Today we are excited the share the story of the extraordinary Rhonda Deomampo, CEO and Superintendent of Synergy Academies.
There’s a word that Rhonda Deomampo keeps coming back to, and it’s not just because it inspired the creation of the school she has led for nearly a decade.
Synergy.
For Rhonda, who is the CEO and Superintendent of Synergy Academies in Los Angeles, that work is less a slogan or tagline and more of a foundational operating philosophy. Synergy is a nonprofit, tuition-free TK–12 charter school operating three STEM-focused schools — an elementary, middle, and high school — with a mission to disrupt educational inequity and prepare all students for college, career, and life.
“Our founders were very intentional about choosing that name,” Rhonda said. “They felt that all the challenges we face in education are too big for any one of us to solve on our own. It really takes everyone working together, which includes teachers, school leaders, students, and families.”
Twenty years in, she hasn’t found a reason to disagree.
From the Islands to the Classroom
Rhonda grew up in Hawaii, where going to a mainland college was, in her words, “a really big deal.” She had a high school counselor who pushed students to explore, and when she was considering her options, the University of Southern California (USC) checked every box: a school deeply embedded in its community, and one that made the finances work for her family.
She arrived in Los Angeles not entirely sure what she wanted to do with her life, a feeling she’s quick to normalize now when talking with her own students. Rhonda double-majored in philosophy and public relations, minored in business, and upon graduating took a job in recruiting at Arthur Andersen, the once-behemoth accounting and consulting firm that later collapsed in the wake of the Enron scandal.
The implosion of her employer turned out to be a gift.
“It was an opportunity to reconsider what I really wanted to do,” she said.
What Rhonda kept coming back to was a summer job she’d had during her USC years, working as a reading tutor at a local elementary school. She’d been working in some form or another since she was 13 or 14 — babysitting, teaching piano, retail — but that tutoring opportunity was different.
“It was the most fun I’d ever had at work,” Rhonda said. “I especially love seeing the lightbulbs go off for the kids who weren’t exactly thrilled about reading, until suddenly they were.”
Rhonda went back to USC for her master’s in education and soon after stepped into a classroom of her own.
The Statistic She Almost Became
Rhonda’s first teaching job was in a large urban district in Los Angeles during the mid-2000s. It was the sort of challenge, Rhonda said, that almost made her join the ranks of new teachers who reportedly exit the profession within the first five years.
During her second year as a teacher, Rhonda received a job offer from a small, fairly new charter school called Synergy Charter Academy.
“I thought, let me just give this one more try before I totally redo my life plan again,” she said.
She walked into Synergy, which was founded in 2004, and found everything she thought teaching was supposed to be.
In addition to a STEM-focused curriculum that prioritizes high-quality math and science instruction for all students, Synergy offers socio-emotional supports through school-based counseling, extracurricular activities to expand learning outside of the classroom, and parent and family education to build support between school and home.
Rhonda taught second grade for several years after joining Synergy. When she had her first child and stepped back from full-time work, she remained connected to the school and asked how she could help.
What followed was a years-long evolution through part-time teacher coaching — as Synergy expanded to middle and high school and hired new teachers —as well as grant writing and strategic planning alongside the previous CEO, followed by a role as Director of Special Projects.
When co-founder and former CEO Meg Palisoc departed in 2017, Rhonda felt called to apply for the job.
She got it.
What Synergy Actually Looks Like
This spring, Synergy held its annual Senior Commitment Day, a celebration of what comes next for the graduating class. In the neighborhoods Synergy serves, roughly 6% of adults hold a four-year college degree, yet 93% of Synergy seniors are headed to four-year universities.
Closing that gap is what gets Rhonda out of bed each day.
“At the end of the day, I hope our students have as many options as possible in their lives,” she said. “Whatever those choices might be.”
While the school is STEM-focused with a strong college-going culture, Rhonda is careful not to reduce success to a single definition. Students heading to vocational programs, apprenticeships, or military service are celebrated alongside those bound for four-year schools.
What matters is that the door has been opened for them.
The proof shows up in several different ways. Synergy now has alumni on its faculty. It has a board member — a UCLA graduate who works in city government — who was sitting in Rhonda’s own second-grade classroom 20 years ago.
“It feels like I’m not old enough to have a former student on my board,” Rhonda said, laughing. “But here we are.”
The Wednesday Morning Zoom
Charter school leadership can be isolating. The challenges are relentless — enrollment, staffing, facilities, funding, compliance, the ever-escalating complexity of student needs — and they don’t slow down long enough to let you solve one before the next one arrives.
“Sometimes the biggest challenge is that there are so many challenges,” Rhonda said.
In terms of building advocacy strength, Rhonda knows there is no substitute for active participation in organizations like the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). She was among the earliest to commit to a Standard Membership — full CCSA benefits include contributions to regional advocacy — and encouraged other leaders to do so.
Support from organizations like CCSA represents the ultimate synergy of the charter movement, but it’s not the only opportunity for meaningful collaboration.
Countless opportunities for synergy have emerged for Rhonda in recent years, including ones resulting from regular check-ins with like-minded charter leaders.
Six years ago this spring — March 2020, shortly after the world began to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — a handful of Los Angeles-based charter school leaders, including Rhonda Baldenegro of Gabriella Charter Schools, got on a Wednesday morning call at 9 a.m. to check in with one another and learn how they were proceeding to serve students during unprecedented circumstances.
They decided to check in again via Zoom the following Wednesday. And then the Wednesday after that.
That call still happens every week, more than six years later. The group, typically around 10 leaders from independent and small-network charter schools across Los Angeles, has no agenda, no formal structure, no deliverables: It’s a brain trust and a safe space for all to ask, “Is anyone else dealing with this?”
“Over the last year, we’ve had some newer leaders join as there’s been turnover,” Rhonda noted. “It’s nice to see the support system evolve and already be there for someone brand new to the role.”
While Rhonda said she also receives support from various statewide charter organizations, there’s something about the informal Wednesday morning ritual: peer-to-peer, no agenda, just people doing the same hard work and choosing to do it together.
To Rhonda, it feels, in a word, like synergy.