John H. Finley IV, Founding Head of Epiphany School

 

92-142. John Finley

SPEAKERS

Will Bachman, John Finley

 

Will Bachman  00:36

Hello and welcome to the 92 Report conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m delighted to be here today with the Reverend John H Finley the fourth. I didn’t have to say the fourth part, but it just fun to say Reverend John H Finley the fourth. He said, I could just say John Finley. But I mean, how often do you get a chance to do this. So John, welcome to the show.

 

John Finley  01:03

Thank you. Will. I was one more, and I’m a pope. I think when you get to, like, the fifth six numbers. And I did have a funny moment, Harvard moment, because my my father went to Harvard, and my grandfather went to Harvard, and my grandfather was master of Elliott House, and he had, like, the he wrote the core curriculum, and he taught what I don’t know if you took or aware of Greg Nash’s class, heroes for zeros, right? Exactly. Well, that was my grandfather’s class. It was actually the largest class Harvard ever have. Anyway, the roundabout way was Larry Bacow asked me to help with looking for a new minister from Royal church, and I went to meet with him, and he’s, you know, told me what he wanted. And you know what his you know what what the goals were, and it’s great. At the end of the meeting, I said, Well, I’m really happy to do this, you know, because Harvard’s meant so much to my family. And he looked at me and he said, did your family have something to do with Harvard? And there were two things that happened. Will one was I was like, Oh my God, I don’t feel like I’ve ever been anywhere at Harvard on my own merits. You actually want me for me, part of me said, like, I mean, there’s a university professorship in my grandfather’s name. And like, there shouldn’t, Isn’t there someone on staff who says, you know, you’re about to meet this little preppy idiot and he thinks he’s a big deal because his grandfather was a big deal or something. But apparently, not, apparently, you know, you know they no one’s no one’s bothering to try to color the President’s perspective. Anyway,

 

Will Bachman  02:34

someone, someone needed a little bit of a staff briefing on the staff there, you would

 

John Finley  02:42

think, I mean, you would just think, like, Isn’t Harvard, like, dripping with administrators? Like, aren’t there a million people

 

Will Bachman  02:47

you’re about to meet John Finley, his father, grandfather, his father’s Elliot house. All right, John, tell us about your journey since graduating from Harvard.

 

John Finley  02:58

Sure. Sure. So when I was at an undergrad, I worked a lot at the unilu shelter, and it really was a transformative experience for me. It was a chance to really,

 

Will Bachman  03:12

I’m sorry. Uni loop, for people that aren’t sorry, the University

 

John Finley  03:15

of Lutheran, church, home, shelter, so right next to Pinocchio’s in the basement there, right, right? And I slept there a lot, and worked with folks. And I, you know, I just saw

 

Will Bachman  03:25

people like you would, you would sleep there as well. Yeah,

 

