About Innovate Public Schools

Innovate Public Schools is a power-building organization that was launched in 2012. At Innovate, our vision is a high quality school experience that cherishes and affirms every student, particularly Black and Brown students, and prepares them for a lifetime of opportunity and choice. Our mission is to build the capacity of parents and families to organize, advocate, and demand high quality schools for their children.                    

Our program model centers long-term power-building through community organizing for parents & education stakeholders. To support this work, we deploy our Research & Policy (RAP) team to collect & publish data that supports the informed demands of engaged parents. Our Communications team helps to disseminate RAP findings and supports parent leaders in implementing effective outreach strategies that bring more parents into our established organizing communities. Our Partnerships & Training team then scales this work nationally, providing training for schools & community leaders to build capacity within their organizations to support authentic grassroots parent organizing.  We deeply engage with parents and education stakeholders to support them in cultivating sustainable power-building practices that ensure that their voices are heard in the education advocacy space. 

Reporting

The Canvasser, will report to the Community Organizer, Los Angeles.

About the Position:

Innovate Public Schools is looking for a self-motivated, outgoing and persistent person who is passionate about closing the achievement gap and expanding high quality school options for low income students of color in the area. 

The community canvasser will be part of a canvassing team working to engage and empower parents to be agents of change in their local public schools and advocates for new high quality public schools, including charter schools. The community canvasser will play an integral role in building the base for the area parents working with Innovate as volunteer parent leaders. 

The community canvasser should be effective at building relationships with parents in low-income communities of color and inspiring them to take action. The canvassing work will be issue-oriented, but non-partisan and not affiliated with any political campaign.

Key Responsibilities

• Engage with parents and community members about the quality of their local public schools and new public school options coming to their area within the community by canvassing via:
• • Door-knocking in neighborhoods 
  • Canvassing at grocery stores, laundromats, and barber shops/beauty salons
  • Tabling and approaching people to start conversations at public locations
  • Engaging community members at events
  • Signature gathering 
• Invite parents to attend local informational meetings during door-to-door work, community events, and in follow up phone calls
• Identify potential parent leaders who are interested in organizing as volunteers with Innovate to improve their local schools and advocate for more high quality school options
• Potential non-partisan electoral outreach
• Build relationships with small-business owners, community-based organizations and other stakeholders in order to reach more parents
• Identify potential locations for canvassing
• Collect and manage data, review for accuracy and complete daily and weekly reporting on field activities
• Support logistics at parent meetings and events
• Report weekly and coordinate with the assigned manager.

Hours: 20 -25 hours weekly. Approximately 4 hours of office time weekly, approximately 4 hour shifts on both Saturday and Sunday, remaining 8 hours will vary during the weekday or weeknights 

Compensation

Compensation depends on experience and is highly competitive. Innovate offers PTO, 33 days paid time off per year (including office closures in July, November, and December), 1 day per year paid volunteering time off, and 3% employer contribution to 401k.

Work Environment/ Work Demands

The work environment characteristics and the physical demands described here represent those an employee encounters while successfully performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel objects, tools, or controls; reach with hands and arms, and talk or hear. The employee must regularly lift and/or move up to 30 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

Commitment to DEI

Here at Innovate, we believe applying a DEI lens to everything we do creates the most equitable outcomes for our staff and the communities we serve. DEI is alive through a well established Equity Working Group which serves as the vehicle for ensuring our policies, practices, and overall staff culture is equitable. We also have race-based employee resource groups, DEI Institutes, consistent DEI programming in our staff meetings, as well as an Intranet with relevant DEI resources.