Joseph H. Reich, a financier and philanthropist who with his wife created one of New York City’s first independently-run public schools, proving that impoverished students could outperform expectations in such a setting, and which helped to kick-start the city’s charter-school movement died ongtyt Sept. 29 at his home in Sheffield, MA. He was 89.

Convinced that city-run schools were failing to educate students in high-poverty neighborhoods, Mr. Reich and his wife, Carol Friedman Reich, raised $1 million and secured a building, opening the Beginning With Children school in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in 1992. Six years later, New York State passed the Charter Schools Act, codifying rules for such experiments. Today, 15 percent of New York City schoolchildren are enrolled in one of the city’s 281 charter schools.