1985-1986. Because of my background in finance as a CFO and CPA, I was invited to be a member of the Board’s finance committee that same year.

McDonogh flag
A McDonogh banner with the school colors. Image courtesy of the McDonogh School.

At the time, the Board considered committee service as a way to evaluate prospective trustees. By the time I arrived to attend my first official meeting in September of 1990, I was no stranger to the Board.

My committee membership on the finance committee continued. In less than a year, I was asked to take over the chairmanship of the strategic planning committee. Committee chairs were members of the Board’s executive committee, which met during the months that the Board did not meet. Executive committee meetings could take as much time as board meetings, particularly if the Board was busy with capital campaigns, construction projects, and other concerns.

In 1994, the Board’s Treasurer, Randy Respess, completed his maximum number of terms.  I succeeded him as Treasurer, ultimately serving two three-year terms. I was also asked to chair an ad-hoc committee formed by the board to review the school’s athletic programs.

My tenure on the Board was incredibly busy. At the end of my first year, the executive committee (that I was not yet a member of) voted not to renew the term of the headmaster, who was an alumnus and had served the school as its head for the previous 18 years. I was asked to attend meetings requested by the faculty and the alumni to explain the Board’s decision.

Baptism under fire would be my best description of those meetings over the summer. The following year was busy with the search for a new school head.

The same year, the state of Maryland passed a law requiring kindergarten for all students. McDonogh added a K to its curriculum (K-12), and the Board funded the construction of a new kindergarten building without waiting for a donor.

McDonogh had a wonderful campus, but it had not constructed any new buildings since the 1960s. The community had members who argued that we needed an arts center to support the school’s drama and music programs. Many alumni wanted an athletics center to replace the school’s Memorial Gym. We raised the money to build both.

Technology was becoming more prominent in businesses and education, so the board created a technology committee to assist the school in its planning. One of our first actions was to recruit a technology director. We located and hired Tim Fish, a young teacher in the Fairfax County, Virginia, school system. His experience and enthusiasm would serve the school well for years.

We established a land committee to evaluate the sale and development of some of the school’s property that had been owned since the establishment of the school in the 1800s. The school ultimately decided to develop the land itself, a decision that rankled some members of the Board because it diverted capital from the endowment to the development of the property.

One of our Board members, Terry McHamer, resigned from the Board and became the head of our development operation. Terry did a wonderful job, given that he was not compensated similar to independent real estate developers. However, he was an alumnus and grew up on campus where his parents served as faculty members and administrators. The land returned capital to the endowment, just years longer than some Board members expected.

Working with the administration, we built a strategic plan that was backed by a finance plan that tied to a development plan. My job as treasurer was to annually update all Board members on how the school’s finances worked. We established policies for the draw on the endowment, for capital campaigns dedicated to raising money for buildings to include funding for building maintenance, for building construction, and for borrowing money to allow construction to begin before all pledged gifts were received.

The Board’s land committee did not control or direct the construction of campus buildings. The Board had a buildings and grounds committee that evaluated the proposals for funding the maintenance of many of the aging buildings on campus prior to new building construction. That committee’s role expanded to include working with the school’s administration to evaluate and monitor the construction of all new buildings.

As the endowment grew and the capital campaigns expanded to include additional facilities and endowment funding, we moved the investment sub-committee of the finance committee to an independent board committee, allowing it to focus on targeted endowment returns and investments.

McDonogh aerial view Boston
Aerial view of the McDonogh campus. Image courtesy of the McDonogh School.

Our steadfast attention to the school’s operating budget led us to a better understanding of the enrollment process and resulted in an increase in the overall number of students. When I joined the board, McDonogh’s enrollment was just under 800 students in first through twelfth grades. When we added a kindergarten, we added sections in certain grades as those first students who began as kindergarten students continued their academic journey. The last year I served on the Board, our enrollment had reached 1,275.

The 15 years that I served McDonogh as a Board member and Board committee member represented an incredible period of change for the school. While there were ups and downs, the dedication of Board members willing to provide at least two of the Ws, if not all three, resulted in the school standing strong in the Baltimore community today.

I was inspired to write this article so many years later after donating my Board files to the school’s archives this past week. Without this narrative, the files are just files. What they represent is much more.

Wally Boston Dr. Wallace E. Boston was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of American Public University System (APUS) and its parent company, American Public Education, Inc. (APEI) in July 2004. He joined APUS as its Executive Vice President in 2002. In September 2019, Dr. Boston retired as CEO of APEI and retired as APUS President in August 2020. Dr. Boston guided APUS through its successful initial accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association in 2006 and ten-year reaccreditation in 2011. In November 2007, he led APEI to an initial public offering on the NASDAQ Exchange. For four years from 2009 through 2012, APEI was ranked in Forbes' Top 10 list of America's Best Small Public Companies. During his tenure as president, APUS grew to over 85,000 students, 200 degree and certificate programs, and approximately 100,000 alumni. While serving as APEI CEO and APUS President, Dr. Boston was a board member of APEI, APUS, Hondros College of Nursing, and Fidelis, Inc. Dr. Boston was appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity by the U.S. Secretary of Education in 2019. He also serves as a member of the Board of Advisors of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), as a Trustee of The American College of Financial Services, as a member of the board of Our Community Salutes - USA, and as a member and chair of the board of New Horizons Worldwide. He has authored and co-authored papers on the topic of online post-secondary student retention, and is a frequent speaker on the impact of technology on higher education. Dr. Boston is a past Treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the McDonogh School, a private K-12 school in Baltimore. In his career prior to APEI and APUS, Dr. Boston served as either CFO, COO, or CEO of Meridian Healthcare, Manor Healthcare, Neighborcare Pharmacies, and Sun Healthcare Group. Dr. Boston is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Management Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. He earned an A.B. degree in History from Duke University, an MBA in Marketing and Accounting from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business Administration, and a Doctorate in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. In 2008, the Board of Trustees of APUS awarded him a Doctorate in Business Administration, honoris causa, and, in April 2017, also bestowed him with the title President Emeritus. In August 2020, the Board of Trustees of APUS appointed him Trustee Emeritus. In November 2020, the Board of Trustees announced that the APUS School of Business would be renamed the Dr. Wallace E Boston School of Business in recognition of Dr. Boston's service to the university. Dr. Boston lives with his family in Austin, Texas.

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