Green Dot Public Schools

Green Dot Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school organization, was founded in 1999 to create small, high-quality public schools for students in historically underserved and low-income areas of Los Angeles, California. Since its founding, 25 Green Dot schools have opened across Los Angeles, California; Beaumont, Texas; and Memphis, Tennessee. Collectively, they serve more than 14,000 middle and high school students. Green Dot schools from some of the most disadvantaged communities in Los Angeles have since been ranked among the best high schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report (Green Dot Public Schools, 2021).

One contributing factor to Green Dot’s success may be the way it has engaged families and communities in redefining the purpose of school for society. In 2011 Green Dot established a community engagement team in its Los Angeles schools with the primary goal of empowering parents to engage in their child’s education. Green Dot leaders and teachers recognize that meaningful parent engagement goes beyond surface-level parent involvement in classrooms. They believe that parents have a right to be equipped with the skills needed to be their child’s primary advocate. Through a range of programs, including job training and English as a second language, the community engagement team at Green Dot works to build in families a balance of five capitals: human, social, political, intellectual, and financial (Green Dot Public Schools, 2013).

Green Dot recognizes that creating a school culture of effective family-school engagement does not happen overnight. The Green Dot “leadership ladder” is a model of family-school engagement that follows an intentional step-by-step process through which parents’ level of engagement deepens over time. Parents start as spectators and then work their way toward participation, involvement, engagement, and finally action (Green Dot Public Schools, 2013). In the first stage of this model, family members simply attend an event or workshop. Next, parents enroll in a series of classes or training programs. Finally, families progress from involvement to engagement by taking action, such as organizing fellow parents, identifying community issues, or developing school action plans.

Green Dot’s strong level of parent engagement paved the way for a new entity to address issues beyond the school level. United Parents and Students (UPAS) is an affiliate organization of Green Dot that focuses on organizing parents around social change beyond school walls (Fondation, 2017). Larry Fondation, the founder and executive director of UPAS, envisions schools in poor neighborhoods functioning as hubs of social capital, similar to country clubs or neighborhood associations in more affluent areas (L. Fondation, personal communication, July 14, 2021). UPAS believes that schools can strengthen themselves by strengthening the community around them. Central to this is giving parents access to the knowledge and resources they need to self-advocate for holistic community change. UPAS operates most visibly in Los Angeles and has expanded recently into Memphis, Tennessee; King County, Washington; and Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

UPAS has a strong record of successful parent-driven community advocacy campaigns on issues that parents feel will help them and their children have better lives and hence learn better and succeed in school. In 2015 UPAS members partnered with the office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor to testify at minimum wage hearings at the city and county levels (Green Dot Public Schools, 2016). The Los Angeles City Council eventually approved a minimum wage increase from $9 per hour to $15 per hour by 2020 (Medina & Scheiber, 2015). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UPAS advocated for an emergency grocery voucher program to support low-income families, including those who were not being supported by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. Building a coalition that included the Los Angeles Food Policy Council and American Heart Association, UPAS members submitted over 500 emails to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, spoke at board meetings, and met with local legislators. UPAS’s efforts contributed to the county implementing a $20 million emergency grocery voucher program (Chief Executive Office, County of Los Angeles, n.d.).

Chief Executive Office, County of Los Angeles. (n.d.). Health, food security and slowing the spread of COVID-19. https://ceo.lacounty.gov/cares-food-security/

Fondation, L. (2017, April 20). How organized parents and students empower communities. https://blog.greendot.org/organized-parents-students-empower-communities/

Green Dot Public Schools. (2013). Building parent engagement programs at Green Dot Public Schools: 2013 annual report. https://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/implementation-support-unit/tech-assist/green-dot-publics-schools-annual-report.pdf

Green Dot Public Schools. (2015a, January 27). Thousands of parents gather for inaugural United Parents Assembly [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZXePKtmwMs&ab_channel=GreenDotPublicSchools

Green Dot Public Schools. (2015b, March 4.). United Parents: A force for change [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA4_HSPBY1Q&ab_channel=GreenDotPublicSchools

Green Dot Public Schools. (2016, November 18). United Parents and Students assemble for change. https://blog.greendot.org/united-parents-and-students/

Green Dot Public Schools. (2021, April 28). Nine Green Dot high schools ranked as best in the nation by U.S. News & World 2021 Report. https://greendot.org/2021/04/28/nine-green-dot-high-schools-ranked-as-best-in-the-nation-by-u-s-news-world-2021-report/

Medina, J., & Scheiber, N. (2015, May 19). Los Angeles lifts its minimum wage to $15 per hour. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/us/los-angeles-expected-to-raise-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour.html