John Finley  03:29

I would do overnights there, okay? And, yeah, my routine, well, with the the law required you to be have someone awake or on staff, and I couldn’t stay awake. So I would, I would take a dish towel and twist it up and tie it around my eyes, and then the knot was my pillow, and I’d sleep on the kitchen counter. And then if there was like a commotion, I could pivot my body, my legs would drop it and yank up my torso, and I whip off my dish towel and deal with whatever it was. And I really began by my junior year, so beginning to think that I really wanted to work with people younger, earlier in their lives. My plan had been to such and it really wasn’t as clearly a plan. I mean, looking back, it was, but it was sort of, you know, step by step, but, but I wanted to work with people earlier. My plan was to become an Episcopal priest and then open a school, and I got involved right after college, thanks to Ellie Lee, our classmate was doing a film on this school that was starting in the Roxbury section of Boston, and I visited the school, and I was just like, yep, Sign me up. I’ll help get this school started. But I was planning to become an Episcopal priest and then open my own school, but the bishop at the time said, You’re openly gay. Forget it. You know the you’re not getting ordained. So So I, so I stayed at nativity prep for five years when it was awesome. Will it was like this. I love the work. I. Uh, I lived very simply. I’ve lived in a basically abandoned convent with a bunch of other people in Dorchester, and it was a very, you know, I lived in a nun cell. Not great for your dating life to have, you know, to live in a convent, but, but it’s great. And the new a new bishop came in to replace the old one, and the new bishop drove out to see me and said, Look, you know, I know what you were told new boss in town, I’m fine with that. I mean, you still have to, you know, have a monogamous life and a prayerful relationships and all this stuff, but you doesn’t matter if the with the gender of the person. So I wrapped up everything there, applied to Harvard Divinity School, got in and was going to leave and go do seminary, and then the same Bishop came back and said, You know, I think you should open a school. And I was like, awesome. So I did a year at HDS while raising money and hiring teachers and building a facility to start the school I run now, the epiphany school, and it’s very much like nativity prep that that first Jesuit school, but where it differs is, I should back up will and say, we, we grew that school dramatically. So they’re now 6070, Nativity Schools around the world, and they’re great. But the critique, for people who wanted to critique us, we would say, Well, you know, you yes, you’re serving low income kids, but there’s a there’s you’re looking for kids of academic promise with engaged parents. You haven’t, you know, you have interviews and you have an entrance exam and so forth. I never thought that was really fair. I mean, we were working with some kids from really challenging situations, but I was very clear that when I got to my own school, that that would not be the situation. So epiphany serves kids who are homeless, kids who have been abused, neglected, kids living in poverty. There’s no interest exam. There’s no we’re not looking for kids of academic promise. And as a result, our incoming fifth graders are usually testing about second grade level, so they’re about three years behind, but they graduate in eighth grade well ahead of grade level. And for example, this year’s eighth grade scored 1.5 million in high school scholarships. So they it’s and they work hard. They have 12 hour school days, so we have breakfast, lunch and dinner here at school, and they have school all year round. So my kids will be in school until August, in the middle school anyway, so yeah, so I did a year at HDS, and while I was starting the school, and then I dropped out of Divinity School when the school opened too much to do, and so I then spent several years in this kind of limbo where I would sort of ask the bishop. I say, you know, you asked me to open a school, you asked me to get ordained. Like, how do you think these are both going to happen? But eventually it worked out, I was ordained as a as an Episcopal priest and I serve as one. Today I have a parish here in the Dorchester section of Boston, where I’m the priest associate. I’m the summer pastor at Trinity York Harbor in Southern Maine. But my day job is running epiphany school, and we now have dozens of Epiphany schools around the world. Many of my teachers are former students of mine, and it’s grown from it was just a middle school, and now it really has five components. So one is the middle school, one is the Early Learning Center. So we admit children after the mother’s first trimester, so do the Early Intervention around the pregnancy and housing and family support. And then the babies are with come to us, and they stay with us till they’re five. Then we have the Middle School, which is fifth to eighth. Then we have graduate support. So any kid who comes here, we fund them for the rest of their lives, support them in their tuitions, make sure they have summer jobs, help them with college applications. Then we have the Teaching Fellow Program. So we take up to 27 people a year who get room, board, health care, a living stipend and a free master’s degree. So sort of train the next generation of educators. And then we have the epiphany impact, which is our our where, how we organize when we’re starting to build new schools or help people start things. That epiphany impact is the department that handles that part of it, so that’s what it is today. And what else to tell you? Just around the time I was getting ready to do epiphany, I was introduced by Harvard friend who was a year ahead of me, to the guy who’s now been my husband for Well, we’ve been together for almost 30 years. There were 10 years there where we couldn’t get married so, but we’re coming up on our 30th anniversary in in the fall, and Stan is, is amazing. Yeah, I the metaphor I use, will because I’m religious, is the language I use. I. Not work for everybody, but like, I see it as, like a marriage is like a metaphor for God in the sense that you know Stan is, he’s knows me. He’s seen me at my worst. He probably knows you know some ways better than I know myself. And he isn’t stupid, like he’s, you know, Rhodes Scholar, you know, Harvard Law, whatever, and yet he still thinks I’m the greatest thing in the world. And I that feels to me the way, like my experience of my faith is like God knows me inside and out better than I know myself, and still thinks I’m amazing. How that is possible. I have no idea, but I’m not asking any questions. I’m just grateful that Stan feels that way about me. So I adore my husband, and we live in Boston, and we have our we have a place, two places on the Cape, on Provincetown, but then my family places in Southern Maine. So that’s also sort of sort of two anchors there. And professionally, you know, I guess probably, like a lot of our classmates, you know, we’re in our mid 50s, many of us and sort of thinking about, Okay, what’s the next thing? And so what I’m for me, it’s succession planning. And my plan is to retire here at 65 which is a ways away, but, and, but I would never leave the school. I just, I just love it too much, and it’s just makes me way too happy, but I don’t need to be the head of the school for the rest of my life. So thinking about, you know, how do you set the school up for success, you know, after you’re gone, and so that’s important. But yeah, and then what else I should I’d love to get any questions mute, but I just say other things I’m doing. I’m a trustee of a college scholarship foundation that awards several million dollars a year in college scholarships. So if any of our classmates know high school seniors in Massachusetts who are looking for support, we’re always looking for new partners, and if anyone wants to give away college scholarships, we’ll do it for them for free. So if the Bachmann millions want to go to send someone to college, we’ll do it. And you won’t, you know, we won’t charge you anything for it. And I also trustee of a program that gives grants to people with projects. So if you came and said, I want to leave consulting and I want to go do this other thing, and if it’s an investment both in the project and the person, so that’s a project I’m involved with. And then also, you know, just the building of new epiphany schools are helping replicate the the model, or replicate parts of the model. And what else, yeah. So I, you know, I preach, I married people, I baptize people, I bury people. So do all the things that a priest does, and I love it. And, yeah, but anything there that you’d love to riff off or ask questions about, or

 

Will Bachman  12:58

so this podcast to do it properly would take about at least a week, I think, to unpack some of those areas that you opened up. My goodness, maybe I’d like to start with, wait the epiphany school. So you started the first one, and now you have replicated this to some number you think you said, Yeah.

