Less than two decades ago, Lester Long was at the helm of a semi-truck delivering steel girders across the Mid-Atlantic. In the fall, he will take charge of more precious cargo when he opens the South Bronx Classical Charter School.

Mr. Long may not have the resume of a typical school leader, but the school he plans to open – where the education is firmly rooted in the classics and all students start learning Latin in the third grade – is not typical either.

A final vote from the state Board of Regents last Friday paved the way for Mr. Long and four others, including the outgoing chairwoman of the City Council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz, to open five new charter schools in Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

The South Bronx Classical Charter School will open in August with 120 kindergarten and first-grade students and will eventually expand to include students up to the fifth grade. Mr. Long has just five years under state law to prove the school is a success or it will be shut down.

The former Wall Street banker said he hoped his life might inspire a few students. With less than stellar high school grades, Mr. Long worked his way up from truck driver to construction worker to earning a degree from Dartmouth before moving to Manhattan and becoming a successful investment banker. After seven years, he gave up his Wall Street career, and the salary that goes along with it, to become a teacher at a public school in the Bronx.

As a member of the New York City Teaching Fellows program, he was assigned to a failing school in the South Bronx. He taught six different subjects over four years.

“I learned quickly that entrenched schedules, hiring restrictions, and a lack of simple order and a strong school mission meant failure for schools and failure for children,” he said.

In his new position, Mr. Long will marry his skills in management, teaching, and finance. He plans to approach his Wall Street connections in the hopes of raising an additional $500,000 for the school.

In New York City, about 12,000 students attend 47 charter schools across the five boroughs. More than 90% of the students enrolled are black and Latino. This year, the state is expected to grant the last of the 100 charters allowed under state law. Charter school advocates and the Bloomberg administration are pushing Albany to lift the cap.

Ms. Moskowitz officially announced yesterday that she will take control of the Harlem Success Charter School when she leaves the council next month.

The school will be located in central Harlem, historically one of the city’s poorest performing districts. It is hope the school will serve as a model for 20 to 30 additional schools to open over the next decade.

“The last six years on the City Council have been rewarding and challenging, but it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get back to my roots,” Ms. Moskowitz, who taught for several years and received a doctorate in history before joining the council, said.

At the helm of the education committee, Ms. Moskowitz was known as a harsh critic of both the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers. After an unsuccessful bid for the position of President of Manhattan, the Upper East Side legislator flirted with the idea of entering the private sector but ultimately decided she wanted to stay in education.

Several of the new charter school leaders spent last year on a fellowship with Building Excellent Schools, a nonprofit organization that prepares future charter school principals.

Among them is a native New Yorker who attended Bronx High School of Science before enrolling in Brown University, Seth Andrew. He will head the Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem.

During breakfast at the International House of Pancakes in Harlem yesterday, Mr. Andrew pulled out an 800-page binder.

“This is the charter school application,” he said heaving it onto the table. He spent the past year putting it together and assembling a board of trustees, which includes a pediatric dentist in Harlem. The school will serve sixth- through 12th-graders.

During his fellowship with Building Excellent Schools, Mr. Andrew visited dozens of charter schools and spent almost six months at the successful Amistad Academy in New Haven, Conn.

His school will focus on creating “responsible citizen-scholars” who succeed in college. The school day will run from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with frequent Saturday classes. According to the charter, a hotline will be established that parents can call to learn what homework their children have been assigned.

The other leaders include Allison Keli who will run Community Roots, a charter school partnered with the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. An attorney, Sheila Joseph, will open the East New York Preparatory Charter School in Brooklyn. She is a former New York City teaching fellow.