This week, we are excited to profile Jacqueline Elliot, founder of the first charter middle school in Los Angeles County and the former president and CEO of PUC National.
Many of us—if not most of us—think of middle school as an awkward, self-conscious time. But Jacqueline Elliot thinks differently than most of us. She sees middle school as a time of great promise and opportunity.
Jacqueline began her career in a family planning clinic, where she worked as a counselor, often interacting with adolescents who were coming in for pregnancy tests.
“I would discuss with them taking responsibility for one’s own destiny, etc. and the subject of school would come up,” she said. “Many of them said they didn’t like school.”
Later, as director of health education for Northeast Valley Health Corporation in the San Fernando Valley, Jacqueline did presentations and taught sex education to high school students.
“I observed the same apathy and lack of connectedness to school among some of the students,” she said. “Later…it was those students who I would think about. Students who had great potential and who could be inspired with a love of learning and motivated to set goals for their future if they had the right teachers in the right school climate.”
In thinking about how to intervene with disengaged students, Jacqueline viewed middle school as a crucial time.
“I reasoned middle school was either a time you could inspire students with a love of learning or you could create a breeding ground for ninth grade dropouts,” she said.
Bringing a vision to life
Jacqueline entered education in 1986, when she became a teacher in Pacoima in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. She was already thinking differently than most teachers.
“From the very first day I set foot on that campus, I knew that school reform was necessary,” she said.
She learned about California’s then-new charter school legislation while she was teaching and was determined to try to start a charter middle school to stem the high dropout rates (about 50%) at the local high school.
“I wanted to have the independence, the flexibility and be nimble—not use some cookie cutter approach,” she said.
Even back in the 1990s, Los Angeles Unified was not enthusiastic about the idea.
“It was a huge struggle to get that school started,” Jacqueline said. “LAUSD pushed back, but I didn’t give up. That began the journey.”
She founded Community Charter Middle School in 1999—the very first charter middle school in Los Angeles County.
As she told her students on the day the school opened, the creation of Los Angeles County’s first charter middle school was “a dream come true.”
‘Very popular, very quickly’
Within a few months of opening, Community Charter Middle School had a waitlist.
“The school became very popular, very quickly. Word got out that there was a safe, small school where teachers believed in every student and students were happy,” Jacqueline said. “If you have a waiting list, why don’t you start another school? I realized my mission was to serve the community. So, if I was going to serve the community, then I needed to start another school.”
There was so much community demand, in fact, that Jacqueline went on to found several schools—all in the same area.
“I think we opened the floodgates,” she said.
Given the popularity, in 2004, Jacqueline co-founded Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC Schools), a nonprofit umbrella organization for the schools she and her co-founder, Dr. Ref Rodriguez, had created.
In 2013, they founded PUC National to support and replicate the purposes of PUC Schools and support and promote the greater public charter school community.
There are now 14 PUC schools, serving over 4,200 students, all in the Northeast San Fernando Valley and Northeast Los Angeles. PUC schools have a high school graduation rate that exceeds 90%, and over 100 PUC graduates themselves now work in PUC schools.
‘Don’t be insular’
Although Jacqueline has been committed to PUC since 1999, she has thought about her work differently—not in a silo, but as part of a larger, interconnected ecosystem.
“It’s not just about your own school. It’s about the greater educational community,” Jacqueline said. “It’s about supporting the concept of independent public charter schools that can meet the needs of their particular population and provide a different public school option for parents. I always say to our students, ‘You don’t walk on this earth alone. You have a commitment to those around us.’”
In that spirit, she’s served on the board of the California Charter Schools Association and on the Los Angeles Advocacy Council. Her work has earned her CCSA’s Hart Vision Leader of the Year Award.
“Advocacy is the key to survival,” she said. (She also wrote about this for CharterFolk in 2024.) “When you advocate for others, you’re also advocating for yourself. There are so many fallacies and myths out there that it’s important to get the truth out there. Find a way to get in an article. Be out there. Don’t be insular. Don’t keep it to yourself.”
A new chapter
Jacqueline announced this month that she’s embarking on a new journey in her career. Most people might hear that and think of retirement—but Jacqueline thinks differently. For her, this is a shift in her daily duties, not in her commitment or her gumption.
She’ll be transitioning out of her day-to-day role as CEO of PUC National and into a part-time advisory role. Malena Orozco-Otero, who has been with PUC for more than two decades, will be stepping in as CEO.
“It is really important to me in our work that we think about the future and what kind of people we want to be leading this country,” Jacqueline said. “The children in our schools are the ones who will be leading the future. That’s something always to be mindful of. What they experience in school sticks with them, so model for them what it is you want them to be.”