Education Kickoff Event: You're Invited!

Join GOOD for a community-based project bringing together education leaders from all sectors to define the critical variables of a successful school, and the best practices to bring these to life on a wide scale.

On August 19, 2010, we’ll kick-off this discussion with Randi Weingarten (President, American Federation of Teachers), Jordan Henry (Teacher, Santee Education Complex, UTLA House of Representatives, Member), Steve Barr (Founder of Green Dot), John Deasy (Deputy Superintendent LAUSD), and Allison Graff-Weisner (Executive Director, City Year LA). We’ll then dig into further detail with other thought leaders during workshops around these defined variables in the month of September.

Be sure to RSVP by August 13th: GOODeducationevents@gmail.com.

Jordan Henry has taught elementary school, middle school, high school, music, and violin in bilingual and English-only classrooms of Los Angeles since 1994. He has assumed numerous leadership roles in his school, union, district, and city, including as member of UTLA’s House of Representatives, LAUSD’s Teacher Effective Task Force, staff to LAUSD Board Member Marlene Canter, and Interim Executive Director of The Harmony Project. Jordan is an alumnus of Yale University, Teach For America, Americorps, the Henry Mancini Institute, and Coro Southern California, and resides in South Los Angeles with his family of four.

John Deasy is Deputy Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Previously, Dr. Deasy served as deputy director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation, Dr. Deasy served as superintendent of the Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland, where he earned a national reputation for his leadership in significantly narrowing the achievement gap between low-income and minority students and their peers. He also served as superintendent of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District in California, and Coventry Public Schools in Rhode Island. He has been an Aspen Fellow, a Broad Fellow, and an Annenberg Fellow. He has also spoken and written extensively on education and serves on numerous boards.

Allison Graff-Weisner, a Southern California native, serves as the Founding Executive Director of City Year Los Angeles. In 2006, she moved to Los Angeles to launch CYLA, leading the organization’s eighteenth site. Starting with 75 corps members in its founding year, CYLA has quickly grown to meet the needs of the region, expanding to 200 corps members in its fourth year. Prior to launching CYLA, Allison served as the national Alumni Director for City Year, Inc. Allison has worked at numerous community development and education organizations in the U.S. and abroad. After running parent involvement programs at 20 schools in the Bronx with Learning Leaders, an organization that engages 10,000 volunteers in New York City schools, Allison became a leader of the program department. Prior to Learning Leaders, she taught and ran an after-school program in Washington, D.C. during her year of national service with Public Allies. She currently serves on the Board of Advisors at the Drucker Institute and is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.