Meg Palisoc
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Synergy Academies
Problem
As the director of engineering career services at the University of Southern California (USC), her duties were to help students in both graduate and undergraduate schools to get jobs after graduation. She saw the power of technology, engineering and computer science degrees and how having education in those areas would lead to a good career. However, she saw disparities in students' education backgrounds. Those who had struggled in K-12 and didn’t go to quality schools struggled to get into prestigious universities. And even if they did, they struggled with majors such as math, engineering and science. Thus, she was motivated to do something to close the disparity gap. Innovation Dr. Palisoc quit her job in higher education at USC to become a part of the solution. She became a 1st and 3rd grade inner city teacher in South Los Angeles. She saw firsthand some of the challenges the students, teachers and families were facing. From these experiences, together with her husband Dr. Randy Palisoc, she decided to start Synergy’s first school. Synergy Charter Academy opened with 6 founding teachers and 120 K-5th grade students in 2004. Without a school building, the school was located on a church site. Every Friday, every classroom had to be packed up entirely. Despite this challenge, Synergy’s students excelled, and within four years, Synergy Charter Academy projected its students’ academic achievement to near the top 10% statewide. Her passion was to learn about charter schools and make a greater difference in underserved children. She had a bigger dream and together with her husband had a long term dream of using the charter school route as an incubator to bring back their best practices and share with all schools. Their goal was to use this as a sample school to say that what they were doing could be modeled and used elsewhere. Impact Located in the heart of south LA, where most of the elementary students enrolled were significantly performing below average, students at Synergy Academies who did not have hope and courage to do better in life, are now performing above average. Most of Synergy’s middle and high school students do not come from Synergy’s successful elementary school, but instead, they come from struggling neighborhood schools and are often performing three or more grade levels behind in reading and math when they first enroll. By using technology and strategies to develop and strengthen the students’ literacy and math skills, the students at Synergy Academies are now at their grade level and are being prepared for high school graduation and college. After its first year of opening, the standardized test scores of Synergy students’ were the highest in the community. Synergy Charter Academy’s test scores were near the top 10% of the state within four years, and the school has remained the highest-performing, fully implemented K-5 school in South Los Angeles for the past eight years. By consistently outperforming all other students in California, Synergy Academies' students are eliminating the disparity gap. Synergy Charter Academy's 2012 Academic Performance Index (API) score is the highest in not only South Los Angeles, but is also higher than schools in Beverly Hills, CA. Apart from eliminating the achievement gap and giving access to quality education to minority students, Synergy Academies give the students the skills they need to have a better life. In 2008, the California Charter Schools Association awarded Synergy Academies “2008 California Charter School of the Year”. The National Center for Urban School Transformation awarded Synergy Academy “The 2013 Gold Award Winner” - Best Urban Elementary School in America. Skills Dr. Palisoc’s passion to help kids in underserved communities achieve success gave her motivation to co-found Synergy Academies. She believes in giving every student an equal opportunity to learn and grow. She supports team work and one of her values that she shares with her team is “At Synergy, we’re all in this together because together we are better. We bring out the best in each other and in ourselves every day in every way.” She trains her staff to work as a team and support each other. She asks for help when she needs it and also offers help when help is needed. Dr. Palisoc started her journey of being an innovator by asking the question, “Why aren’t inner city children getting a quality education like children from affluent areas?” Based on this question, she co-founded Synergy Academies to eliminate the achievement gap between children from underserved homes and children from higher income homes. She started to observe the challenges faced by underserved children and from what she observed, Dr. Palisoc sought out new ways to meet this challenge. She co-founded their first school, Synergy Charter Academy, an elementary school and after four years co-founded a new school, Synergy Kinetic Academy, a middle school. In 2011, she co-founded Synergy Quantum Academy, a high school with an emphasis on Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Dr. Palisoc has a networking team she reaches out to for new ideas. She believes in sharing and learning from others thus she attends conferences and meetings to get new ideas and shares her ideas with others. Dr. Palisoc took a smart risk to achieve Synergy Academies mission. Although she did not have enough funding support to start Synergy Academies, she did not give up, but took a risk and enrolled students into the school. The school was started in a church building and eventually moved to a school campus. Now Synergy Academies serve over 1300 children in South Los Angeles. |
Bio
Dr. Meg Palisoc is teacher, Co-founder, and Chief Executive Officer at Synergy Academies in Los Angeles, CA. As an administrator at the University of Southern California, Meg noticed that college students who came from inner-city public K-12 schools were often not as academically prepared as their peers. For this reason, Meg transitioned from higher education and became an elementary school teacher. As a teacher, she saw that inner-city schools were not improving quickly enough. Therefore, Meg co-founded Synergy Charter Academy and Synergy Kinetic Academy to more rapidly create educational equity for all students. |