Ashoka
YouthBuild Charter School of California (YCSC) holds a unique place in the landscape of California’s public charter schools. As a competency-based dropout recovery school, it seeks to provide a high school education that leads to a diploma for a distinct group of students. YCSC students, who are all between the ages of 16 to 24 years old, come from low-income families and underserved communities, and have previously left or been pushed out of the traditional school system without a diploma. They enroll at YouthBuild programs over-aged, under-credited, or both, in order to receive vocational training, counseling, leadership development and an education.
Phil Matero
Phil started teaching in an alternative school setting 25 years ago at a part time job preparing students for the GED exam. As he got to know his students and learned about the many challenges they faced and the disappointments that they had been dealt, he was moved to compassion for their situations and committed himself to fight for justice on their behalf. But the more time he spent with them, the more he realized that they were the best advocates for themselves and that they had the ideas, the insights and the intelligence to take on social justice issues. Phil’s role as an educator has become more of a facilitator to unleash the energy and power that they possess and support them in the process of community and self-transformation.
For years Phil worked outside the formal school system in sometimes subversive ways to create opportunities for young people to thrive despite the system, but eventually he decided that the most impactful way to create change was to get inside the system and be an example of what can happen when a school is committed to social justice. So he founded YouthBuild Charter School of California with the intent to launch a public school that would reach the academic goals required by the State, but do so in a way that honors the hopes and dreams of the youth who had been pushed out of traditional schools. They opened a school that shunned the trappings of standardized testing and “one size fits all” education, and through project-based learning and community action projects, gave students ownership of their education. Their school has done something many said was impossible, and their example has inspired many to take similar steps to make education meaningful and transformative.
Dr. Rudy Cuevas
As the Chief Collaboration Officer (CCO) & Principal at YouthBuild Charter School of California, Dr. Cuevas currently manages the Academics, Operations, and Finances for a network of 19 charter school sites. Via a unique collaboration with YouthBuild programs and 150 charter school staff, Dr. Cuevas has led the development and implementation of a disruptive instructional model that features contextual community transformation as the learning focus across 19 sites in California.
Dr. Cuevas is also Founder & Managing Director at Cuevas Capital, an early-stage venture capital/private equity firm that invests in progressive private school startups owned and operated by minority teachers. Dr. Cuevas has a BA in History from UCLA, an MA in School Administration from Loyola Marymount University, and an EdD in Educational Leadership for Social Justice from Loyola Marymount University. Dr. Cuevas serves on the Board of Directors of the LMU School of Education Alumni Association. He is a 2015 graduate of the inaugural cohort of the Executive Latino Leadership Association. Dr. Cuevas regularly serves as a chairperson to determine school accreditation on behalf of WASC.