When Michael Fung arrived in 1997 as Charlestown High School’s new headmaster, he wanted more graduates to attend college. And he knew certain changes would help students overcome historic obstacles that were rooted in society’s economic disparities.
“In the US, if you have a better house, your kids get better schools,” he told the Globe in 2005. “With better schools, they get better jobs. The only way out of this vicious circle is to get our kids to college.”
As Mr. Fung recruited young teachers from prestigious universities — many from the Ivy League — the average age among Charlestown’s faculty dropped from 56 to 34. The percentage of students going to college, meanwhile, increased from 60 percent to 80 percent. By 2002, 94 percent of the high school’s seniors had passed the 10th-grade Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test, at a time when almost half of Boston high school seniors hadn’t done so.
“We always expect the fact that we’re not going to have every kid pass, but we want every kid who comes to school regularly to pass,” he told the Globe in 2002. “It’s not about being smart. It’s about how much effort you put in.”
After becoming an educator almost by accident, he spent more than 30 years in the Boston Public Schools as a teacher, headmaster, and administrator. Mr. Fung, whose health had declined due to respiratory and other ailments, was 79 and lived in Brookline when he died Jan. 25.
Innovative and successful as an administrator, he had addressed different issues than he would face at Charlestown while serving as principal of William Howard Taft Middle School in Brighton in the 1980s.
Noting that the school recorded 267 suspensions during his first year, he worked with teachers and students alike to trim that number to 35 by his second year.
Mr. Fung removed a half-dozen teachers who had imposed about 85 percent of the suspensions, worked with the rest of the faculty to better address student behavior, and imposed new rules.
He required students to walk directly from class to class during the day, for example, and did not allow them to congregate while standing in the cafeteria.
“You can’t sit down and have a fight,” Mr. Fung told the Globe in 1988.
Mr. Fung, who was among the semifinalists on the Boston School Committee’s 1991 list of potential candidates for superintendent of the city system, was an unusual figure within the city’s school system.
Originally from Hong Kong, where he was from a wealthy family, he set a personal example of hands-on dedication to the classes he taught and the schools he led.
For a time at Charlestown High, rather than leave an unappealing task to a lower-paid staffer, he would move about the cafeteria at the end of the lunch period clearing table tops of the debris that students left behind: crumpled potato chip bags, nearly empty milk bottles, and almost-finished food.
Mr. Fung, who retired in 2007, was a significant character in “The Assist: Hoops, Hope, and the Game of Their Lives,” a 2008 book by Globe writer Neil Swidey that looked at the highly successful basketball program run by Charlestown High’s then-coach Jack O’Brien.
O’Brien and Mr. Fung formed a professional bond and a personal friendship as the coach’s efforts helped get players into colleges, and the team’s success buoyed spirits in the entire school.
“What we were able to do at Charlestown is kind of develop a culture where academics is important,” Mr. Fung said when he participated in a panel discussion about race, class, and public education that was held in March 2008 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
At that forum, John Shattuck, then-chief executive of the JFK Library Foundation, introduced Mr. Fung by noting that when he retired the previous year as Charlestown High headmaster, he “was honored by the Boston school superintendent and the School Committee in a special ceremony recognizing, and I quote, ‘his tireless efforts on behalf of the children and families of Boston that has made a difference in so many lives.’ "
Born in Hong Kong on Aug. 21, 1943, Michael Fung was a son of Hon-Hing Fung, who started a furniture company and later became a director of his family’s export business. Mr. Fung’s mother, Norah Wong Fung, worked with the furniture company before running its day-to-day operations.
When he was young, Mr. Fung wanted to be a writer. Then his father sent him to live with a relative in the United States, where he studied chemistry and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University.
He continued his chemistry studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he completed the course work for a doctorate before a disagreement with his adviser prompted Mr. Fung to leave.
He became an activist while living in Boston in the late 1960s, and that work led him to become a math and science teacher at English High School in the early 1970s.
In 1972, he married Susan Yan, whom he had met when both worked with the adult education program in Chinatown.
In the past year, according to Mr. Fung’s family, the couple’s oldest son, Monbill, and Mr. Fung’s brother John died.
After Mr. Fung’s time as principal of the Taft middle school in Brighton, he was appointed community superintendent of District E, and subsequently served as high school zone superintendent and director of the office of technology and information services before becoming Charlestown High headmaster in 1997.
At the Kennedy Library forum, he highlighted his recruitment of young teachers from prestigious universities as one of his most memorable accomplishments in his final job.
“About a quarter of the teachers graduate from Harvard College or Harvard University, about 80 percent of them graduate from the top 25 percent of the top 25 colleges in the United States,” Mr. Fung said. “All of them could have done something else, but they’ve made a commitment to teach in an urban school.”
A wake has been held at Bell-O’Dea Funeral Home in Brookline for Mr. Fung, who in addition to his wife leaves a son, Monnard of Brookline; two daughters, Monnette Yoshino of San Mateo, Calif., and Monique Liu of Brookline; three brothers, Tony and Bernard, both of California, and Edmond of Lexington; and six grandchildren.
During the Kennedy Library panel discussion of Swidey’s book, Mr. Fung spoke about how surprised he was by the economic divisions in public education in the United States, which he called “a vicious circle” that gave students from more affluent communities a better chance at success.
“As some of you who have read the book know, I’m not brought up in this country. I actually came from a very privileged background. What shocked me when I first got involved in public education is how unfair the system is,” Mr. Fung said.
“Now, I’m not naive enough to want to change the world. But I think what can be changed is that if you can get the kids to go to college, then they can break out of that vicious circle,” he said, adding that “we make a commitment at Charlestown from the very beginning that getting kids to college is our goal.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.