Possibilities Imagined

Paul Morrissey ’99 vividly remembers his first day of music class at Govs. The fourteen-year-old was still trying to acclimate to his new school as he filed into the old auditorium (now the Bergmann Theater in the Wilkie Center for the Performing Arts) with his classmates. Morrissey didn’t know it, but within minutes, music teacher Cindy McKeen would make an announcement that would change the course of his life—and later inspire him to open one of the fastest-growing public charter schools in the state of Texas.

“The first thing Ms. McKeen told us is that she needed to know what we could do, so we were going to be called up to sing,” Morrissey recalls. “I hoped she would somehow skip over my name, but she didn’t; so I went up on stage and sang. I was melting back into my seat when she looked at me and said, ‘That was great. You need to see me after class.’”

Morrissey was taken aback. Though he had previously developed an interest in music—teaching himself to sing harmony to his favorite cassette tape, The Best of the Beach Boys—his brothers would poke fun at him for singing along on car rides. So instead, he opted for the role of student-athlete, arriving at Govs with impressive ice hockey skills.

Things changed when Morrissey stayed after that first music class and listened as his teacher encouraged him to join the chorus.

“Ms. McKeen opened up this door that I never imagined would be possible for me,” Morrissey explains emotionally. “I joined the chorus and then the advanced chorus; I even acted on stage (not very well)—all because of this one moment where Ms. McKeen saw something in me that I didn’t see. She heard something in me that I didn't hear. And she reached in, pulled it out, and showed it to me.”

For Morrissey, that “something” was more than just the ability to hit the right notes into a microphone. It was about developing the confidence to discover what can happen when you push yourself to take a chance, to bet on a dream. “My best memories of Govs—some of them are on the football or baseball field or in the hockey rink; but a lot of them came from being on stage and getting to experience stuff that was not on my radar at all. And that’s something that happened to me again and again over those four years.”

After Govs, Morrissey joined the US Hockey League for two years, then completed a bachelor’s degree at the University of Connecticut. He lived in Prague for a short time and then attended graduate school at Trinity College Dublin, earning a degree in popular literature. “At Trinity I had the opportunity to work in a small cohort who really understood what I needed and were willing to push me and challenge me, but also support my efforts to be a better scholar,” Morrissey says.

The experience reminded him of poignant moments at Govs, and he started to consider a career in education. “I think every person who works in education has a story about the one or two teachers who really changed their lives; but for me it was this whole community of adults at Govs. I got full financial aid to attend and from day one I felt lucky to be there, placed in a community where, every day, I could tell that adults cared about me, about my future. They wanted me to succeed, and it was game-changing for me.”

Morrissey’s first role as an educator was at Basis Ed, a public charter school in Arizona. “The school had this big vision to improve education by challenging and supporting students in equal measure,” Morrissey explains.

“They believed that kids can do much more than we think, and that we need to raise the bar—but not without the safety net of caring adults. That appealed to me because it was directly connected to what I had experienced at Govs.”

After teaching and college counseling, Morrissey served as assistant principal, then principal. “I started to understand the role that public education plays and how it impacts everything that matters in society.”

So when the opportunity came for him to open a new charter school in Washington, DC, he took it. As they recruited students from all across DC, Morrissey started to notice discrepancies in populations and performance measures. His growing interest in improving outcomes for economically disadvantaged students led him back to the Boston-area for a fellowship at Lawrence Public Schools, which was in state receivership. In that role, he worked with—and eventually joined— Building Excellent Schools, a nonprofit organization that trains leaders to build and run high-achieving college preparatory urban charter schools.

Morrissey’s next venture would prove to be among his greatest accomplishments: founding Compass Rose public charter school, and serving economically disadvantaged communities in San Antonio, Texas. “When I was a fellow at Building Better Schools, I knew I wanted to open a new school, to create something that didn’t exist before,” Morrissey says. “Through the program of study, I researched high-performing charter schools across the country and learned how to write a charter school application. That was instrumental in me launching Compass Rose.”

The process included a 500-page application to the Texas Board of Education. That year, Compass Rose was one of two groups approved to open a charter school. A board of directors was formed, and the school opened in 2017 on a converted military base with one grade level (sixth), 90 students, and a staff of 10, including his wife Nicole.

“There’s so much that goes into building a school. But then you need to get students to come and show up,” Morrissey recalls, sharing his grassroots recruitment eff orts. “There’s a Walmart across the street from our founding campus and I was out in the parking lot every day with fliers in my hand stopping families, letting parents know that we would do right by their kids. It felt like such a win that 90 families took a chance on us.”

Morrissey and his team followed through on their promise of a quality education, and the number of students doubled the following academic year. By year three, they had reached an enrollment of 350 students. But things changed in March 2020, when U.S. public school systems shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Undeterred, Morrissey and his team were already brainstorming next steps. “We recognized very early in the pandemic that there was going to be a nationwide problem bringing kids back to school, that they were going to get lost and fall behind,” says Morrissey. “One of the things that has been instrumental in our organization’s growth is the decision that no matter what was being said publicly, we were going to open up in the fall and make sure our kids were cared for during one of the greatest times of need in our public education history.”

Morrissey and his team spent that summer driving through neighborhoods, handing out fliers and ice pops, and talking with families. In August, the existing campus and a second new campus opened with 1,150 students enrolled. “It took incredible eff ort, all-boots-on-the-ground community engagement work,” Morrissey says.

And that level of commitment has not wavered since. In what Morrissey calls “hockey stick-style growth over the past five years,” Compass Rose now has seven campuses serving Pre-K through grade 12. Its first class graduated in June 2023 and enrollment for fall 2023 is expected to be approximately 4,000 students, which Morrissey says makes Compass Rose “the fastest-growing public charter school entity in the state, and potentially the country.”

The curriculum includes STEM, aeronautics, entrepreneurship, computer science, agricultural science, nature-based learning, public health, and medicine. And Morrissey has made sure that Compass Rose does not lose sight of why he founded the school in the first place: access to a world-class education and the ability to pursue and achieve dreams. “It’s been a wild ride over the last five years, but it’s the most meaningful work I could ever imagine doing,” says Morrissey, who is the father of one son, Harlan, and two daughters, Noa and Sawyer. “And it all directly links back to my experience at Govs. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t know the power that an educator has to truly reach inside a child’s heart and pull out that beauty, that talent, that excellence that they don’t see in themselves.”