 

John Finley  13:21

Depending on how you count it, it can be as high as 31 and some of them are, but some of them are very loosely on the model. But yeah, we have dozens of schools around the world. Yeah.

 

Will Bachman  13:31

Okay, so this is, I mean, this is extraordinary. I’d like to hear a bit more about the nature of an epiphany school, and you’re achieving some extraordinary results. You know, if you follow writers like Matt Iglesias or wherever, who talks about, you know, education reform, education reform is really tough, from what I hear, and most interventions actually don’t work, or they have very marginal effects. So tell us maybe a bit in more detail about the core of the Epiphany school. And then there’s those four other areas. But let’s start with just the core of the school. What are you doing differently? What’s the design? What are the you know, what’s your sauce?

 

John Finley  14:13

Well, well, I really appreciate the question. I mean, in some ways, it’s not really rocket science. You know, the the core principles of the school are pretty simple. It’s non merit based admission, tuition free. So they’re independent schools, but there’s no tuition, extended school day, extended school year. So we have school through to August, abiding graduate support and that’s really the basic core of what the schools you know, if you do all those things, you can be an epiphany school. We there’s more to it in terms of full service stuff. So we do have metrics, like we try to move every family out of poverty while the kids are in the school, because we really. Believe in seeing the whole family as part of the the process, the project, but you were talking about outcomes, and it one of the things that you do have to do as an epiphany school is you have to track every graduate every year, forever. And it’s a powerful way of improving your program by seeing you know where you’re succeeding and where you could probably do better and so forth. But it’s also really important thing about efficacy. And I often when starting a new school graduate, support is often a tough thing to sell to people, because it’s sort of an open ended commitment to a child and family forever, right? And it just seems you know, what are the parameters and how do we manage it, and the the but one of the great things, one of the ways it helps in the funding of the school, is looking at efficacy. So I tell people this story in I think it was in the late 30s, early 40s, philanthropists took 1000 at risk. Boys in Cambridge and Somerville split the population half. So 500 were receiving free summer camp and weekend mentoring. And the other group was a control, and then he endowed it to follow those two cohorts to see the impact of the intervention. And lo and behold, over the decades that followed, one group had shorter life expectancy, lower socioeconomics, situation, more drug and alcohol abuse. Will it was the group that got the mentoring and got the summer camp, the intervention caused harm, right? And so I think it’s important for people like us who are doing sort of social justice work to really look at our long term outcomes and hold ourselves accountable to those things. But on the other hand, you know for epiphany, where you know we have no money. We we’re not you know, 90% of our money is from private donors. And you know one thing I can say is that demographically, my grad should have an unemployment rate of about 20% and my grads have an unemployment rate of less than 1% so it’s a really great way of saying, you know, invest in us, give us money. Because we really do seem to be able to change the trajectory of a kid’s life

 

Will Bachman  17:09

in terms of, like, in terms of the actual coursework. Maybe talk about that.

 

John Finley  17:14

No, yeah. So there’s not, like, a special curriculum sort of system there. We do have a discipline of constant curriculum improvement, which I think is healthy. Nothing’s particularly magical about it. Every year, we take a tranche of the school and bring in outside experts to assess us, and they write up a report of what they see, the faculty responds, and then that goes to the Board of Trustees. What that means, though, is that every six or seven years, every aspect of the school is taking time away, writing down on a piece of paper what they actually claim that they’re doing. Then they’re being checked to see if they actually do what they say, and getting critiqued by leading, you know, people who are really amazing in that field. And so having that, you know, it’s that, like that, that Kaizen thing. You know that you’re the consultant, but, like, that idea of constant improvement, like building that into the system. But no, we don’t have a particularly, I don’t think that’s really one of our strengths in terms of, like, I don’t think we have a curriculum that’s world’s better than folks, but we do have really intense, it’s really an intense program. I mean, it’s, you know, little fifth graders going to school from 7am until 6pm you know, and and doing the and going to school in July and so forth. And then also, I think it is important to work with the families, you know. So, you know, if you you look, I I’ve seen studies that suggest that anywhere from 30 to 50% of Head Start gains are gone within three to five years. And one of the problems there is that there are perverse incentives in our social system. I’m not this is nothing new to the world that that prevent families from improving their situation. So for example, one of the reasons we opened our early learning center is mothers would have daycare vouchers. And the problem with the day they’re very generous. In Massachusetts, they can be up to 20, $22,000 a year for childcare. But you have to stay single, because you can’t have an alternative source of income, which is often the dad, and you have to stay poor, right? So our goal is, we say to our mothers, we say, you know, look, we know you have a daycare voucher, that’s great. We’ll definitely take the money, but our goal is you would lose it, and will. I’ll tell you, every single mom it not sometimes it takes four or five years, but every single mom in our early learning center has lost her voucher, either because she’s making too much money and or because the dad’s involved. So I think that we’re able to do as an independent school is is to be able to to work around those systems that that are clearly well intentioned. You don’t want to give a voucher to someone who doesn’t need it, right? So, but if you make it means tested regularly, people are going to stay poor to keep it unless you know it’s the same thing with affordable housing. So we have an escrow program for families, where if your income exceeds your threshold for public housing, you can escrow up to $50,000 which can only be used for housing, but you don’t have to move out of your you don’t have to find market based housing until you have reached the $50,000 number. And that just grew out of people, because we do a lot of work on employment here. And when you see a family saying, Look, I can’t take that raise, because if I make this much more a year, I I’m out. I got to go find market based housing, and I haven’t saved any money. I don’t have like, and I can’t save until, you know, it’s this weird conundrum, so, and it’s just, I think, our role, you know, it’s really trying to explain to families that the money’s coming out of their paycheck, and, no, they can’t spend it, but it is still really theirs, and it’s not being stolen, that it’s really, you know, being the trusted broker sometimes with families, because that kind of financial instrument takes a fair degree of trust, you know, you know, Will, I’m taking your money and it’s yours, but you can’t have it yet. Sorry. One more thing before you ask a question about financial stuff, we also, I didn’t mention this, but every child, when they’re born in the epiphany system, gets a $3,000 or 529 plan. So investing, you know, sending a message to families early on that there’s significant resources. You know, $3,000 isn’t, you know, going to be a lot, but they get quarterly statements, they see it’s invested in a fairly conservative mix of equities and bonds. But it, you know, it goes up and down, but over time it, you know, it grows and grows. And families see that and and know, it’s for their child. So that’s, that’s a positive thing.

