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Related Link: http://www.icefla.orgMike Piscal started his career in education as a public school teacher in New Jersey. He moved to California a year later where he taught at the prestigious Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. After six years in the classroom, and deeply troubled by the civil unrest in Los Angeles, Piscal resigned from his position and sought to make a difference in the education community of South Los Angeles. In 1994, he founded the Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF). In 1996, ICEF's first program the View Park Prep Summer Camp opened with 7 students. His vision was to create neighborhood schools that would send students in South LA to college prepared to succeed.
Under Piscal's leadership, ICEF opened its first charter school, View Park Preparatory Elementary in 1999 with tremendous success. Today, ICEF Public Schools operates 13 public charter schools serving over 3,000 students in South LA. In an area where less than half of the students receive a high school diploma, ICEF is graduating nearly every student from high school and sending 100% of its graduates to college for three straight years and counting. Today, ICEF Public Schools is recognized as one of the leading charter management organizations in nation.
Piscal has gained prominent attention in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and Good Morning America. He has received funding support for his entrepreneurship in education from the Ahmanson Foundation, Broad Foundation, Dwight Stuart Youth Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, NewSchools Venture Fund, Pacific Charter School Development Corp., Walton Family Foundation, and the Weingart Foundation. The community has acknowledged him as a leader and a visionary who is transforming their community, as exemplified by his receiving the Recycling Black Dollars award. Piscal is also an Aspen Institute Fellow. He also serves on the board of Challenger's Boys & Girls Club, Families That Can, and has previously served on the State Board of Education's Advisory Commission on Charter Schools.
Piscal received a Bachelor's Degree from Wake Forest University in History and was awarded an honorary degree from Wake Forest in 2005.
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