Green Dot Public Schools is a non-profit organization whose mission is to help transform public education so ALL students graduate prepared for college, leadership and life.

Unique in the nation for a major non-profit charter management organization, Green Dot is proving it can achieve better student outcomes with the same student population, lower per pupil funding than the district and a unionized workforce. They are the leading charter school operator in Los Angeles and one of the top three largest in the nation.

The U.S. Department of Education has featured Green Dot as a national leader in school turnarounds, and they are the only charter school operator in the country to lead the turnaround of a 3,000-plus student high school.

Green Dot's History

Green Dot Public Schools was founded in 1999 in direct response to the poor state of public high schools in the Los Angeles area. Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD’s) high schools were not graduating over 50% of their students, and those that were making it through were rarely prepared for college. The vast majority of the students failing out of the system were children from low-income families. Green Dot had a vision of creating small, successful charter schools and in doing so, demonstrating to the school district and the public-at-large that there was a more effective way to provide public education to low-income, high-risk youth.

In August 2000, Green Dot opened its doors with just one 9th grade class of 140 students. Today, their organization has successfully grown to serve more than 11,000 students in communities across Los Angeles, CA, Memphis, TN, and Tacoma, WA.

The U.S. Department of Education has featured Green Dot as a national leader in school turnarounds, and they are the only charter school operator in the country to lead the turnaround of a 3,000-plus student high school. Green Dot schools have been featured in “America’s Best High Schools” by Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, and The Daily Beast.

In June 2013, Green Dot received authorization from the Achievement School District to turn around several middle and high schools in Memphis starting August 2014, when it reopened Fairley High School. In August 2015, Green Dot reopened Wooddale Middle School as its first transformation middle school in Memphis, and Destiny Middle School in Tacoma.