 

Will Bachman  21:40

So you seem to me to have adopted, among other things, the sort of, you know, religious requirement of humility. So I’m going to ask, I’m going to ask you to sort of take on the persona of Stan, if we will. And what would Stan say is, like John finley’s superpower, you seem to be extraordinarily capable at building institutions and be very thoughtful about building institutions. How would Stan describe what your superpower is?

 

John Finley  22:11

Yeah, well, we won’t go for Stan, because Stan’s vision of me is just completely unrealistically well. But what I have heard is that people say I’m very good at thanking people for stuff so that, you know, I mean, a lot of what I do will is, I kind of, it’s, you know, that metaphor of Stone Soup, you know, where they say, can mix, right? So I say, Oh, we can. We can create a a free school for low income kids, and the budget will be seven, $8 million a year. And we can do this. It’s going to be great. And then everyone starts to contribute money, time, resources, to make it happen, right? So I think, you know, I think it’s my capacity to thank people. I think my sort of, my optimism tempered by, I think, I think I have a decent radar of, like, what’s feasible, you know, I have seen over the years and people who have really good ideas, but they’re just not going to they’re just not going to fly because they’re just not they don’t have enough of the key pieces to put together. I think I’m able to do I’ve got a decent work ethic, so I’m still at work every day at 5am you know. And I think that that’s important if you’re going to be the you can offer yourself as the leader, you know, I think you kind of lead by example. Least that’s been my experience. Maybe, maybe there are other ways of doing it, but for me, I think it’s, you know, showing that you work really, really hard. And I think so that I’m pretty good at I’ve had an amazing education, you know, just from, obviously Harvard, but I went to porting school, Groton School, which was amazing, and I went to a great private elementary school and so forth. And I think the other thing that has been, I think I’ve been good about is about being able to cultivate a diverse group of people around me. So, you know, my team, my my average teacher’s been with me for 20 years. You know my three of my founding teachers are with me today, and and they think I am SO wrong half the time. And you know it, there really are like, like, I think about Jennifer Daley, who is the first person who joined the effort, and everything I suck at, Jennifer’s great at, you know, and it’s, and I’m not, that doesn’t bother me. I’m, I’m fine with that. And then the other thing is, I, you know, I guess I like, I enjoy raising money. I makes, makes me happy to bring resources to things. So, you know, my work, it just happens that what I do, you know, is something I enjoy doing. So I haven’t, I’ve been able to sustain it for a long time, but, but I would, you know, revert to the humility a bit. You know, it’s the old, you know, just because you were born on third base doesn’t mean you hit a triple, you know. You know, I had a lot of advantages growing up.

 

Will Bachman  24:59

So, okay, I want to. Want to intervene there and ask you, because you’ve alluded to this a couple times now, just now and then at the beginning, with the story about Larry Bucha, which is kind of funny, but seems that you have, like, a little bit of a, you know, there’s a real fan. Talk to me a bit about your family’s legacy and the role it’s played in your life and your, yeah, world outlook, like your grandfather was the master of Elliot house, for Pete’s sake. And, yeah, no, what? Tell us about this Harvard and your family, and what’s that meant to you?

