And Birkett is responsible for ensuring the school's five-year contract gets renewed in late fall 2000.

The challenges are many, but they seem to invigorate Birkett.

He smacks his fist into his palm as he addresses the challenges. "We can focus right in on a problem," he says, "and then we can deal with it."

He says he feels uniquely qualified to run such an ambitious mission. He has taught, he has administrated, he has been in academia and he has flown in the Air Force.

When he was a high school social studies teacher, he found that he wanted to have more of an influence--and that he could do an administrator's job.

So Birkett headed toward Harvard's Graduate School of Education, where he received his master's in 1995. Though his initial job as Assistant Head Master at Boston's Renaissance School "literally fell into my lap," as he says, he beat out 35 other applicants to become Banneker's executive director in the June of 1997.

The School of Hard Knocks

For Birkett, the most important aspect of the school is the students.