Ep 3: Interrupting the School to Prison Pipeline: How Lisa María Rhodes' Alas Advocates for Students

Lisa María Rhodes:
One time I asked an auditorium of young people at an assembly, in a school, raise your hand if you've ever been mishandled, assaulted, or profiled by the police. And every single boy's hand went up. I didn't expect that.
Nicole Jarbo:
Today, we have Lisa Maria Rhodes, founder of ALAS on the show. ALAS creates interventions to support students who've been impacted by the court system in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Lisa María Rhodes:
To see how pervasive it is for young people to be preyed upon while they're walking to their grandma's house, while they're going to the store to get some food for their mom, while they're taking their little sibling to a practice. It really impacts the way young people see themselves in the world and their ability to trust in other people and in the systems around them.
Nicole Jarbo:
Hey, I'm your host, Nicole Jarbo, and this is Pitch Playground from 4.0. This season, we'll hear 10 ideas from entrepreneurs reimagining the future of learning, and we'll put them in the hotseat with funders who will help them strengthen their pitch.
This week, Lisa Maria sits down with Molly O'Donnell, managing partner at New Profit, a venture philanthropy firm that funds entrepreneurs tackling big challenges in education, workforce development, and economic opportunity.
Molly O'Donnell:
My day job now is overseeing the portfolio of investing functions here at New Profit. So, that's the team that's responsible for running investment selection. We look at hundreds and hundreds of organizations a year, select which organizations to provide unrestricted capital and capacity building support too. Yes, that's a bit about me.
Nicole Jarbo:
Molly also has unique insight into the New Orleans communities that Lisa Maria is working with.
Molly O'Donnell:
I'm really excited about the ways in which you are really thinking deeply about what needs to be, what are your building blocks for growth and scale.
Nicole Jarbo:
At the end of the season, you, yes, you, will cast your vote and one of these ideas will get $50,000. Lisa Maria's early passion for education was largely inspired by her mom.
Lisa María Rhodes:
My mom is from Colombia and came to the US, which gave my brother and I so many different opportunities for education and for our careers. For her, education was always the top value. The rule was that I had to bring home straight A's because this was a ticket to the future, and that there's just no question about that.
Nicole Jarbo:
Lisa Maria describes herself as a product of two different cultures.
Lisa María Rhodes:
My whole life I've been a bridge between English and Spanish, between Colombianness and Americanness, between the ways that education systems train people to think and how in different societies and cultures people think differently. They express differently. And so, when you're raised like biculturally and bilingually, you spend your whole life going back and forth between two different realities and you're never quite one or the other.
Nicole Jarbo:
Lisa Maria got her start as a high school teacher in New Orleans. It was during her time as a teacher that she recognized a need for something like ALAS.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Every day, during the first five minutes of class I would send a text message to any absent student and their parent just to say like, "I see so-and-so is absent. Can you still come? We can make up the classwork. If not, but is there anything else going on that we can help with?" And about once a week, I would get a response from a parent that would say, "Oh, my son has been arrested. My son is incarcerated."
Nicole Jarbo:
Lisa Maria wanted to help, but she didn't know how.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Here, I am as an educator in the mass incarceration capital of the world in New Orleans, and we know that the school-to-prison pipeline is a real thing. And, for me, knowing teachers and how hard teachers work and how dedicated educators are, I don't see that as individuals intentionally willing this, but I do see systems that are set up that result in this outcome. So, my big question was like, how do educators interrupt this school-to-prison pipeline?
Nicole Jarbo:
That became Lisa Maria's guiding question when she decided to pivot and go to school for social work. She got a field placement at the Public Defender's office in Orleans Parish.
Lisa María Rhodes:
It was my first day and I was learning about the court system. And so, I had to go to first appearances, which is what is required by law after someone is arrested. They have to appear before a judge. And so, I was just going to learn about the process. And when I saw the name of my very first client, I was like, "I know somebody of that name that certainly can't be the student who I taught the past two years."