 

John Finley  25:29

Yeah, so, and my great grandfather was at New York Times and built City College, and so it was, it’s a great tradition in the sense, because the Jonathan was okay before me, were all pretty impressive people, but they didn’t do the same thing. It wasn’t like there was a family. Was a family business that, you know, it was handed down, you know. And so I, you know, I had, I left Harvard with, you know, no debt, with enough of an income that I could, if I wanted to get a tiny apartment and drink beer and watch TV for the rest of my life. I could do that. You know, this is not Rockefeller money, but it’s but it’s enormous security to know that you you don’t have to worry about, you know, being able to feed yourself or something, right? But there was also a real pressure of like, okay, what do you love? Like, what do you want to do, and I hadn’t landed at nativity yet, and I, I remember this, this feeling, this pressure of just, like, like, just get off my back. Like, you know, I’ll, you know, I’ll figure it out. But it was really great encouragement. And my father was really great that way, that, you know, my sister runs our family real estate company. My brother’s a plumber, and my father was wildly proud of all three of us. And you know, not only do I not make any money, but I beg for money all the time, right? And he didn’t. All he wanted was for us to really be the fullest version of ourselves that we could be. And but he wasn’t going to tolerate a lack of a passion, like, if we didn’t care of, you know, I tried working with him for a while, and it was just hopeless, because he just say, Look, you don’t love this. Like, why are you here? Like, what? What are you like? And I, what I was hearing, Will was I was hearing you’re you’re not, you’re not good enough to do this. And then I did my first project, and it was a modest success. I wouldn’t say it was going to, you know, go in the record books, but I finally enabled me to hear what my father had been saying, which was, not, you’re an idiot and you can’t do this. It was, you don’t love this. And it’s true. Every day I was looking to, like, when is five o’clock? Like, when can I get out of here, you know? And now the day, my days at epiphany fly by, and I’m, one of my common refrains is, I can stick my head out the door and, you know, ask my colleagues, can someone make me more time? I need more hours in the day. I don’t. There’s just not enough time. And it’s a cool time. Now, in terms of, I’m sure you have this in ways to like, you know, now that we’re older and sort of things are some of the seeds we planted have have grown. So, you know, many of my teachers are former students of mine, and and I love them, and I’m not their dad or their best friend, but I, you know, we do love each other, and it’s just a joy to see them, you know, walking up down the halls, and just, you know, getting married and buying their own homes and and you know, when I met them, you know they were living in a shelter, and you know that they’re now having these great lives. And it’s just, it’s really, you know, not every story works out perfectly, and no, every life you know, you never, you never free from suffering and pain. That’s that’s not, you know, that’s, but it is great to see people who are living happy, productive lives. It’s really but the to caveat it you were asking me about, like school reform and stuff like that, if you wanted to critique us, and I think it’s a legitimate critique, is that, you know, we’ve created this environment, this independent school environment that is privately funded, so we’re really have a lot of flexibility to do what we think is best for our kids. If you look at the whole epiphany system, it’s maybe 3000 kids will so it’s, you know, if you were, you said, Well, that’s great, but it’s really a drop in the bucket. You’re really not making a broad impact, you know, where, let’s say you, you know, you brought education reform to the state you’d be affecting, you know, you know, hundreds of 1000s of kids. So, but what we try to do, you know, in terms of a bigger impact, is just be a practical example of what’s really possible. And I’ll give you one quick anecdote. So every time Boston has a new superintendent, and we get a new one, every like 15 minutes, because that allows no one to be responsible for the failure of the school, just, oh, fire the superintendent. And. And they’re always sent down here to take a tour. And we had one superintendent, Tommy Lee, who was Tommy Chang, sorry, Tommy Chang, and we were, it was in October, and we went down the fifth grade, and he came out of the classroom. He’s like, John, that’s like, an awesome classroom, trauma sensitive. You know, great use of technology, you know, but, but, John, it’s October, and these kids don’t even know they’re single digit multiplication tables. And I wanted to say, well, Superintendent, you know they, they were my, you know, they were, they’ve only been with me for a month. They were, you know, yours. But that wouldn’t have been, you know, polite and but then we kept touring, and we went up to the eighth grade, and the eighth grade was doing algebra two, and to his credit, he said, Were these kids as far behind as those kids I saw downstairs? And I said, Yes, and that’s exactly the point, right? Is that you know, you know, you might look at a school, like a, you know, Harvard, or, if you know of any number of fancy, you know, high schools or elementary school, say, Well, yeah, but the only reason you’re so good is because you took smart will and you didn’t take knucklehead and John. But you know, that’s just not true. And I, you know, our schools are, I think, a solid data point that says, Look, no, you know these kids on paper, you know, were the worst in the city of Austin in terms of test scores, homelessness, abuse, and they’re they’re doing great. So don’t tell me that, that it’s not possible. It’s just a question of, as a society, are we committed to making that happen? You know, but don’t tell me. Don’t blame the kids. Don’t say these kids with these parents can’t get here, because it’s just not true. So now you may, it may be difficult to implement. I don’t know what I if I was superintendent, I don’t know what I would do. I mean, I’m not I’m not smarter than they are. I don’t you know if I was Secretary of Education, how would I make it happen? I don’t know, but at least to at least acknowledge a goal that is a reasonable goal that, you know, every eighth grader could be doing algebra two and tucking in their shirt and, you know, having, you know, have their head off the desk. You know, it’s not impossible. So sorry, I’m going on too much.

