Told she wasn't smart when she was a girl, Maya Bugg proved 'em wrong — all the way to Harvard

Maya M. Bugg smiles when she talks about her childhood years in southwest Philly.

There was double dutch jump rope, water gun wars, hide and seek, and street basketball where the older boys mounted cut-out milk crates on telephone poles.

As the grownups watched, kids spilled out of the endless rowhouses in their working-class Black neighborhood, making up games, hanging out or dancing through the water spewing from open hydrants.

The little girl, in white turtleneck and black skirt, loved to sing in the Christmas pageant where her family worshiped, at the all-Black Holy Cross Baptist Church down the street.

And, young Maya, a straight-As student, almost always finished her homework from her neighborhood school before she went outside to play.

Her best friend, Victrail, lived next door, and the two girls often chatted on opposite sides of the railing that separated their porches.

It was on those porches that an off-handed insult changed the direction of her life.

One day in third or fourth grade, Victrail's cousin Erica walked up to the girls talking about Masterman, a Center City Philadelphia school.

"But it’s a school just for smart people," the cousin said, cutting her eyes toward Maya, "so you don’t need to worry about all that.”

Well, the little girl thought, I'll show you. She marched back into her house, walked up to her parents and insisted they get her into Masterman, whatever it was.

"I thought, if it's a school for smart people," Bugg said, "I should be there!"

"There" was the Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School, a public magnet school (like Hume-Fogg or Nashville School of the Arts) that consistently is ranked the No. 1 high school in Pennsylvania.

Bugg graduated from Masterman — and from Ivy League schools, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. The doctoral degree holder now is CEO of the Tennessee Charter School Center, where she battles for quality public education for children from disadvantaged neighborhoods.

In that role for five years, Bugg and her organization advocate statewide for charter schools, which are publicly funded-yet-independent schools that strive to provide high quality education for children from disadvantaged communities. 

"We need to use our positions to push to disrupt systems of injustice," Bugg said.

"And in my case, I have chosen to focus this mission within the fields of education, education policy and nonprofit leadership."

Her desire to fight that fight began at Masterman.

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'That sat heavy with me'

What Maya Bugg, now 38, didn't know until she was an adult was that her parents tried to get her older sister into Masterman a couple of years earlier. 

But the white guidance counselor at their neighborhood school told the girl's parents that Masterman wouldn't take kids from their school. That counselor wouldn't even try, Bugg's parents, Archie and Beverly Martin said.

So when their middle child asked about Masterman, their hearts sank. Still, Archie Martin was going to at least try.

It turned out that in the two years since they last tried, the neighborhood school had gotten a new counselor who was enthusiastic about trying to get Maya into Masterman.

"That first experience instilled doubt," Archie Martin said.

"I thought, come on, I don’t want to go through this again. But this new counselor surprised me. She was all in."

At Masterman, about two thirds of the students were white. Still, Bugg easily made friends and excelled at Masterman.

She got all As, worked two part-time jobs, ran track and cross country, and became active in student government.

"She was very active, always ready for the next challenge," said Rena Morrow, one of Bugg's teachers at Masterman. "She was a high achiever."

Bugg also volunteered to be a tutor for younger students from a nearby neighborhood. She started working with a young girl from Puerto Rico who couldn't read even after several years in elementary school.

It really bothered a teenaged Bugg that the local school had failed this girl.

"I didn’t understand how my school was tops in the state and it was just down the block from kids in schools who couldn't read," she said.

"That sat heavy with me."

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Bugg also saw she got far better textbooks and resources — and far more challenging homework — than her cousins who went to neighborhood high schools. Once again, she was troubled by the disparity in education, even among public schools in Philadelphia. 

"I wanted to do something about that," Bugg said. "I decided I wanted to work in education policy."

After graduating seventh in her Masterman class of 93, Bugg competed for and landed a Philadelphia mayor's scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania.

From there, she earned a master's degree from Harvard and an Ed.D. from Vanderbilt University.

So far, Bugg has been a teacher, school director, education consultant, advocate and a Vanderbilt adjunct professor. 

She and her husband have three children, a 9-year-old and 6-year-old twins, who each attend traditional public schools in Williamson County.

Bugg said her experience from the time she was a girl has shown her the education system is "designed to sort and separate" and to "amplify inequities and perpetuate racist policies and systems."

"When people saw me and other little girls that looked like me, they had a plethora of assumptions about what we could and could not do — who we could and could not be," she said.

Her parents and her time at Masterman taught her she has the power to define herself, Bugg said.

Now, Bugg said she wants to disrupt and improve public education so that all children can do the same.

"You should not have to attend a magnet school to receive a high quality education or to gain access to expanded opportunities and privileges," she said.

"There shouldn't be only one or two top schools in the city. All of the public schools in all their various forms should be 'top schools' and then families should have the opportunity to choose which of these great schools best fits the needs of their children."

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.