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 Interested in learning
more about Green Dot schools. Join our mailing list for regular updates.
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Learn more about Green Dot
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For
more information about Green Dot, our students' successes, and our plans
for transforming public education in Los Angeles, visit our website:
www.greendot.org
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Dear Green
Dot Supporters:
We are excited to announce one of the most significant events in Green
Dot's history: the L.A. Board of Education has approved Green Dot's
plan to transform Locke High School in Watts
into ten small, safe, high-performing Green Dot schools.
We are also eagerly looking toward the Green Dot Ball: A Benefit for
Great Public Schools on October 29 to raise awareness and funds for
making L.A.'s
public schools the best in the country. I hope you can join us for
a beautiful and festive night.
As always, we thank everyone who supported us in our push to transform
Locke High. And we welcome your continued support in our drive to make
all public schools in L.A.
small, safe, and successful at graduating kids and sending them to
college. Please join us!
Steve Barr
Founder and CEO
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Make Sure You Get Green Dot's e-mails!
 Stay up to date with Green Dot's
growth and successes. Add "info@greendot.org" to your
contacts and your "safe senders" list. To unsubscribe, see
the instructions at the bottom of this email.
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Locke
High Transformation Gets Green Light from L.A. School Board
 Green Dot Public Schools made history in Los Angeles education when the city's Board of
Education voted to allow Green Dot to take over Locke High School
and break it up into smaller charter schools. This is the first time in
LAUSD history that a non-district group will run an L.A. Unified public
school.
"I'm proud of the board and proud of the parents and the teachers
of Locke," said Green Dot's Founder Steve Barr. "...We're
going to work together and make Locke a great school. People around the
country are going to come to Watts and
see what a great urban turnaround school looks like."
Locke High is one of the city's and the
state's lowest-performing high schools with very few students who are
proficient in math or English and a graduating class that is one
quarter the size it was in ninth grade. For example, in 2005, 332
students graduated from a class that, as ninth-graders, had 1,318. In
contrast, Green Dot schools have consistently outperformed nearby
public schools on standardized tests and graduate 100% of our students.
Parents, students, and many teachers at Locke have long supported Green
Dot's transformation plan to convert the high school into smaller,
high-quality schools.
"Today is about historic accountability," Bruce Smith, an
English teacher at Locke who gathered signatures for the Green Dot
petition, told the Los Angeles Times after the board's vote.
"Finally a day of reckoning has come. ...Real change is coming to Locke High School."
Green Dot will take control of Locke High in fall of 2008. As part of
the transformation plan, Green Dot will restructure the Locke campus
into several college-prep high schools of about 500 students. The
schools will follow Green Dot's Six Tenets for High-Performing Schools:
small, safe schools; getting parents involved; holding students and
staff to high expectations; maximizing funding to the classroom; giving
principals and teachers significant authority over school-site
decisions such as budget and curriculum; and keeping schools open later
for community use.
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Edna McConnell Clark Foundation to
Invest $4 Million in Green Dot
Green Dot is pleased to announce that the Edna McConnell
Clark Foundation will invest $4 million to support Green Dot and the
Locke Transformation Project. A significant portion of the implementation of Green Dot's business plan is being
underwritten by a 34 month grant
of up to $4,000,000 from The Edna
McConnell Clark Foundation, which makes substantial multi-year
investments in leading youth-serving organizations as part of its
ongoing efforts to help young people from low-income families develop
the skills and abilities that will enable them to make a successful
transition to productive adulthood. Thank you to the Clark Foundation
and to all of our supporters!
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2007 API Results Show Continued Success
Recent API scores for Green Dot's Jefferson
Transformation Schools outpaced neighboring Jefferson High School
by nearly 200 points. The five schools' av erage API for 2007 is 628 out of a possible 1000, while
Jefferson High recorded an API of 457, a 171-point difference. All of
Green Dot's schools' scored
significantly higher than their neighboring high schools. Overall,
Green Dot's average API is 689 while the API average for neighboring
schools is 116 points lower at 573.
"When
we give kids a small, safe environment with dedicated educators given
the autonomy to make the best decision for their students, we will
continue to see these kinds of results," said Steve Barr.
Congratulations to our fantastic school leaders and teachers for these
tremendous results. Green Dot would not be where it is today without
them.
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Join Us at The Green Dot Ball: A Benefit for Great
Public Schools
Mark your calendars!! On Monday, Oct. 29, Green
Dot will hold the first annual Green Dot Ball: A Benefit for Great
Public Schools  at the Griffith Observatory. The dinner and benefit is a
unique opportunity to celebrate Green
Dot's success in the past year and to honor all who have helped us
reach these heights. This year Green Dot will honor Eli Broad, Andy
Stern, Oscar De La Hoya, and the Teachers of Green Dot as our
"Champions of Great Public Schools."
Please join us at this important and festive event. Your support of
Green Dot Public Schools will help us create and sustain high-achieving
public schools for every child in Los
Angeles. To attend, call Sarah
at 310-899-9191, or email sarah@newphilanthropygroup.com.
We look
forward to seeing you at the Ball!
