Bill Oberndorf on Value Investing, Educational Equity, and Purpose-Driven Leadership

But we've continued on with the work, and the family's been very generous to helping to bring us where we are today. Yeah, well, that's amazing. And what do you hope ultimately to achieve for students and families through your work pushing this movement? Well, John and I felt that the downside in what we were doing is we'd help a lot of kids. And the upside was we could change the trajectory of education in America by injecting competition. Into K through 12. And that it was only by causing the traditional public school systems across the country to compete for kids that they were going to improve their performance. It just seems so obvious, right? It hasn't been an easy road. Here we are 30 years later. And there were no charter schools when the private school choice movement began, by the way. It predated charters. So where we are today is after all these years, this year marks the first year where we have crossed the million child threshold of children who get on average about $7,000. A piece of state money across 34 states to attend, for the most part, modest tuition, inner city schools across the country. We have about three and a half million children attending charter schools. And then, and this actually predated COVID, but it has ramped. And we're not sure exactly what the... The numbers are, but we have between somewhere between three and five million children being homeschooled in the country. And a lot of them are in pods and things like that that came out of COVID and about 30% of those kids are living in cities too, by the way, they're not out, you know, in, you know, the mountains side somewhere. So that's, that's a whole big thing that's changed because of COVID. The, the best measure of, so I think we, we know we've helped a lot of kids, but the best measure, can you really change the trajectory in, in the country is a few states where that has actually happened or happening. And Florida, Illinois. Indiana, Arizona, and Ohio, where the number of kids has got to be so significant. In the state of Florida, 49% of all the children who live in Florida have some form of choice today. Wow. And on the standard measure, the National Assessment of Education Progress. Florida. It was like 33 out of 50 states and it's gone to, I think, 17 now. And Indiana went from 26 to four. So you've seen big movements and Ohio shown some very nice moves. Those states, they have no choice, like California, where I live, has gone from 44 out of 50 to 41 over the last 20 years, just virtually no movement. So we're seeing that where there's choice. So we're seeing that where there's choice. So we're seeing that where there's choice. It causes the public school systems to get to get better. And it's why Miami-Dade, it is now the number one performing urban district. It's the fifth largest district in the country. And there you have all forms of choice in, including a lot of very robust, traditional public school offerings now, like international baccalaureate. uh and uh uh it's very exciting what's uh what's gone on there for for for the kids so we're seeing some really remarkable things uh charter schools too uh which are part of the work we do now um there's a wonderful uh uh program called success academies and um in new york city run by an incredible woman eva moskowitz and she has 28 000 children who attend success academy schools uh that makes and they're mostly minority kids that makes her the seventh largest school district in new york state and she beats westchester county and all the fancy suburbs so it can be done and we're the country's in serious trouble because this has been ignored everybody should be focused on this issue you know do you kind of approach your philanthropy work with some of the same kind of strategic mindset that you use investing i mean for example do you look for kind of like a return on kind of the money that people do and donate and kind of spend to help out such a great cause like school choice uh charlie some uh things are easier to measure than others um but yes we really look at those metrics in uh in school choice and we also look at them like what we're doing uh in trying to reform san francisco government uh here uh but uh we have we raise maybe 20 million to 30 million dollars a year we're now up to 30 but we've been at 20 for many many years and we've seen a real nice increase the last few years at the american federation for children but when we pass this legislation in the states which is recurring we are getting um uh usually six or seven hundred billion dollars of recurring dollars for that 30 million we spend plus we're we're doing defense work to maintain the program we have so that's a really high return on your philanthropy and you can measure that very uh directly uh and uh when you're doing uh when you're doing work um on uh basic research um the uh like we're doing at uh the university of california san francisco uh where i shared the board there for nine years but i've been involved there for 25 years uh it's harder to measure the progress because the breakthroughs can take a long time but when they come they're so completely transformational yeah well speaking of supporting education you've funded multiple scholarships here at university school including the obendorf scholarship and the jarvis scholarship that you and your wife susan made possible and that's just given countless students including myself the opportunity um to attend university school that wouldn't have had the opportunity if not so what inspired you to establish those scholarships here at university school well uh first of all uh uh the jarvis scholars is uh named after uh uh tony jarvis the reverend f washington jarvis uh tony was the most influential teacher i ever had uh and um uh that his entire school life their styles and all those attributes that he did uh really made me smart and open-minded i i remember when i was learning college i remember what the small houses meant to young people and i remember i remember были a large business play a great business building for young students and it was at a time when uh and i've only just finished my bachelor's degree in native 