And so, then I am looking a little more carefully like, "All right, what's the date of birth?" And I'm like, "Oh, no, this checks out. This kid is the same age as a student who's been in my class this past two years." And I'm like, "All right, let me see. Yup, it says it's a black male. Okay." The person I'm thinking of is also a black male, and that's all the identifying information I have at that point. I can read the report, but I'm still like, "That can't be him." That's just not him. That's not him.
Nicole Jarbo:
It was the student who had been in her Spanish class for the past two years.
Lisa María Rhodes:
And so, I go to first appearances and see him, and he sees me, and I'm a Spanish teacher, and my students call me Señorita. So, he's like, "Senorita, what are you doing here?" And my heart just sunk. I knew him really well. I knew his mom, I knew his little brother. I knew he was on chapter 17 of Harry Potter. He was a nerd. He was going to miss AP environmental science test. He was going to miss a group project. I knew him enough to know these things. And so, it just really broke my heart of like, "Okay, what can we do?"
Nicole Jarbo:
So, Lisa Maria did what she felt like she could do. She told the judge what she knew about this student and who she knew him to be. She told the judge that he was in chapter 17 of Harry Potter
Lisa María Rhodes:
And the judge was like, "Oh, my grandson loves Harry Potter." And I'm like, "Aha, that's the point." This is a child, not an orange jumpsuit before you.
Nicole Jarbo:
At that moment, Lisa Maria realized the teachers could do more. She discovered a powerful way to champion students by advocating for them in court.
Lisa María Rhodes:
That is a very light lift that any educator can do to humanize their student with the core values of their school, with all the things that they're great at. Maybe it's their attendance, maybe it's their performance, maybe it's their teamwork. But judges don't know that and educators do, and judges really do tend to trust an educator's opinion because they see that this is a person who is for this kid. And that really sparked all of this because I was like, "Okay, this is very easy," and it has a major impact.
Nicole Jarbo:
Alongside the work that ALAS does to advocate for students in the criminal court system. They also work with students affected by immigration courts. The spark for that came that same year.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Our school went from around three immigrant youth to almost 100 in one school year. And as a native Spanish speaker on staff, people would just send students to me. And I didn't have answers for everything, but one of the ways that that manifested was going to immigration court because there was no court-mandated interpreter. And there's also no public defender in immigration court.
So, I would go to court with students just to interpret, and the judge would refer to me as their attorney. And, "Oh, your Honor, I'm a social worker. I'm just here to help interpret and accompany my student." But it made me realize that our students aren't getting their constitutional rights honored. They're not getting a right to a council. And so, it just propelled me to knock on attorney doors and ask for help like, is this the right paper to submit and how do I fill it out? Unfortunately, many attorneys were like, "You can't do that. You're not an attorney." I'm like, "Aha. But you can."
Nicole Jarbo:
What would you say to somebody who was unfamiliar with the challenges that young people face with the legal system in these ways?
Lisa María Rhodes:
One time I asked an auditorium of young people at an assembly in a school, raise your hand if you've ever been mishandled, assaulted, or profiled by the police, and every single boy's hand went up. I didn't expect that. To see how pervasive it is for young people to be preyed upon while they're walking to their grandma's house, while they're going to the store to get some food for their mom, while they're taking their little sibling to a practice. The effect that that has on the human psyche to feel like, "I'm not safe in my neighborhood. I'm not safe amongst my family. I can't take care of my little siblings without my safety being in question." It really impacts the way young people see themselves in the world and their ability to trust in other people and in the systems around them.
Nicole Jarbo:
So, Lisa Maria decided to dedicate herself to changing the system with ALAS. ALAS means wings in Spanish. There are many aspects to the work that ALAS does, but it is well-known for advocating for students impacted by the criminal legal system and immigration courts. On the criminal court side, one of the students impacted was Lorenzo.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Lorenzo was arrested in December of his senior year, and Lorenzo was a drum major and a drum major in New Orleans of all places, requires great musical abilities, great leadership among your peers, excellent grades, excellent attendance at school, and excellent behavior. And he had all those things.
