Derrick Ciesla, the head of school at Codman Academy Charter School since July 1, is a veteran Boston Public School leader who most recently led the Russell Elementary School. The 47-year-old educator has enlisted a team of other former BPS administrators to help him restructure the academy, a 345-student K-12 school connected to the Codman Square Health Center.

“I think Codman Academy has been a pillar of the community and a place where things like the partnership with the Codman Square Health Center have been robust and a centerpiece,” said Ciesla.

The school has seen rapid transitions in its top jobs over the past few years, leaving a “leadership purgatory” that Ciesla and his colleagues intend to correct.

“If you don’t have leadership, internal strife can happen,” he said. “When we don’t have leadership there is instability. This will be like a renaissance period, and we want to breathe new life into our community and our school.”

To steady things, Ciesla has brought in long-time BPS central office administrators like Julia Bott, a former BPS Principal of the Year at the Mendell School, and Kim Williams, the former BPS director of social-emotional learning, among other seasoned educators.

Teachers at Codman last year voted to unionize with the Boston Teacher’s Union (BTU), another new dynamic for the school’s new leadership.

“We have brought in BPS educators with proven track records of having success in turning around schools,” he said. “They come from the central office and from overseeing the entire Boston school system and they now have an opportunity here with 345 students in Codman Academy to work with that same kind of laser focus.”

While Ciesla completed his doctorate program at Boston College this year, he brings extensive experience to his new position. Before the Russell, he was in administrative positions at the Mildred Avenue Middle School, and the Higginson after his teaching time at Boston Renaissance Charter School.

During his student years, he spent summers with family in Mattapan, and attended high school in Providence, where he was a self-described athlete and a social butterfly, but not much of a student, graduating in the bottom half of his class. Motivated by his mother’s journey through college while a single mom, he looked to college, but struggled with the admissions process, and began classes as a non-matriculating student until he was unexpectedly admitted to Clark Atlanta University, an historically Black college. His joy there was short-lived, as the school didn’t have the programs he wanted. He eventually transferred to the University of Connecticut and focused on sports marketing and education.

It was after college while he was working for the Boston Red Sox that he found a niche in teaching as a substitute at Boston Renaissance, then in Bay Village. The principal there eventually offered him a full-time job, and that put him on a new track in life, one that saw him rise as a talented educator and school leader.

“When you think about going to school and not being the best student in that I finished in the bottom half of the class in high school and didn’t know if I wanted to go to college, [it was] through perseverance and unwavering work ethic that I was able to navigate the educational terrain and come out on the other side,” he said. “When I think about students I have worked with, they were less fortunate than I was.”

Among other things on his to-do list, Ciesla wants to strengthen the partnerships between the school and Codman Square Health Center, Harvard Medical School, Huntington Theatre, and others.

“We will lead it better than we found it…I feel really strongly about getting key stakeholders together here from our community to serve children and families,” he said.

Some of that work involves bridging the divide between charter schools and public schools. They have historically been at odds in the world of education world but not so much in the world that residents and families live in every day.

Coming with experience in both, Ciesla said he hopes to build bridges with BPS schools, other charters like Neighborhood House Charter School (NHCS), and religious based schools. He called the word “divide” a misnomer.

“Sometimes you’re in a relationship and it ends, and you don’t know why,” he said. “It can just be miscommunication. A lot of district-centered individuals think charter schools take resources and jobs away from individuals. That’s not the case. At the end of the day, we have to fight through our biases and what’s really important is students.” His new students returned to classes at the Codman Square campus on Aug. 26.