 

Will Bachman  32:18

That’s the point. You mentioned, tucking in their shirt. Like, beyond schoolwork, are there sort of behavioral things, or, you know, aspects beyond the schoolwork that is important, I don’t know, to others, or that sort of stand up straight, or, you know, comb your

 

John Finley  32:35

hair, all that kind of thing. Yeah, no, we definitely put more emphasis on the social, emotional stuff than the academic. So there’s more rewards for conduct and effort things we use a software program that we helped beta test years ago that’s now used in a lot of schools, called Class Dojo, and different schools use it different ways, but on my cell phone, there’s a little icon for every kid. So if I see will making a thoughtful choice or showing courage or perseverance, I can ping him, and I have the option of typing in what will did. I don’t think most teachers do that. I certainly don’t. The reason we use it is because it’s tied to your parents phone. So your parents get a little Bing saying, so when you come home, they say, Oh, well, you know, Mr. Finley gave you a point for thoughtful choices. What did you do? Oh, well, I was, you know, I was in this situation, and I chose to do this and not that. So building that stuff up, you know. And, you know, because of the way we admit kids, some of our kids, after a few years, is it possible to pause for one second and just answer a call? I’m so sorry. I’ll be right back. Yeah, It’s Fine. Yeah.

 

John Finley  35:26

I’m sorry about that. Will one of the tricks is like, when a major donor calls, like, three times in the course of half an hour, you say, Okay, I better answer the phone. I’m sorry, but you were asking about the social, emotional stuff. So yeah, we do. So all, all of our kids are in group therapy, and about 70% are in individual therapy. And we really believe in having that in the building. So the therapists and the teachers are all working on the same page. So, you know, Will says, you know, with John, we’re working on, you know, when he seems to get excited, ask him if he’s in his danger zone, and he has breathing exercises he knows to do. So we’re all, you know, there’s not, there’s no one’s falling through the cracks sort of thing. And so we do a lot of that work. We also have a group called the Brotherhood, and then a group called Sister sister, and they, those are older grads who come in and they do with the kids. They do gatherings, community service, stuff, fun things, but creating that sort of social, emotional support. And then we use a tool that we helped develop with McLean’s and MGH called the holistic student assessment. And I it’s now publicly available, and it’s a very simple self assessment that kids do twice a year at the beginning and end of the school year, and it has two really great features, in my opinion. One is it allows you to get a macroscopic sense of, you know, how are you doing on the social, emotional stuff, like, you know, let’s put some numbers to this. The other way, though, that I think is really more hits you more in the heart is you capture that kid who you didn’t see before. So for instance, little student, little girl in the fifth grade, lovely little girl home visit. Was great, you know, good in school. See, you’d say, great. And then she takes this self assessment. She says, I want to die. I want to cry every day. I hate my life. And we go back to the mom, we say, hey, you know, we missed something like, what? Like, you know, what’s going on? And she said, you didn’t miss anything. We her father shot himself last year, and we wanted to have a fresh start at a new school. And so we were clear that we weren’t going to share anything with you about this. And so we, you know, in that situation, you say, look, obviously won’t share this with no one needs to know this, but we need to get her with a therapist and get some help as a teacher. You know, it’s always that feeling like, Oh, my God, I didn’t know that kid needed glasses, or I didn’t know. Oh, I forgot one of the most, you know, if my colleagues were here, they would have fusted me. I didn’t mention one of the most important things about our school, which is we we never give up on a child, which means we don’t kick kids out. So when a kid is struggling, the debate is never about like, Well, how do we build a paper trail to kick kick will out? You know, it’s we got to make this work for will. So what’s, what do we got to do to make this work for him? And it’s a very healthy discipline. It because, you know, it’s, all too easy to start make yourself feel good by saying, Well, we’re really not the school for will. We don’t have the resources that will requires. And, you know, so it’s not that we don’t love will, but he’s just, you know, we’re not the school for him, and just taking that off the table and and it’s true, we’re not, we’re often not meeting the full needs of our kids in every way but it, I can’t remember an example where we weren’t the best available option, you know, that, you know, short of adopting them, or, you know, paying $150,000 for to go to boarding school, it wasn’t, you know, with we had to make it work.