Nicole Jarbo:
When Lorenzo was arrested, he had to sit in jail for two months waiting for his charges to be accepted or denied.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Some context for New Orleans as one of the reasons why we are the mass incarceration capital of the world is that in Orleans Parish, the kid who is arrested and there's no probable cause still sits in jail for 60 days. They missed two months of school, enough for them to fail that year. And then, they get released because there was no probable cause all along. But now, they have incurred all this trauma. They have lost seat time at school. And, of course, there's a social stigma to having just spent two months in jail.
Nicole Jarbo:
After Lorenzo's two-month waiting period, his charges were accepted.
Lisa María Rhodes:
And for Lorenzo, the issue is that his bail was not set at an affordable rate. And the Eighth Amendment says that we should have affordable bail.
Nicole Jarbo:
That's where ALA stepped in to advocate on Lorenzo's behalf.
Lisa María Rhodes:
In interfacing with that judge, we got the judge to reduce bail to an affordable rate, which made it possible for his family to post bail. Once that occurred, Lorenzo was able to go back to school, finish his senior year, walk across the stage with his peers at his high school graduation, enroll into college.
Nicole Jarbo:
Lorenzo got his future back.
Lisa María Rhodes:
And Lorenzo, he would tell you his greatest accomplishment is tucking in his four children into bed every night. He's a family man. He got married to his high school sweetheart, and that's his priority is to provide for his children and for his family. And so, for Lorenzo, that's the most important thing in his world, and he was able to do that because of the liberty granted through the bail reduction.
Nicole Jarbo:
A huge part of ALAS's work is interfacing with judges much like they did in Lorenzo's case. In many cases, this means educators simply write a letter to a judge explaining what they know about the student.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Every single time a teacher has written a letter to a judge, still to this day, the judge has released the kid pre-trial or reduced their bail, allowing the kid to go back to school and be innocent until proven guilty. It has worked every time.
Nicole Jarbo:
That's a 100% success rate. This support network extends far beyond the courtroom, creating lasting ripple effects in the lives of these students.
Lisa María Rhodes:
They can show up to court with letters that document their attendance at school, their behavior, and their teachers just wrote them a letter to get them out of jail. Of course, they're more invested in school and appreciative of their teachers. And the teachers feel very committed to the success of that student because they just signed their name to a judge about this kid. And the judge feels like, "Oh, look, there's a support system that's looking out for this child." So, it's a three-way benefit right there.
Nicole Jarbo:
Lisa Maria also has examples of students who have been positively impacted by the immigration court side of ALAS's work.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Monica came to the US from Honduras after a grueling 17-day journey by land, by foot, crossing the river, the Rio Grande, and she came unaccompanied by either of her parents, so she was alone, was placed with family members in New Orleans, enrolled at a high school in New Orleans at George Washington Carver High School. And she just had a few words of English.
Nicole Jarbo:
Monica was able to stay in the country and she excelled.
Lisa María Rhodes:
When she graduated high school actually, she was really well positioned because she had leadership, she had great grades, she had great test scores, but she couldn't continue to a university because she couldn't afford it, because she didn't have that permanent residency.
Nicole Jarbo:
Having permanent residency would allow Monica to attend university at a lower cost, but she had to navigate the immigration court system to obtain it.
Lisa María Rhodes:
There is no public defender in immigration court, which means that kids are going to court and they have to represent themselves. Would anyone who's not an attorney feel comfortable representing themselves in court and be successful doing it? Very unlikely. And that has been true for our students too. The chance of winning without having an attorney is 8%. What we're doing is we're pairing students with free legal representation, which then increases their chance of winning that case to over 90%.
Nicole Jarbo:
ALAS hooked Monica up with an attorney, which led to her successfully getting permanent residency, that meant she could afford to go to college.
Lisa María Rhodes:
She went to school. She finished her studies. And she's currently a teller at a bank. She might be your bank teller if you drive through her bank today. And so, for her, it has meant like an opening up of her world. She's now traveling. She has assisted her family members and their professional goals. She lives her life without fear of deportation.
Nicole Jarbo:
There are many others like Monica who ALAS has helped.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Over 800 young people have been connected to an attorney for free through ALAS. And for those young people, it means they have a 90% plus chance as opposed to an 8% chance of winning permanent residency and not living in fear of deportation.
