The Don Shalvey Story
Chapter 1: Origins & Early Calling
South Philadelphia Roots
Childhood, family influence, baseball, music, and early values
Before there was a charter school in California, before Aspire or Gates or A+, there was a boy named Don Shalvey growing up in South Philadelphia.
The year Don turned six, the 1950 Whiz Kids won the National League pennant.
It was his father, Vincent Shalvey, who taught him the game and instilled many other loves that would shape Don’s entire life.
Right up there with baseball and Philadelphia was a love for music. Vincent was a professional musician. On the wall of the family home hung a framed dollar bill.
As the back of the frame attested, it was the first dollar that Vincent had earned playing music. That dollar, and all others that would come from Vincent’s playing, would be dedicated to the family’s other love.
A love for learning.
A Family Investment in Education
Childhood, family influence, baseball, music, and early values
Both Vincent and Florence Shalvey made sure their son attended the city’s best Catholic boys’ schools, places where expectations were high and students knew they were loved.
From his earliest days in those schools, as his report cards attest, Don demonstrated the traits that would later define him: academic excellence, alongside a tendency toward mischief-making that would ruffle the feathers of school authorities.
Through it all, the family maintained an unwavering commitment, but one that evolved over time. What had begun as a general notion that whatever Vincent earned with his music would go toward Don’s education became a pool of resources dedicated to a very specific purpose.
It became Don’s “College for Certain” fund, a crystallization of the family’s aspiration that Don would become the first in the family to graduate from college.
“College for Certain” Becomes a Calling
Camp counselor influence, MIT aspiration, leadership seeds
As Don progressed through high school, the phrase became a mantra he carried beyond the home, no longer just a guiding principle for his own life but one that began to shape the trajectories of other young people as well. A tradition of the summer camp where Don worked as a counselor was to name cabins after colleges, instilling in campers the belief that they, too, were destined to complete a college education. In each group photo, Don found a way to be the one holding the sign bearing the name of the college.
Soon thereafter, he secured admission to the very one he had long held out for himself: M.I.T.
A Turning Point Close to Home
Father’s passing, decision to stay, La Salle
But fate intervened to send his life in a different direction. Halfway through his senior year, Vincent passed away suddenly. The loss was devastating for both of them, but even more so for his mother. When the time came to decide among his college options, Don knew he needed to remain closer to home so he could support her through the unexpected challenge that had befallen them.
He enrolled instead at La Salle College in Philadelphia, continuing his education within the same tradition of strong Catholic institutions that had shaped his earlier years, and in doing so fulfilled the promise expressed in the framed dollar that still hung in the family home.
Finding Purpose in Education
Graduation, teaching path, Gonzaga fellowship, philosophy emerging
Four years later, Don graduated. His studies, along with his continued experience as a camp counselor, convinced him that teaching was in his future. But just as he was preparing to take a position in a local middle school, a telegram arrived that once again redirected his path.
Would he accept a fellowship to study school counseling at Gonzaga, a small Jesuit university in Spokane, Washington?
Circumstances had changed. His mother had successfully rebuilt a life for herself, allowing Don to consider opportunities he had previously set aside. Within months, he was thriving out West amid a tight-knit group of fellow students who took to calling him “Shalvs, the Philly Dog.” There, in yet another Catholic institution of higher learning, the sense of camaraderie among his colleagues, combined with the focus of the program itself, reinforced an intuition that had been forming for some time.
Namely, that the relationships students and educators build within a school are every bit as important, perhaps even more important, than the instructional techniques they practice. It marked the emergence of a personal philosophy about the centrality of human connection to learning, one that would guide Don’s work for decades to come.
Westward — And a Defining Miscalculation
Move to California, Merced surprise, discovering community
As ever, music remained a central interest of Don’s life. As he received his master’s degree in 1967, the music of the Summer of Love was defining a generation. And it was beckoning Don to go even further west. Scanning job postings in the Bay Area, he came across a position in a place called Merced and assumed it was near Lake Merced just south of San Francisco. So he applied.
It wasn’t until he had secured the offer that he discovered the truth: Merced was actually located three hours inland, in the heart of California’s Central Valley.
Merced: Where Philosophy Meets Practice
Community alignment, inequities, belief in relationships
He was drawn to visit anyway and found a community that reflected what he had come to recognize about public education at its best: schools where relationships mattered, and where close alignment with the community led them to evolve in response to local needs and reflect local values. In Merced, that meant adapting to the rhythms of a local economy dependent on agriculture, including schools adjusting their calendars, often at the last moment, to accommodate the demands of the harvest.
