Meet Green Dot Public Schools

Green Dot Public Schools is located in California where they serve 12,000 students across 21 schools in the Los Angeles area. 

At Green Dot, it’s imperative to find highly skilled, driven, and passionate educators who are committed to preparing all students for college, leadership, and life — a principle applied to both full-time educators and substitute teachers.

The challenge: rigorous sub requirements

Green Dot works with anywhere from five to eight companies to outsource substitute teachers. When evaluating potential partners, the most important factor is the ability to hire subs who meet their requirements and have the training and motivation necessary to thrive in the schools’ classrooms. 

“Our permanent teachers are working to develop and have the skill set to address unique needs, and we expect the same, for continuity purposes, from our subs,” says Samantha Matamoros, Green Dot’s Vice President of People. “If we get folks that don’t understand what it’s like to work in our context, then that’s when issues arise.”

Recruiting with Swing

When it came time to partner with a new substitute teacher provider, Green Dot chose Swing Education, who has a strong background with a wide variety of schools, including K-12 charter schools.

“Swing has extensive charter experience,” says Matamoros. “They had the right context and understood some of the challenges that we had faced in partnering with other sub companies and had a clear vision of how they worked to address those challenges. From the get go Swing was really responsive, communicative, and flexible.”

The benefit of finding subs that fit

Swing’s understanding of the charter school environment and commitment to customer service has been a winning mix for Green Dot. 

“What I appreciate about Swing Education is that there’s a high level of responsiveness,” Matamoros says. “I feel like they take compliance really seriously, which has in the past been a pain point for us, just in getting updates from sub companies on their employees and their clearance to be able to work with students.” 

Swing Education is one of Green Dot’s preferred substitute teacher providers, filling nearly 13,000 substitute teacher days annually. “I would say the brightest spot for Swing is to see how quickly they’ve become one of the most popular options among the cohort of sub companies,” Matamoros says.

To learn more about Green Dot’s experience with onboarding and working with Swing, read their case study on how they partnered with us to create a winning professional development program. 

And if your district is looking for an innovative approach to finding subs, addressing teacher absences, and keeping learning on track, you can learn more about how we work with districts here.