1945 so we left our uh so our class went into a um crisis needing uh financial support but there was a beautiful uh value in it which was that we were uh handle a uh attract uh incredibly talented uh boys uh from uh northeast ohio who otherwise might not know about us or might not be able to attend uh uh and uh at the same time i i wanted it to be uh really uh uh based on uh academic strength um admitting uh the boys uh there's also it's important that they're going to be good citizens of the u.s community so uh that was the kind of inspiration for that and i i felt that um and we'll we're going to see this is still a very much in process um program next year will be our first cohort of seniors uh next year and i just can't wait to see where uh this group ends up matriculating to to college uh but i think they have really uh added a lot to the community overall and um i think it also has has helped uh to stabilize and increase middle school enrollments too uh because uh did that that was another thing that we were hoping uh hoping would happen and uh uh uh from what i understand uh uh you guys are uh doing a great job it and being good good good members of the u.s community and academically uh really rising uh to the occasion and taking full advantage of what u.s has to offer so that's what we hoped would happen um uh i i'm i'm really excited about the program and uh i'm uh equally excited about uh the the scholarships that we established to for for uh really for low-income kids um and we wanted to have scholarships that were for both groups a hundred percent free um so you could come to u.s take full advantage of everything that was going on at the school and uh be a full participant in the community and uh uh so it they're they're kind of two different uh groups of kids but we have some extremely talented uh uh kids academically as well as other things are doing of our oberdorf scholars so uh it's uh it was great to be back this fall and uh visit with uh most of the students and uh i think it's been a really great experience for us and uh i think it's been a really great experience for us and uh i think it's been a really great experience with them. We did it over two days because I guess we have 40 boys involved overall in the upper school, but it was really fun to do that. You know, how does it feel for you to see the impact of these scholarships on students' lives? I mean, you stayed very involved with the university school since then, so how have you kind of hoped to see them grow even after this next senior class ends up graduating? Well, you know, Charlie, I actually am in touch with a couple of the boys who've gone through the program because they reached out to me, and so I've continued to have a dialogue with them and mentor them on the way, and they're just first-rate people, and they're really just off doing wonderful things. So, yeah, that's exciting. You know, I do the national work. There are a lot of children involved, and the nice thing about this program is, and what we're doing at U.S., is, you know, it just gets you closer to what's actually happening with the recipients. Yeah, and you've stayed involved with university school, obviously, supporting these scholarships, but also as a trustee and, I believe, as on the board of directors. What has it been like to watch U.S. evolve since your time as a student, and how does it feel to be a part of kind of guiding its future? Well, you know, it's such an important institution, and as a director, you're really a guardian of the institution, and we're really fortunate to have... Patrick Gallagher is head of school. I think Patrick's been doing a really wonderful job, and I think U.S. is... Under Patrick's leadership, there's been just a lot of thought that's gone into the curriculum and how the lower school curriculum works with the middle school curriculum that works with the upper school curriculum, and our goal as a board is... To have U.S. be one of the finest day schools in the United States. So that's what we're aiming towards. It's not easy to do that. It requires a lot of financial support, but I think it's a virtuous kind of wheel, if you will, that, you know, we have a lot of... alums out there who don't live in Cleveland, such as myself, and will never be sending our children to U.S., but we know that that experience was so important to all of us that being engaged in helping the institution to ensure that it can continue to provide those kinds of opportunities for people. I think it's really important. Yeah. And I think the next generation of boys such as yourselves is something that I feel is incredibly important to do. Sue and I have always... We've been very concentrated, actually, in our philanthropy. It's a little like being concentrated in our investing approach here, and this is just one of those places that I feel was so instrumental in my life. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really important part of life that I want to make sure that it is an absolutely first-rate, top-notch experience going forward. And I think U.S. is educationally a better place than it was when I was there. And I hope you are having as much fun as I had when I was there, too. I had a really good time. I made so many great friends. But I got to... I just have to be honest. I just happened to be there when you had your field day in the fall, and that was great, just to see everybody out there having a good time. Yeah. We're definitely having... We're having fun. Yeah. You know, kind of going to the impact that you've seen in just our students at university school, when you're considering hiring or even partnering with younger people who may have come out of college or a little bit further down in their career in your different ventures, what qualities or skills do you kind of look for that make someone really stand out? Well, I want to see a few things. One is a track record for us to hire somebody because we don't do that many hires. But, you know, what's been kind of the record of achievement that a person's had up to that time? And then how motivated are they? And equally important, and this is often the trickiest part, you know, what are their values? And so, and are they just, are they good people?