Education leader Bill Kurtz spent twenty years building DSST Public Schools into one of Denver's top performing charter networks, then spent nine months learning how not to be it. His warning to the sector: we are not getting twenty year leaders anymore, and it is not because they do not want to stay.
In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Bill, founding CEO of DSST Public Schools and now a coach and advisor to CEOs across sectors, to talk about building something for two decades and then handing it off well.
Bill traces the path from Wall Street to a small Catholic grammar school in the South Bronx, where he taught social studies and coached the boys basketball team to an undefeated city title. His banker colleagues thought he had lost his mind. Six years as principal of Link Community School in Newark followed, then a newspaper ad for the founding head of the Denver School of Science and Technology.
He and Mike get into why DSST was built on values rather than compliance, and what Bill believes that gives graduates entering an economy being reshaped by AI. Bill is also direct about the identity trap of founding something. You become DSST and DSST becomes you, and he started unwinding that before he ever left.
Tune in to hear Bill's distinction between self worth and self confidence, and why he thinks the education sector keeps betting on the wrong one.
Chapters:
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01:21 Meet Bill Kurtz: founding DSST in a Denver ready for change
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07:58 STEM leaders, not the assistants serving the innovators
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12:36 Why a values driven school matters more in the age of AI
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19:12 Leaving Wall Street for a K-8 in the South Bronx
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25:10 A newspaper ad and three months to founding DSST
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28:36 Becoming DSST, and the nine months it took to decompress
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38:26 Lead yourself to lead others, and why twenty year leaders stopped happening
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44:46 Self worth is not self confidence
Links:
Reach out to Bill Kurtz to talk about founding, succession, and leading yourself well enough to stay in the work for twenty years.
Stay strong.
Episode 40