The visit to Merced also revealed that the community’s schools bore the clear imprint of the educational inequities of the time.
But it also revealed a community that cared deeply about its public schools, one that had approved a tax increase earlier that year designed to provide its young people with the kinds of opportunities more often found in more advantaged communities.
It was, in short, a community that Don found to be full of promise, exactly the kind of place where he was looking to cast his lot.
And so it was that Don Shalvey, “the Philly Dog” to his classmates, began his career in education in a place about as different from his hometown as he could have imagined, bringing to the work an energy and drive that would become hallmarks of his career.
Building a Belief System in Practice
Teaching, leadership rise, LEAP program, core philosophy: relationships matter
It began with a position teaching 7th grade.
Almost immediately, he was asked to take on new responsibilities, first as a counselor.
In 1971, just four years into his teaching career, he was making headlines in the local press, launching the LEAP program, Language Enhancement Augmented by Parents, which drew hundreds of families into classrooms for learning and celebration.
In the process, he began to serve as ambassador for his emerging philosophy of education. Children, he was quoted as saying in that first story, should “have people they love in school.”
By 1974, he had been promoted to principal, and soon after, he began leading professional development for the entire district. His enthusiasm was widely noted as contagious, and colleagues recalled that his workshops made them “fall in love with teaching again.”
By 1980, he had been named Director of the district’s new Professional Development Center, a program he had built from the ground up.
From Local Leader to Lasting Impact
District leadership, influence, Lodi, personal life, growing reputation
In 1987, after more than two decades in Merced, the Sun-Star announced that Don was leaving the district. The outpouring of appreciation that came from his colleagues at his farewell confirmed that the core beliefs that Don held about public education – that excellent schools are defined as much by the quality of human connections within them as by the strength of their instructional practice – had come to be realized in California’s Central Valley.
His next destination was Lodi, a city just north along Highway 99 in San Joaquin County. It became the community that he would call home for the rest of his life. There he met Sue, a fellow educator whose dedication to children matched his own, and the two married soon thereafter. Their shared commitment to education and to the local community became the foundation of a partnership that would shape both his personal life and his professional journey for more than fifty years.
The Charter School Breakthrough
Doctoral cohort, legislation, late-night call
By the early 1990s, he had become superintendent of the San Carlos School District and a doctoral student at USC. The program was offered remotely to educators in Northern California, and every other week he met in the basement of a Sacramento hotel with his cohort, a circle of reform-minded leaders that included Dave Patterson from the California Department of Education.
They came from different parts of the education system, but they shared a common goal: to open public education to innovation by giving entrepreneurial educators the freedom to design programs that better met the needs of students and families. Much of their conversation centered on the recent passage of Minnesota’s charter school law and whether similar legislation in California was even possible.
It led to another fateful moment. As Sue would later recall, a call came in very late one evening. It was Dave Patterson, speaking with a kind of breathless excitement. In the final hours of the legislative session, Senator Gary Hart had managed a complex parliamentary maneuver to push through a charter school bill largely unamended by its opponents.
“What are you saying? What does it all mean?” Dave recalled Don asking.
“It means the bill’s made it to the governor’s desk, and you know Wilson’s going to sign it. Don, this charter thing’s for real!”
“I’m Going to Be First”
Urgency, action, personality, filing early
Don stayed up most of the night thinking through the implications. By the following morning, he was at the district office early, convening a group of his closest colleagues and moving forward with his characteristic urgency. Within a matter of weeks, they had drafted a petition that met the new law’s requirements and secured approval from the San Carlos School Board to submit it. They moved quickly enough to file the application before the California Department of Education had even formally opened the submission window.
From his desk inside the department, Dave Patterson could see the unusually frequent visits Don was making. Don, however, seemed uncharacteristically circumspect, until Patterson could contain his curiosity no longer.
“What are you up to, Don Shalvey?”
The man whose childhood report cards revealed a tendency toward mischief-making was now poised to ruffle the feathers of school authorities on a much larger stage.
Don offered his trademark innocent grin.
“Dave, you know if I’m going to do this thing, I’m damn well going to be first.”
Charter #1 — A Movement Begins
Climactic moment and legacy launch
Months later, when the state began assigning numbers, that is exactly where he found himself.
San Carlos Charter Learning Center received Charter #1.
California’s charter school movement was born.
Get QR Code
