The man who will save Philly's crumbling school system?

THE FIRST Bill Green was an Irish immigrant who owned a tavern in Kensington in the early 1890s. Bill Green Jr. was a congressman and legendary Democratic Party boss. Bill Green III was a firebrand mayor who in his single term took on the unions, City Council and just about everyone else. Will Bill Green IV become the man who saved Philly's crumbling school system?

Daily News writer Sean Collins Walsh sat down with Green No. 4, who recently resigned his Council seat to become School Reform Commission chairman, in his half-moved-into office at district headquarters. They talked about his new role.

Q Protesters swarmed your first SRC meeting to criticize your policy views and your appointment by Gov. Corbett. Is that what you expected in the job?

Yeah. Look, people are passionate about their children, they're passionate about what happens in our schools - and they should be. It's outrageous what happens in our public schools. I'm surprised there's not more outrage.

Q You come from a fairly privileged background, and you went to good schools. That's different from much of the district's population.

And that's a crime. And I'm trying to change that. We should have 100 percent good schools. The greatest opportunity we can give anybody in this country is a free quality public education, and the failure to do so, given the resources we apply, is immoral. My background is irrelevant. I'm either proposing and enacting policies that improve outcomes for children, or I'm not.

Q Do you see this as your chance to add a chapter to the Green legacy?

I don't really think about the Green legacy. I think about what can help make Philadelphia grow and thrive. I never met my grandfather, but I certainly know that was always my father's goal. Philadelphia could be 2 million people again by 2050 or 2060. I don't think that's unrealistic if we have great schools.

Q What did your dad say when you told him you wanted to be SRC chair?

I can't repeat it. I think that's the best

way to say it: I can't repeat it.

Q Council President Darrell Clarke said you came into Council ready to take on the world and learned how to slow down and be more effective. Do you think you came in too full steam ahead?

No. You have to have a bold agenda in order to to accomplish anything, and people have to know you won't give up. I introduced and co-sponsored 78 bills that passed, which is an incredibly strong record for six years.

Q Later in your Council years, you were less vocal in budget hearings with the administration. You skipped most of them last year. You said that you thought you could do more behind closed doors than at public meetings. Is that a lesson you'll carry to the SRC?

I will choose the path that I think will ultimately result in success, which can include meetings in private instead of public. In that sense, I've become more savvy, but my goal has been to change the world and that goal hasn't changed.

Q You work at the Duane Morris law firm as special counsel. Once you get settled at the SRC, what do you think your balance between the two jobs will be?

I don't know. This is an unpaid position, and I'll give it probably far more than half my time. But I haven't settled into a routine yet.

Q Do you have any hobbies?

Well, my hobby is now the School Reform Commission since it's an unpaid job and it takes about 20 or 30 hours a week, I imagine.

Q Good point. Did you have any hobbies before?

I like looking at realestate and thinking about the real-estate market. On weekends my wife and I will go to a new neighborhood we haven't spent a lot of time in and learn about the neighborhood by learning about the real-estate market.

I got that from my dad. He used to drive around, and all they did was look at houses. And every house he was interested in, he used to call the realtor and that's how you learn the market.

I don't have the money to actually buy places, but I like to think about it. And then I can say, "I wanted to buy in this neighborhood, and I was right!"

Q Why do you think Philadelphia

struggles so hard to achieve its

potential?

It's because of pettiness and smallness, and you're this person's friend and you're not my friend. You've seen that played out historically between the Mount Airy Democrats and the West Philly Democrats. Northwest Coalition people versus the Fattah people. So that still exists underneath the current of cooperation at the top levels.

What's happening in our political system is people are focused on dividing up an ever-shrinking pie of patronage or contracts or whatever it is, instead of all us coming together and growing the pie. I really blame that on not any faction but on a failure of leadership in terms of someone coming forward and presenting a vision for a big pie.

Q Why do you think Philly hasn't created or supported that type of leader?

Fundamentally, for some reason, Philadelphians don't believe that we can achieve the bigger vision of growing the pie. And if you don't believe that, why should you give up what you have? That's why Dr. Hite [School District Superintendent William R. Hite Jr.] has a vision of 100 percent good schools, because that's what we have to achieve. We have to believe that's possible for people to invest in us. But I don't have the answer to that question.