 

Will Bachman  38:58

Now, some of our classmates who have kids, perhaps in private school, are thinking to myself, Man, this sounds like more all encompassing than the private school I send my kid to tell us a little bit about how much this actually costs. Like, what’s the cost per kid? Not the tuition that you charge, it’s free. But like, yeah,

 

John Finley  39:18

what’s the cost? Because the cost per kid is between like 30 to $33,000 a kid. It’s tough to do an apples to apples comparison, right? Because we have certain benefits, and then we’re also smaller. Our most expensive component is the Early Learning Center, because the ratios you have to have one adult for every three kids at that level. And, you know, so we, and that is an all in number. So that includes, you know, graduate support. It includes the family supports and so forth. The we’ve had a couple studies, one by the Harvard Business School. And two by Babson, sort of looking at our cost per student as compared to the public system. And I would say, on the one hand, both studies said we were less expensive and more effective, but I would say both studies were so biased in our favor that you would look at it for five minutes and say, This is not valid, you know, because they fell in love with us, and which is great. Is great, they fell in love with us, but it meant that the outcomes were not really fair. But will, what I do take away from it is maybe we’re less expensive, maybe we’re not, I know we’re much more effective, and it’s at least we’re not 10 times as expensive, or some, you know, level that you just could never get to, you know what I mean. So I find that sort of hopeful that the numbers aren’t there, but to that apples to apples comparison is tough, because basically what we’re doing is school after school, social work, summer programming, and that’s it’s all in one institution. So you have to, we’ve

 

Will Bachman  41:01

talked a lot about your school, yeah, I’d love to hear, you know, what else you have going on your life, your your intellectual pursuits, your reading, or your hobbies, or, you know, all the surrounding things that you have going on your life. Yeah, side of the school tell us about that

 

John Finley  41:17

well, so I, I work out every morning so I don’t kill a child. That’s very important.

 

Will Bachman  41:21

You said you show up at 5am like, what? What’s your morning routine?

 

John Finley  41:26

So I get up at quarter of four. It’s this really is going to sound ridiculous, but I get up, I pray, I go to school, I walk the property to pick up syringes and bottles of water and stuff. And then I see a trainer at 530 and I train with him until 630 and then I get over to the school and and when I start opening the school, because the kids do start arriving around 615 if the families have to get to work and stuff, and then my best part of my day is that first chunk. So until eight o’clock, I’m either in the lobby or I’m beginning at 730 I’m in front of the building, shaking hands, and every kid has to look me in the eye and shake my hand to get in the building. And it’s also about making me available to parents, you know, if they just want to, you know, I heard, you know, so and so was bullying. Well, I want to, you know, I want to talk to you. You know, I don’t want to make an appointment. I don’t, I want to see you so, but making myself accessible, but I love that part. And in succession planning, I’ve been able to, I farmed off a lot of the things. You know, there’s a lot of depth in the school that there wasn’t 30, you know, 2530 years ago, but and, and I did think about giving up the handshaking thing, because I do think it’s important the kids are greeted, but it does. I don’t think it’s that important that it’s me, but I just love it too much. I’m just like, sorry, like, you know, you know, until I’m fired, until I quit, that’s going to be part of my day, and then the rest of my day is mostly spent with adults, you know, raising money, talking with the leadership team, doing stuff like that. And then, usually I’m, I don’t stay through the whole day anymore, so I usually go home around 330 or so. I get home, I then I always sort of plan to be on the Stairmaster in the afternoon, so I have work that I can do there, and didn’t just take phone calls stand my husband thinks it’s completely obnoxious to take a phone call while you’re on the Stairmaster, but I seem to be able to, I think I could do it, and then we have a quick, simple dinner, little half an hour TV, and off to bed. It’s that’s the routine in other parts of my life. I didn’t mention I’m also doing a really cool philanthropic program from a family that made a bazillion dollars, and one of the ways they’re giving it all, they’re giving it all away, and one of the ways they’re doing it is they’ve recruited a group of us, and each of us gets a million, $2 million a year, just to give away. And so I’m really enjoying that work, and the people I’m meeting through that playing the piano took that back up again. My piano teacher says, you know, I don’t mind it when adults don’t practice, because it’s your money you’re wasting. So I’m not sure I’m practicing all that much, but I do love the piano, and my husband’s comment is, it’s just amazing. You managed to find a Deaf piano teacher, bless his heart. But I’m doing that. I’m in a couple of blog different like clubs and things. One of my one of the ones I enjoy a lot, is the thing called the tavern club. And we do a bunch of things that. One of things we do is we write our own plays and write our own music for them and perform in them. So I’ll be in the Christmas play this year. I don’t actually know what my part is yet, and I always have to hire again, a line from my husband, my deaf singing teacher, to help me get through my my part, but trying to to remain have something that is feeding those other parts of my brain that aren’t fed by, you know, and then I’m really close to my family, so, you know, I have a family real estate company. That my brother and sister I own. We own a house in Maine together. We own a house in Florida together. My but we’re all in Boston, in the Boston area, so I probably talk to my siblings at least twice, two, three times a week. And same thing with my mother. And then in summertime, when we’re up in Maine, we’re all together in this great big house. It’s big, but there’s only one kitchen. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta see each other. Just got back, I was in Tuscany for eight, nine days for my mother’s 80th. We all went over. And my father died a few years ago, and that was a really hard, but I think, really valuable experience that I really appreciated having. It was really, I’ll give you an example of, like, not so much the hard parts, but like, I was the one in the family who could sort of deal with toileting him and bathing him and stuff, and he’d be so he had dementia, and it was just so traumatic for him, so I sort of finally he’d be just spent, and I like how haul him into bed. And then, not all the time, but more than once, he said, you know, as he’s falling asleep, he’d go, you’re a good son, like, but it’s those things, like we’re all at that place, a lot of us right, where our parents are getting older, and you know that thing. And actually, my next call this afternoon is about my estate plan, and I’ve, I offer this to my classmates, so I’ve my family real estate stuff will go to my nieces and nephews, but everything else we own is going to be sold. And each niece and nephew gets a charitable trust. They get to give away 5% a year for their lifetime, and then designate a final residual person so it won’t, you know, won’t go on forever, but, but that’s what, that’s what I’ve decided to do with and my brother and sister seem to think it’s okay and stands with it, so we’re good.

