Senior Page: Even In Retirement, Paul Niles Is Devoted To Uplifting His Community

 From adolescence to adulthood, we carry with us the wisdom and skills imparted to us by educators. For Paul Niles, the president of the Lighthouse Charter School Educational Foundation, the importance of a strong foundational education cannot be understated. 

 Out of college, Niles worked as a social worker helping homeless people in Portland, Ore. The community he worked with was largely composed of older adults, and it was this experience that inspired Niles’ great appreciation and dedication to the support and education of young people. 

“I just had this revelation that it would be really great to invest in youth, in young people, and get to people in their formative years,” Niles said. 

 Carrying this passion with him, Niles moved to Cape Cod in 1995 and co-founded the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School. Within this scholastic ecosystem, he has served as an educator, a principal, and now, in his retirement, as the president of its educational foundation. The school, as Niles envisioned it, is based on principles emphasizing and encouraging the importance of creativity and individual development in students over conformity and control.

“When I was running the charter school, I got to do what I wanted every day, and now, as a retired person, I get to do what I want every day…it’s great,” said Niles. 

 The word “foundation” has taken on new meaning under Niles’ guidance. 

“You might think of the traditional foundation being there for financial support, but we are trying to expand the notion of foundation to really include support of the entire ecosystem of people who have gone to our school, and who go there now,” he said. 

 Fostering a sense of community and support beyond graduation and well into adulthood through reunions and other outreach initiatives, the foundation is more than simply a legal entity for charitable donation. “I think of the foundation as a living tissue,” Niles said. “We want to build our foundation at the Lighthouse School to bring alumni together and provide support for alumni today, not just some great ideals that buoy them along into adulthood.” 

 To Niles, a foundation is more than finances, and more even than a stagnant set of skills and opportunities upon which a future can be built. It is a breathing, ever-evolving, transcendent component of our being, impacting us every day of our lives. 

Niles has remained in touch with alumni now in their 20s and 30s and seen the remarkable impacts of the Lighthouse Charter School’s education and culture. “We find that we laid a foundation that was really positive for these kids,” he said. “So for me to be able to take over the foundation, and to think about ‘foundation’ in a more fluid and expansive way…it’s incredible.” 

Niles hopes that the foundation will afford further opportunities in the future for alumni and other community members to form intersectional connections, continuing to work together and support each other’s growth well beyond their time at the Lighthouse Charter School. As Niles put it, “Togetherness is what we really need to get through life.” 

 While the foundation defines much of how Niles spends his time, he is engaged in a number of other local volunteer organizations. Acting as a board member for Friends of Pleasant Bay as well as Cape Rep Theatre, running and volunteering for “Tennis for Life: Cape Cod” and offering free driving lessons to immigrants, Niles’ devotion to his community knows no bounds. 

 “My goal for any of this work that any of us do is to make a more just, fair, and equitable community in the big picture that has all the support people need,” he said, “and I feel like we can do it, if we are all taking steps in our micro-lives.” 

 To Niles, it is more important now than ever before that everyone adopt an active role in their local community; he stressed the importance of fostering a “problem-solving culture.” With issues like economic inequality, housing shortages and educational system failures, it falls to the everyday person to fight for what is right, he said. 

 For more information, contact emma@capecodchronicle.com.