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Winners Circle
Sophomores Win Essay Contest
& $500
Jennifer
Quintero and Viridiana Estrada-Mateo each won
$500 scholarships in the "Save Me a Spot in College" essay
contest, sponsored by The Campaign for College Opportunity. Jennifer
and Viridiana, both sophomores at Ánimo Ralph Bunche, had to create a
poster, video, or write a 400-word essay answering the question:
"Why should California
leaders save you and your peers a spot in college?" Viridiana, 15, wrote a recipe for what it takes to
be a good doctor: hard work, support, good study habits, and, a spot in
college. Viridiana says she would like to
study law or medicine, but definitely knows she's headed for college.
Junior Makes
Prestigious Who's Who List
Ánimo South L.A. junior Jhakil
Doyle was accepted into the Who's Who Among American
High School Students, 2006-07 edition. Each
year, over 24,000 youth groups, service organizations, and public,
private and parochial high schools nominate students for the
publication who have a "B" grade
point average or better and have demonstrated leadership in academics,
athletics, or extracurricular activities. About 67% of students
selected for publication maintain an "A"
average. Jhakil has been involved in
basketball and football, and has volunteered for several organizations
including the Expo
Center (formerly
EPICC) and S.L. Franklin's Urban Design program. He also participates
in his church's youth ushers group and youth choir.
Congratulations to Jhakil, Jennifer,
and Viridiana for their successes.
If you have success stories to report about Ánimo
students, let us know. E-mail info@greendot.org.
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Johanna Matamoros:
Ánimo Venice, Class of 2008
Growing up in Culver City's projects,
Johanna Matamoros feared her life was predetermined: she'd be pregnant
by 18, maybe graduate from Venice
High School, and
land a low-wage job. She didn't know anybody in her community who had
gone to college and nobody ever really tal ked to her about it.
But Johanna and
her parents wanted more for her life, so they seized at the chance to
sign up for the lottery for the founding class of Ánimo
Venice. Today, Johanna, 17, is on the path to college, with schools
like University of Pennsylvania, Columbia
University, and West Point at the top of her list. She wants to
study criminology and can't wait to experience the challenges and
adventures that college has to offer. Sometimes she sees some of her
old middle-school classmates, several of whom are already young
mothers.
"Sometimes
it's hard being a Hispanic girl because people don't expect much from
you," says Johanna. "But what's great about being here [at Ánimo Venice] is that they expect a lot from you.
They don't expect you to fail and become a statistic. They expect you
to go to college and to be successful."
Johanna gives a
lot of credit to the one-to-one relationship with her teachers and
principal for opening new possibilities and continuing to raise her
academic achievement. "The teachers are more like my
friends," she says. "They're always there for me. They know
my family. Even [Principal Tommy] Chang knows the names of almost every
parent. In a big school, the principal barely knows the students'
names."
The school also
not only tolerated, but encouraged Johanna's outspoken nature.
"I feel like my
voice is heard," she says. "They've allowed me to express who
I am and by doing that I've been able to discover who I am. I've found
myself and what I like and what I know I want to do. That's been
incredible."
Johanna says
that attending Ánimo Venice has given her
experiences she never dreamed of having, such as a tour of East Coast
colleges that included a trip to New
York City. At the same time, it instilled a
necessary discipline.
"They're
really strict, but in the long run it's for your own good," she
says. "They're trying to get you somewhere that a big school
wouldn't."
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News to Know.........
LAPU
Gets New Executive Director
The Los
Angeles Parents Union (LAPU) has been changing, growing, and
galvanizing support over the summer. The organization has added four
new positions to mobilize even more parents to demand equitable and
high-achieving public schools in their communities. To help with
the organization's growth and progress, LAPU's
board of directors named Ryan Smith as the group's new executive
director. Smith most recently managed public affairs for Green Dot
Public Schools. He has been involved in education and community
organizing for a number of years. A former teacher in Mexico
City and Cuernavaca, Mexico, Smith was a founder of California's
statewide Higher Learning Project, which is dedicated to grassroots and
social justice advocacy. He has worked for youth-related nonprofits,
the California Democratic Party, and was a researcher and writer for
the Los Angeles Times' editorial pages. Smith said he is looking
forward to engaging parents throughout the district in his new
position. "We at LAPU want to make sure parents know the power
they have to demand and implement change in their local schools,"
said Smith.
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LAPU is pushing forward with is work to  vastly improve L.A.'s
public schools. The organization recently launched projects in Silverlake, East L.A., and Venice to help parents work with
education leaders to create plans to improve their local middle schools
and high schools. The organization is also planning a districtwide effort in
the coming months to empower more parents around improving public
schools.
To learn more about the parents' union, visit the LAPU website.
Ánimo Schools Update
Our schools have been moving, growing, and achieving.
For a list of all Ánimo schools, their
principals, grade levels served,
and future locations, just click here, or visit www.greendot.org/schools.
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Green Dot in the News
There has been a flurry of news about Green Dot and its
successful model. The vote to turnover Locke High to Green Dot has
dominated local and national news and online blogs
in recent weeks, in addition to profiles of Steve Barr in Forbes
Magazine and The New York Times. Read several of the stories,
and view video clips, on our website. Some recent coverage includes:
"Finally, Some Real Changes in Public
Education" by Steven Barrie-Anthony (The Huffington Post)
"Watts Riot" by Peter C.
Beller (Forbes Magazine)
"Union-Friendly Maverick Leads New Charge for
Charter Schools" by Sam Dillon (The New York
Times)
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