New Leaders: Giving Tuesday

What if every child attended a great public school?

What if there were a team of leaders in each school with the skills to support academic excellence for ALL students?

What if these leaders already exist–and they need your support?

This holiday season, I hope you will join me in supporting New Leaders, a national non-profit where I am a proud staff member, as part of Giving Tuesday, a national movement beginning December 3rd encourage people to give back during the holidays.

We at New Leaders recruit outstanding educators from across the country and develop them into transformational principals and leaders for students in high-poverty schools.

In the Bay Area, one such outstanding leader is Shawn Benjamin of Leadership Public Schools–Richmond. When Shawn arrived as assistant principal in 2005, the high school’s culture was broken: students had seen a churn of principals, violence was common, and parents felt angry and betrayed. Shawn became principal in 2007 and first focused on school culture, creating an environment that was safe and nurturing. She then drilled down into learning and teaching, raising the academic bar and making sure that every child was pushed to his or her fullest potential. LPS–Richmond is unrecognizable today: it was awarded a silver medal in U.S. News and World Report’s “Best High Schools in the US,” a designation given to only 9% of high schools nationwide. LPS–Richmond is now a place where over 200 AP exams are taken each year and 98% of seniors are accepted into college.
“LPS–Richmond has helped me by getting me ready for college,” says student Tiye Gordon, “even though I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

Every student deserves a Shawn in his or her school. The great news is that we have dozens more just like her: we are currently training 101 current and future principals like Shawn right here in the Bay Area, with the same grit and determination to see their students succeed no matter what. And they need your support.

I hope you will support our efforts this holiday season by investing in training more leaders like Shawn. Any amount will make a difference. I believe that supporting education is the most important thing we can do for our children and for our country–and that making sure every school has a great leader is the best way to start.

I deeply appreciate any contribution you can make to support New Leaders and help change the lives of kids here in the Bay Area and across the nation.