 

Will Bachman  47:05

That’s pretty cool. Let’s turn back the clock. Tell us about any courses, professors or activities that you were involved in at Harvard. You’ve already talked about the university Lutheran and the homeless shelter, but any courses or professors that still resonate with you?

 

John Finley  47:20

Yeah. So I did a lot of work with he wasn’t a professor, but he taught a freshman seminar. I’m not sure. He was an artist story, a guy named Carrie Welch, who ended up becoming a very good friend and had all kinds of neat opportunities with him, co authoring a book, which I really didn’t co author at all, but he was just a nice person, and Peter Gomes was a really, really good friend as as a and Memorial Church was very important to me. I went every day as a to Appleton chapel. So that was important to me, and I still remain involved with the church. I belong to a final Club, which, you know, they’re evil, awful, terrible things, but I loved mine. It was awesome, but it was of no redeeming the porcelain club, all right, yeah, but I loved it. It would seem disingenuous, not to mention, I’ve just had a ball, but it’s of no redeeming value at all. It’s not, does it doesn’t do anything good for the world. Except I just had a lot of fun there. It was really great, but I loved being in the Signet, and that was really rewarding. But, and I do think the shelter work really changed the trajectory of my life, because it sort of, and I think a lot of people had that experience at that shelter is it gave them a sense of, like, how they could make a difference in the world. Like, you know, your classes were sort of, you know, were interesting and meaningful but, but this was like, you’re actually, oh, my goodness, I’m actually, like, making a difference in a person’s life. And so a lot of graduates. There’s a book out called where Harvard meets the homeless, about the shelter, and one of the things the author examines is how many graduates of the shelter went on to very interesting careers. So for example, Katia fells, who was a year younger than I, she noticed these women who wouldn’t come into the shelter because they didn’t feel safe. And she went on to found a program called on the rise, which works with which, which works with women building on their own initiative, rather than sort of saying, this is the shelter, this is the deal. And it’s been just, it’s been amazingly successful. Um, another example would be a more recent college graduates who realized that there were a lot of homeless youth, and there’s no youth shelter in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and they’re really not at 1819 throwing them into an adult homeless population is not great for them. It’s just not super safe. So they built y, 2y which is a in Harvard Square. It’s a it’s a youth homeless shelter. But other people went on to do poverty reduction work to the World Bank. But again and again, these people, now, of course, they were Harvard undergraduates. They were probably going to do something, but it’s interesting. How was funny, when the book was written, was being written, I was like, there is no way. There’s an. So there’s not a book in this thing, and it’s just a way to sell. It’s a great cover, like where Harvard beats the homeless, you know, that’ll sell, but, but, no, actually, it has been, I think it was really transformative, not just for me, but for a lot of people. But, yeah, Harvard was, was just ridiculous, right? I mean, we’re, you know, oh, I’m on the sitting on the floor of the art museum handling million dollar paintings, and I, oh, I’m, you know it, you know, it’s just the advantages we had were just, you know, just ridiculous. You know, we didn’t deserve them. We didn’t create them. But hopefully we’re using them in our different ways to to do good things in the world. So

 

Will Bachman  50:38

John Finley, where can listeners find you online, wealthy classmate who loves the mission? Yes, physical school wants to make that would

 

John Finley  50:47

be great, meaningful, meaningful. Ww.epiphanyschooldotcom, www.epiphanyschooldotcom,

 

John Finley  50:56

but anyone listening to this, if you want to follow up on college scholarships or old college. If you just go to the the contact thing on the website that all that always goes to me, so I will, I will get you’ll be able to reach me through. But it is just so you’re not confused. It’s not.edu or.org it is adotcom which seems but it was the best web address we could get. So back they can follow up with us

 

Will Bachman  51:21

say it one more time. Epiphany school,

 

John Finley  51:23

epiphany schooldotcom, and it’s just like it sounds. So it’s E, p, i, p, H, A, n, y, s, C, H, O, ldotcom, and would love to hear from anybody and will thanks for doing this. I didn’t know if I had enjoyed as much as I did. This is fun,

 

Will Bachman  51:38

John. These are always the highlight of my week, thank you so much for joining and thanks for the wonderful work that you’re doing in the world.

 

John Finley  51:45

Well, right back at you. Take care. Thank you. Bye. Bye.