Principal Rachel Tommelleo has the Midas touch of kindness. It’s her compassion for every student that makes her school in Ward 4’s Brightwood neighborhood a warm, welcoming place for each and every student.
“If she had it her way, she would have 265 separate lesson plans,” said Shavonne Gibson, Tommelleo’s predecessor as principal at Center City Public Charter Schools’ Brightwood Campus and now a high-ranking DC education official. “She starts her day by standing by the front door and playing music, and welcoming each kid.”
Tommelleo’s passion for learning and teaching earned her a $25,000 cash prize last month, when she became part of an exclusive cadre of up to 40 teachers, principals and specialists nationwide chosen to receive a 2018 Milken Educator Award.
“Rachel is only the 14th winner from DC since DC began participating in 2003,” said Jana Rausch, communications director for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Milken Family Foundation.
“There’s no time to waste when it comes to children,” Tommelleo said.
As a mass media and communications major at New York University, Tommelleo wasn’t thinking about becoming a teacher — and certainly not a principal. After graduating in 2004, she bounced around a bit to different tutoring jobs before learning about the New York City Teaching Fellows, a program that trains recent college graduates in education and encourages them to “ignite students’ imaginations when teaching.” She knew she loved working with children, so she enrolled in the fellowship program and began teaching her first class — second-graders in the Bronx. Fast-forward a few years, and she had a master’s degree in elementary education from Mercy College and two years of elementary school teaching experience under her belt. Her next step: creating her own school.
“In New York, the way it works is you can propose a new school idea to phase out a failing school in the city,” Tommelleo said. “So I helped found the Urban Institute of [Mathematics] — a middle school in the Bronx — with some other educators.”
She met her husband at the institute and off they went to DC in 2010 so that he could pursue a career in law. Training she received through The New Teacher Project — an organization that works to ensure that poor and minority students get equal access to education — exposed Tommelleo to all types of schools throughout the District. Not only did it solidify her career choice, but it also opened her eyes to the racial inequities and wealth disparities in DC schools.
“From my experience in New York schools, I have not seen as much of a contrast as I have seen in DC,” Tommelleo said. “Meaning sometimes the facility, sometimes the resources [are the problem] — retention is a huge problem in our city.”
The more she learned, the more passionate she became about working to solve these problems and providing a better education for every student she met. So when the opportunity presented itself, she joined Center City Public Charter Schools in July 2013 as an assistant principal of the Brightwood Campus. Two years later, she took over as principal of the pre-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Ward 4 school.
“The best part about being a principal is just being able to be a part of helping our students learn about why they are passionate in life,” Tommelleo said. “If we can provide them with an experience that sparks their interest in learning, then we are changing their education.”
Tommelleo is a problem-solver. She has a natural ability to look at a situation holistically, inform herself of the possible outcomes and determine a solution that moves toward a goal. But every good leader knows when to rely on the help of others — a lesson she learned while participating in School Retool, a professional development fellowship that hosts workshops for teachers to learn ways to better prepare students for the real world.
“One of the activities I learned as a member of the first DC Retool cohort was checking in on the safety net of school,” Tommelleo said. “One day after a meeting, I put up a chart on the wall with all of the students’ names, and each teacher had to put a check by each student they felt they had a genuine relationship with. We realized there were some students that were falling through the cracks.”
To combat this, Tommelleo created the Brightwood Families Program, which matches each student with one pre-kindergartner and one teacher to meet monthly and to perform a variety of team-building and community activities.
“In a short time she has rallied students around closing the achievement gaps, created the Brightwood Families and created a type of safe haven that sets students on a path to success,” Rausch said.
Recipients of the Milken Award are chosen from a list provided by state education officials, who screen the candidates. The foundation then makes the final decision. Tommelleo was chosen for the impact of her accomplishments, according to Rausch.
Tommelleo’s accomplishments at Brightwood have been quick and effective. After her first year as principal, the school “earned the National Title I Distinguished School Award for closing achievement gaps for subgroups and students with disabilities,” according to a Milken Educator Awards press release. It’s classified as a Tier 1 school by the DC Public Charter School Board, with 75.9 percent of its students meeting performance standards last year. The school’s students are overwhelmingly black and Latino, with 90 percent of the children classified as economically disadvantaged in 2017.
When State Superintendent of Education Hanseul Kang and other dignitaries visited the Brightwood school on Oct. 26, it was under the guise of honoring student growth on DC’s yearly standardized tests. But as the event kicked off, Milken Family Foundation president Mike Milken came on stage to reveal the school’s principal as DC’s sole 2018 winner of the prestigious $25,000 award.
“Rachel Tommelleo has proven to be an effective, compassionate and committed leader who has helped make Brightwood an outstanding school,” Milken said in a news release. “Most importantly, she has made the school a safe and nurturing place where students get a strong start on the path to further education and lifetime success.”
In an interview, Gibson said her friend’s success comes from how she treats education. The two met when Tommelleo was her assistant principal at the Brightwood Campus.
“She is big on improving the social and emotional skills of students and placing a real emphasis on building community,” said Gibson, who is now assistant superintendent for teaching and learning at the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education.
Positive change is Tommelleo’s goal in all of her efforts. She has worked with students from diverse backgrounds, and she wants them each to receive a quality education.
“We are doing way too many children a disservice,” Tommelleo said. “There’s a reason we are seeing certain differences in achievement. When things get tough, it’s definitely a bigger push for me to keep doing what I’m doing and do even more.”
Tommelleo does not know yet exactly how she will use all of the money, but she said much of it will go toward her 1-year-old son’s college education.
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