A Learning Organization

The ability to learn quickly from experience and adapt well is a core strength of successful organizations. Well-designed strategy, careful planning and execution needs good feedback loops to ensure that we reflect, learn and improve constantly. Our communities deserve nothing less.

The narrative arc of Green Dot’s success would not be complete without acknowledging moments in our history when we have had to adapt quickly to correct missteps and ensure that our progress is constantly informed by Green Dot’s commitment to excellence. In this regard, the following instances stand out.

The Jefferson Transformation Initiative Green Dot New York The Locke Transformation District Relations

The Jefferson Transformation Initiative

In 2006, Green Dot built and opened 5 schools as part of a strategy to relieve overcrowding and low performance at Thomas Jefferson High School. Jefferson High was running a four-track year round system, with student outcomes that placed it at the bottom of all high schools in LAUSD. Ánimo Pat Brown, Ánimo Ralph Bunche and Ánimo Jackie Robinson created public school choice for families in the community and have all gone on to significant and sustained success. A fourth high school, Ánimo Justice, opened on the same campus as Ánimo Ralph Bunche. It struggled with enrollment, partly because too many seats were created too quickly in the neighborhood, and partly because the pace of growth required a greater focus on human capital to source, train and support staff effectively at our schools. Eventually, Ánimo Justice merged with Ánimo Ralph Bunche to serve all students more fully and reflect the needs of the community. At the same time, Green Dot recognized an opportunity to create its first middle school on the campus to provide students and teachers with an earlier start to preparation for success in college. The proximity of Ánimo Jefferson Middle School and Ánimo Ralph Bunche High School, has created a thriving secondary school pathway for over 1,000 students in the community.

The fifth school to emerge in 2006 was Ánimo FTA – Film and Theatre Arts – a small specialty school with a different education model than other schools in the Green Dot network. It quickly became clear that the level of support required to sustain a single school like FTA to excellence was difficult to achieve at this scale, while the rest of the Green Dot network benefited significantly from replicable practices that Green Dot’s expert educators supported with year-over-year improvements. An agreement was reached to transfer operation of FTA to Big Picture Learning so they could continue to grow the school authentically, under a model that was already well aligned to the goals and curriculum of the school.

Green Dot New York

In the summer of 2008, Green Dot had an opportunity to advance the national education labor management discussion by opening a charter school in the Bronx in New York City. Green Dot New York was opened in partnership with the United Federation of Teachers (the NYC affiliate of the national umbrella organization, the American Federation of Teachers – AFT). The school was and remains very successful, but governance and management proved to be challenging.

The Green Dot Home Office was 2,500 miles away in Los Angeles and could not adequately provide the intensive supports the school needed and deserved without a regional office in New York. The timing was not right for national expansion: Green Dot was simultaneously engaged in the initial phases of turnaround work in Los Angeles at Locke High School, Henry Clay Middle School, and Jordan High School, which required the full focus of the Home Office education leadership teams in Los Angeles. With Green Dot’s encouragement, the New York school transitioned to an independent charter school known as University Prep Charter High School. Green Dot re-focused its efforts on establishing a clear foundational academic and operational model that could be replicated with fidelity anywhere in the country where the need was greatest. Several years later, Green Dot would expand nationally by establishing regional offices early and ensuring that all stakeholders were well aligned with the core Green Dot school model.

The Locke Transformation

In 2008, When Green Dot began leading Locke High School, it almost doubled the number of students served by the network. The process introduced Green Dot to the myriad challenges of turning around a culture of low-performance at an existing school. Change was swift and positive within the context of a steep learning curve for everyone involved in the process. As the turnaround model evolved, Green Dot adapted constantly to ensure that student safety and success remained at the center of school policy and decision-making. Locke taught us that phasing out higher grade levels to seed new cultures one grade at a time did not work for either side of that equation. The restart of a school must address the entire culture from day one by reseeding the culture at all levels, not just at the 6th or 9th grades.

This requires honoring the legacy of schools, engaging alumni early in the process and at every stage thereafter. We learned to be purposeful in community organizing, focusing far beyond charter authorization and re-authorization, to help our communities develop authentic voice and mobilize for broad community needs.

Locke introduced us to an even broader definition of serving ALL students at scale. We embraced full spectrums of students requiring special education and we learned to address student behavioral issues more deeply as part of our model, to support students and their families more holistically on and off campus.

At Locke, we refined a piloting process to ensure that new initiatives help us continue to learn and remain innovative without disrupting the growth of a school or weighing too heavily on its resources. We seek to be discerning in our approach; to study and learn from data so we are not experimenting in ways that could prove inadvertently harmful. The turnaround model is constantly evolving.

District Relations

Green Dot’s mission involves transforming public education for all children attending public schools. We have always envisioned serving some students directly through schools we operate and others indirectly through the free sharing of best practices with school districts. Charter laws vary from state to state, but frequently charters must be approved by districts who view them as competitors for scarce resources. Unfortunately, this can incentivize a combative stance between district leadership and charter operators. Green Dot sides unequivocally with students and families when it comes to priorities and we have not shied from confronting district bureaucracy in order to locate schools in communities where the need for good schools has been highest and the demand loudest.

Early on, this led to frequently acrimonious relations between Green Dot and the district as Green Dot helped give voice to community desires for good public school options. But by the end of its first decade of operations, while growing to serve 8,000 students in more than a dozen schools, Green Dot had earned significant respect from LAUSD for taking on the toughest education challenges in Los Angeles with a collective bargaining agreement and strong fiscal management. After Locke made a transition to a safe and good school, and because of overtures from both sides, relations between Green Dot and the district began to shift and become more collaborative. This has been positive.

However, the relationship continues to be buffeted by pressures from political, economic, and legal considerations. Green Dot continues to agitate on behalf of students and families who are not being well served in the current system, and this is not always popular with a district that can be slow to respond. We are determined to advance with urgency the transformation of public education towards equity of opportunity and outcomes, and we believe that this work is best served by a stance that is collaborative, with free sharing of best practices and frequent dialogue with others seeking to do the same.

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Green Dot Public Schools National

1149 S. Hill St.
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(323) 565-1600