Nicole Jarbo:
Educators may feel helpless when faced with these systems. But ALAS gives them the tools to intervene.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Educators want so badly to make a difference and to understand how they can support their students. And educators are usually not trained attorneys. And so, it feels like a big daunting system when you have a student who is arrested or a student who is undocumented. And, in this case, we have educator liaisons who then are trained to pair their students with free legal representation.
Nicole Jarbo:
It allows educators to not let the court system stand in the way between the student and their studies, which is essentially standing in the way of the student and their future.
Lisa María Rhodes:
I mean, that's why educators aren't in this work. Educators don't do their job for the paycheck. They love their kids and they care. And so, it's been a beautiful thing to see educators shift from I don't know what to do, to I know exactly what to do, and I'm going to make sure that every student in my school who's eligible for this service gets it because now I have the tools to remove those barriers and open up these opportunities.
Nicole Jarbo:
There are other important aspects to the work that ALAS does beyond the criminal and immigration court interventions.
Lisa María Rhodes:
We organized youth through a summer fellowship called ASPIRE, which now turned into a year-round fellowship called ASCEND. And through youth organizing, we focus on internal healing, interpersonal relationship building and institutional change making.
Nicole Jarbo:
ALAS also provides training for educators and community members.
Lisa María Rhodes:
And we train educators in learning how to better support youth affected by the criminal legal system and immigration courts. Our youth lead those trainings because they've been impacted by those very systems.
Nicole Jarbo:
ALAS also works to address the systemic issues at the heart of harmful systems of oppression.
Lisa María Rhodes:
Our young people identify barriers to education, career or freedom that they're facing, and they put in public comment and they speak at city council meetings, at school board meetings, state legislature, even on the federal level they have advocated for policies and shared with legislators how would passing or not passing certain policies impact them and their communities and their families.
Nicole Jarbo:
Why does the work matter? Why does this matter?
Lisa María Rhodes:
I mean, we have choices. We can go through the world and see things as they are and accept them and continue to allow the same systems in place to be perpetuated. Or we can make a choice. We can interrupt that, so we can see these things and say, "That's just how it is. That's just the system." But who made the systems? People did. So, who can change the systems? We can. So, my real question is, who are we not to?
Nicole Jarbo:
We recorded this episode right after the US election. What feels like top of mind for you right now? What are you thinking about?
Lisa María Rhodes:
Of course, a lot of the election was really centered around immigration and borders. So, there's this really increased need right now for what ALAS is offering, and we're hearing it from students, from teachers, from principals, from parents and community members. And there's so much fear that's been stoked through election season and through policies. And there's less resources and support for what we're doing at the same time and for people to pay us for our services. So...
Nicole Jarbo:
Since the election, new legislation has been introduced targeting the legal, medical and educational rights of immigrants across the country. What would you do with the $50,000?
Lisa María Rhodes:
Where there is increased demand and decreased resources to meet that demand? $50,000 for ALAS right now would mean 10 schools. Over 1,000 students would get support that otherwise they won't have access to.
Nicole Jarbo:
Now, we're going to pair Lisa Maria up with Molly O'Donnell to help her strengthen her pitch. You may remember Molly from her first episode with Victoria Chen. She's a managing partner at the National Venture Philanthropy firm, New Profit.
Molly O'Donnell:
I started my career as a youth worker actually in New Orleans. I served in AmeriCorps in New Orleans right after the storm working with young folks. I just so acutely remember being a youth worker, helping young folks from mixed status families or young folks who had experience with the criminal justice system and feeling so lost as to how to support them and their families through that. I was Googling. I was looking up lawyers to help folks, trying to make all these phone calls and just felt really helpless. And that's me trying to be the helper, not the person actually experiencing it, right? And so, I just imagine the power that your work has at ALAS, so really passionate about the work that you're doing. Grateful for you for doing that work.
Nicole Jarbo:
Today, Molly is going to dive into where Lisa Maria is at with her organization and where she wants to go moving forward. They're going to tackle some of the big questions on Lisa Maria's mind. How do I hire a fully functional founding team? What do I need to ensure that ALAS is sustainable? What funding sources should we look into as we scale our impact? They're diving into all this and more.
