An 'About Face' For Chelsea High

This year, Chelsea High turned to a US Army Colonel and Tufts graduate to transform the school’s academic programs.

Chelsea, Mass. [09.10.04] For Morton Orlov II and the students and faculty at Chelsea High School, change couldn’t have come at a better time. Orlov – a Tufts graduate and battle-tested a U.S. Army Colonel – was looking for a new opportunity after a long career leading and training troops. And administrators at Chelsea High were looking for a strong principal to turn their academic programs around; they hope the resulting match will take the school by storm.

“We needed a leader,” Ferna O’Connor, president of the Chelsea teachers union, told The Boston Globe. “If he can lead men in Haiti, I think he can lead teachers.”

O’Connor was referring to Orlov’s widespread success during his career in the armed service, during which he “stormed Grenada, helped the U.S. hand over power to the United Nations in Haiti, and commanded an armored infantry company in Panama,” reported the Globe.

Now he plans to be the force that transforms Chelsea High into a strong academic institution.

In a school whose 10th-graders ranked in the bottom quarter of the state on the 2003 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam, Orlov hopes to raise academic performance. But that’s no easy task in a school where 75 percent of the students speak English as a second language. Chelsea students come from 40 nations, and 80 percent of them are low-income.

But Orlov – who has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Tufts University, where he enlisted in the ROTC program as a freshman – wasn’t barking out orders as the students filed in for their first day of classes. Instead, the Tufts graduate welcomed the students in the hallways.

“You doing alright? What’s you name? Jose?” he asked one student, according to the Globe. “Nice to meet you,” he told many, shaking their hands as they passed.

Some students were surprised by the colonel’s approachable nature.

“I was worried, first of all, about stricter rules,” freshman Vladimir Hernandez told the Globe. “I came here and there were none – no strict rules, just really fair.”

Another freshman thought it was a good idea to have someone with military experience leading the school.

“I plan on joining the military eventually so I think it’s pretty good that we have somebody around here like that,” Michael Hein told the Globe.

The two – Orlov says – have much in common.

“Think about it: When an Army is not fighting, what is it doing? It’s training, and training is not that different from education,” he told the Globe.

Orlov has been teaching military science at Boston University for two years, where he also runs the school’s ROTC program. Using an anecdote from army history, Orlov told the Globe that in the Battle of Gettysburg, “A rhetoric professor named Joshua Chamberlain protected the left flank of Little Round Top from Confederate forces,” and then won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

“So can great soldiers come from all walks of life? You bet,” Orlov told the newspaper. “Can great principals come from the soldeirs’ ranks? Well, I hope so.”