Mid-Pacific’s leader walked a long, tough road to success

When Joe Rice retires as president and CEO of Mid-Pacific Institute at the end of the next school year, it will mark not just a key transition point in a remarkable era of growth for the Manoa private school, but also the close of a lengthy chapter in Rice’s stranger-than-fiction life.

Rice has been with the school for 16 years, during which the school expanded to include a preschool, elementary and middle school and invested heavily in technological upgrades that radically redefined the way its students and teachers were able to interact. Earlier this month Rice announced his intention to leave his post at the end of the 2012-13 school year so he and his wife can move to Washington state to help care for his ailing mother-in-law and be closer to his two daughters.

"It’s the right thing to do for our family," said Rice, 64. "The school is in great shape, so it’s a good time to leave, even though this is also one of the most exciting times for the school."

During his tenure at MPI, Rice has won praise from teachers, parents and trustees as a visionary leader who is unafraid to take on new, sometimes controversial projects in an effort to elevate the school’s capabilities and reputation.

Rice acknowledges that one of the keys to his success has been the value he places on initiative, high standards and perseverance in the face of challenges. When necessary, he readily offers himself as an example of what these ideals can bring to fruition.

Rice was born in Tacoma, Wash., to a teenage mother who worked as a pinsetter at a local bowling alley. When Rice was 30, he learned that the man he believed to have been his biological father, a soldier to whom his mother had been briefly married, was not. His real father was another soldier who abandoned Rice’s mother when he found out she was pregnant.

In fact, either man likely would have been preferable to the man who would eventually become his stepfather, a violent alcoholic who married Rice’s mother when she was just 15.

The family, which would eventually include 11 step-siblings, spent many years traveling from California to Oregon to Washington as migrant laborers. Rice said his mother would leave him in the shade while she picked fruit.

At age 10 Rice joined his parents in the fields, sometimes picking grapes or walnuts or apples, whatever the season and terrain would yield, sometimes pruning trees.

"It was the life I knew," Rice says. "We worked with Hispanics, Native Americans, a few African Americans, and poor whites from Arkansas and Okla­homa. We were all in the same boat. I did know that we were poor and hungry. I did know that my dad drank a lot and was very abusive."

Rice said his stepfather beat his mother regularly. And when he was done, he usually went looking for Rice.

One night, after several days of hard drinking, his stepfather beat his mother so savagely she was left in a bloody heap on the floor. Rice hid in a closet in a locked room while his stepfather called for him. When the man finally left, Rice told his siblings to take their mother to another room and stay there.

Then he took a knife and waited in the dark for his stepfather to return.

"He finally came back around 3 a.m., swinging his belt so that the buckle was whipping around," Rice recalls. "I took the knife and went after him."

Rice stabbed his stepfather a dozen times, but the old man kept coming. Rice’s siblings intervened, holding the man down so Rice could run away.

Rice spent the next three days hiding in a nearby vineyard while his stepfather, enraged, looked for him.

Eventually, Rice was placed with a foster family. After graduation from high school, he picked beans until he had enough money for a bus ticket back to Washington. There he hooked up with the Neighborhood Youth Corps and got a job working on a survey crew to earn money for college. He spent his first year there living in the bathroom of a large boardinghouse.

Rice spent the next few years working his way from Tacoma Community College to the University of Washington. He found work at a campus snack bar, a service station and a veterinary hospital, where he exchanged cage-cleaning duties for a small room in the back. Later, he would make his home in a 1955 Ford station wagon.

"I took PE classes in the morning so I could take a shower," Rice said matter-of-factly. "For meals I ate six-for-$1 burgers at the Arctic Circle (restaurant)."

DESPITE THE hardships, Rice said he was driven by a desire to complete his schooling and make something of his life. He had ample support along the way from the friends and mentors who helped him to find employment, to the woman who fought to keep him from being drafted during his senior year of college.

After college, Rice joined the Peace Corps and married his first wife so the two of them could serve together. They spent two years in Af­ghani­stan, then another two in Micronesia (an assignment for which they were given training in Pepeekeo on Hawaii island).

The marriage yielded two daughters before dissolving amicably. Rice remained in Micronesia as a government employee responsible for establishing the Hawaii English Program in the South Pacific, a job that required him to fly to Hawaii several times a year for training.

Rice eventually moved back to Washington, where he worked first as a teacher, then a reading specialist and then a principal. Some of his most satisfying work came with the establishment of a school for migrant children like himself.

At one point Rice tried to teach at a school in El Salvador, but arrangements were scuttled due to political unrest. Soon after, his school in Washington hired an attractive young teacher who just so happened to have just come from the same Salvadoran school. Rice had found his future second wife.

"I told her it was fate," Rice says laughing. "We were going to meet somehow, either in Washington or El Salvador."

In 1996 Rice accepted the position at MPI and moved his wife and two young sons to Hawaii.

"MPI used to be proud of being that quiet little school that nobody knew about," Rice said. "I felt we needed to change that perception. Everybody knows Punahou and ‘Iolani, but parents need alternatives and I felt that different schools could have different strengths. Private schools have the opportunity to be unique, and I wanted to develop that (at MPI). You can’t just be a good school; you also have to be competitive in the marketplace and financially stable."

Rice recognized that the top private schools operated from kindergarten though high school. First, he lobbied the MPI board of trustees to approve establishment of a middle school staffed by teachers specifically trained to deal with students in that age range. Next, he befriended Edna Hussey, the head of Epiphany School in Kaimuki, and the two worked out an agreement under which MPI would purchase the elementary school and relocate it to its campus.

"I told the board that having an elementary school would really help with recruitment," Rice said. "Plus, there’s big parental involvement at that level."

Finally, Rice spearheaded the effort to add a preschool.

MPI’s investment in technology has also been instrumental in distinguishing the school from its competitors. Starting with a $350,000 tech lab that later gave way to a state-of-the-art technology plaza, it was Rice’s aim — realized through the leadership of science teacher Mark Hines — to provide students with the technology necessary to take on self-directed projects that emphasize problem solving, critical thinking and focused research over traditional lecture and test-taking.

Rice said he is also proud of the continued success of MPI’s much-lauded School of the Arts and its international baccalaureate program.

"The issue of change is an issue for all schools," Rice said. "Educators are caught between the desire for stability and the need to question existing practices. We run across people who do not want to change, and that’s understandable. The challenge has been to create an environment where people feel free to take risks and know that they are supported. Parents want the best for their kids, and they are much more receptive to this sort of change than you might think."

As Rice finishes his time at MPI, he is also putting the finishing touches on a long-promised memoir.

He hopes people will believe it.