Staff » Paul F. Cummins
Paul Cummins is a renowned educator, author and founder of New Visions, a non-profit organization providing innovative educational opportunities through which the most at-risk and under-served young people can transform their lives. New Visions serves as a catalyst in educational and social innovation for the disadvantaged. Since its inception in1995, New Visions has launched independent and charter schools, and has implemented innovative programs helping children at risk.
Over the past thirty years, Dr. Cummins has devoted his career to finding ways to provide all children equitable access to a quality education. In 1971, he co-founded the well-respected Crossroads School and built it into one of the city’s most successful educational institutions. In 1995, he co-founded New Roads School, a highly diverse K-12 independent school in Santa Monica which has a deep commitment to social and ecological justice. Under his direction, New Visions Foundation partnered with Pueblo Nuevo Development and ExED in 2000 to open Camino Nuevo Charter School (CNCS) in response to a growing need to provide a stronger education to the youth of MacArthur Park. A few years later, Dr. Cummins co-created P.S. Arts, a non-profit, providing arts classes to children in Title I schools. The following year, New Visions Foundation partnered with ExED and noted filmmaker and producer, Moctezuma Esparza in 2005 to design a school in Los Angeles that emphasizes arts and enterprise education for youth who too often do not have access to such programs. In 2006, St. Anne’s, ExED and New Visions Foundation designed New Village Charter School to meet the unique needs of young women. The only charter school to have received a state waiver to operate as an all-female school.
Additionally, with Dr. Cummins at the helm, New Visions has launched several programs including: Fostering New Visions, a program that places foster children and youth in carefully selected schools in order to provide them with educational stability through college; New Roads for New Visions, an after-school program for incarcerated youth, at Camp David Gonzales, which redirects and relocates juvenile students. New Roads for New Visions has successfully placed many of these students directly into college, independent schools, or in the mainstream workforce and has significantly decreased the recidivism rate among its students.
Cummins’ current project for New Visions focuses on the Lennox community, which is located in one of California’s highest poverty areas. Partnering with the Lennox School district and local agencies, his vision is to implement the New Visions for Lennox Educational Neighborhood Zone (NVforLENZ), designed to bring comprehensive, coordinated health, educational and social programs to its children and youth – from birth through high school graduation.
As an author, he has published several books on education and poetry. His publications include a booklet on poet Richard Wilbur, several articles on education and numerous poems that have appeared in journals such as The New Republic, Poetry L.A., Whole Notes, Wild Bamboo Press, Bad Haircut Quarterly and Slant. His biography Dachau Song: The Twentieth Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper (Peter Lang, 1992) has been translated into Chinese and German. For Mortal Stakes: Solutions for Schools and Society, was published in 1998 by Peter Lang Publishing and Bramble Books and was translated into Japanese, and Keeping Watch: Reflections on American Culture, Education and Politics was published by Firstbooks Library in 2002. A collection of Cummins’ poetry: A Postcard from Bali, was published in 2002 by Argonne Press. Proceed With Passion: Engaging Students in Meaningful Education was published in 2004 and Two Americas, Two Educations: Funding Quality Schools for all Students in 2007, both by Red Hen Press. His most recent book of essays, Why Poetry? Reflections on Poetry, Writing and Culture, was published in 2009 by Xlibris.
Dr. Cummins serves on many boards of trustees including: New Roads School, P.S. Arts, The Sam Francis Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Muse Elementary School, and The Center for Innovative Education, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, and the Los Angeles Academy of Arts and Enterprise. He is a graduate of Stanford (BA) and Harvard (MAT) Universities, and received his doctoral degree from the University of Southern California. He and his wife Mary Ann reside in Santa Monica. They have four daughters.
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