Los Angeles Education Partnership: Transforming Schools and Uplifting Communities
The Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) stands as a significant force in the landscape of education within Los Angeles. Through strategic partnerships and innovative programs, LAEP strives to improve educational outcomes for historically underserved students. This article delves into the core initiatives, impact, and leadership that define LAEP's mission and its role in shaping the future of education in Los Angeles.
The Partnership's Mission and Approach
Fifteen years ago, the Los Angeles Education Partnership embarked on a profound purpose to transform education, uplift communities, and shape brighter futures. Today, they continue to strive to accelerate achievement for the students in their schools across LA Unified and beyond. The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools collaborates with LAUSD schools to improve educational outcomes for historically underserved students.
LAEP is one of the largest in-district public school transformation organizations in the United States. As an independent non-profit organization, it promotes change through an innovative transformation model. Working with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LA Unified) under a Memorandum of Understanding, the Partnership manages a network of district schools in Boyle Heights, South LA, and Watts. Because the vast majority of the nation’s students still attend traditional public schools, they believe in finding solutions to empower students in the district context.
Knowing the limitations of public education funding, LAEP only provides supports that can be scaled to and sustainably funded at other high-need district schools. They work where the need is greatest, as ranked by the Student Equity Need Index (SENI) - created through a collaboration between the Advancement Project, Community Coalition, and InnerCity Struggle. The SENI takes a holistic measure of student need by including neighborhood conditions such as poverty, violence, and access to resources. Fourteen of 20 Partnership schools are high- or highest-need.
Systems Change and Equitable Funding
LAEP's experience directly supporting schools uniquely positions them to identify limitations and opportunities within schools and systems. Their systems change work removes barriers to student success while scaling up solutions. A recent example of their work centers around equitable funding for high-need schools. In 2018, through advocacy with their partners, they were instrumental in helping secure approval from LA Unified’s Board of Education for a revised Student Equity Need Index, which now includes indicators that more accurately identify and fund the district’s highest-need schools. They also advocated for the allocation of approximately $260 million of funds to schools in 2019-20 based on their index ranking.
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Partnerships and Community Engagement
The historically underserved schools LAEP manages need an array of supports that extend beyond their work, and they recognize they cannot achieve their mission on their own. Their success is built by creating strong partnerships and leveraging the expertise of partner organizations, community members, and dozens of funders. The Partnership directly serves approximately 12,200 LA Unified students at the elementary, middle, and high school level.
Melissa Peña: A Leader in Educational Equity
Melissa Peña serves as the Chief Program Officer at the Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), bringing more than two decades of experience advancing educational equity, youth development, and community-centered systems change. A mission-driven and strategic leader, she has dedicated her career to eliminating barriers to learning and seeking equitable outcomes for historically underserved youth.
Prior to joining LAEP, Melissa spent over 14 years at Green Dot Public Schools where she launched and scaled high-impact initiatives that reduced chronic absenteeism by 27%, expanded access to wellness services, and built network-wide support systems for more than 600 homeless and foster youth across 18 schools. Her leadership is rooted in both entrepreneurial vision and disciplined execution-designing programs, teams, and infrastructure that strengthen outcomes for students while supporting the adults who serve them.
Melissa’s commitment to equity has shaped her work across roles in education, youth development, and human services, including senior leadership positions at The Door in New York City and national diversity recruitment efforts at Teach For America. She began her career as a fourth-grade teacher in Newark, New Jersey, a formative experience that continues to ground her belief that the key to ensuring every young person meets their full potential lies in the power of family-school-community partnerships. At LAEP, Melissa leads program strategy with empathy, clarity, and a deep belief that children thrive when systems work together from “diapers to diplomas.” She holds a Master’s in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara.
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