Molly O'Donnell:
I mean, I loved obviously your pitch. I'm very sold on, on the work that you all do. And so, that the questions I had are really around what are your aspirations? Where do you want to bring this work? And then, how do you bring people into this work? And so, maybe we'd love to start with, how are you thinking about who ALAS wants to be in two years, five years, whatever time horizon makes sense to you related to where you are today?
Lisa María Rhodes:
Our goal ultimately, would be to one day make it such that ALAS services are a part of what high schools offer across the country. And in terms of immediate plans, that's a real next step for us is to understand first, at what point are we sustainable where we are and how do we responsibly consider scoping growth and figuring out at what pace, how quickly do we scale? These are all questions that are important questions in my mind.
Molly O'Donnell:
I'm curious when you say how are you sustainable, where you are? When you say sustainable, what do you mean by that? And how do you think about the economics of your model?
Lisa María Rhodes:
Right now, we are at a team of four, and we still have two more roles to hire to be a fully functional founding team. And so, right now, we're all still carrying multiple responsibilities. And first part of sustainability for us would be being fully hired. And the second would be to operate perhaps for one full year with a full team and start to codify all the things that we're doing and have everything written into playbooks that we could then figure out how do we differentiate this for new sites and which pieces stay the same and which adapt. And then, from there, figuring out where we can grow.
Molly O'Donnell:
It's really smart the way that you're thinking about sustainability, sustainability of team, and then thinking carefully about where you would grow, why you would grow those places. I do think there's probably real potential for you all to get community foundation type funding, things like that, given you have such a track record of demonstrating that your model works. But growing too fast would, of course, come with a really tough set of challenges and I think puts impact at risk if you grow too fast. I think you're being really, really smart about that.
Nicole Jarbo:
I want to dive a little bit deeper into something that Molly touches on here. The risks of growing too fast. We could probably do a whole podcast on this topic itself. It's so important to grow intentionally. Take for instance, the hiring challenges that Lisa Maria talked about. You need to find a way to instill your culture and values into your team as you grow. Otherwise, you risk losing the organization's authenticity and identity. Since Lisa Maria's work requires communicating the need for ALAS to people who may not understand these issues themselves. Having a solid team is crucial.
Molly O'Donnell:
One of my curiosities, and this is really just I think across the country on lots of different topics, we're just in a world where people struggle with engaging with topics they don't understand or with divergent opinions. And so, I'm curious how you think about bringing people into your work and the story of your work, who maybe don't have lived experience with navigating the immigration system or being in close proximity with those who have these experiences. How do you kind of bring those folks into your story in support of your work?
Lisa María Rhodes:
Whenever we actually have our youth in the room, it changes how people engage with their ideas about young people and what they need. Because in general, I think people are excited to see and hear from youth, and they think that this is cute and exciting, maybe even a photo op. But whenever we bring young people in front of legislators and they realize that our young people have experienced these problems up close and they know the ins and outs of them, they have great ideas for the solutions and for the implementation.
They don't always though have the positionality to share those or the confidence too. And that's really what they work on with us is those soft skills of public speaking and sharing their messages. And I think that's exactly what we need. The people who are closest to the issues have all types of ideas about how we can make our society and our world a better and more just place.
Molly O'Donnell:
Yeah, that's beautiful. And just that young folks have those deep solutions. And yeah, we talk a lot at New Profit around the role of proximity. And proximity is not like a nice to have like, oh, it's good to have the photo op in this instance, but really truly it's an impact strategy. It's actually how your impact will be most sustainable, most effective is when it's informed by those who are really at the heart of the set of questions and problems and bringing the assets and the expertise of their lived experience.
Nicole Jarbo:
Let's pivot to diving a bit deeper into Lisa Maria's current revenue model.
Lisa María Rhodes:
We have three strands for our revenue. One is a fee for service, and that's what schools and organizations are paying to get the trainings from us. And then, individual donors. Well, the bulk of our existence for our first several years and still are a very important part of our revenue stream, we have over 1,000 people who have donated individually, and our average donations are between $20 and $40.
So, it's not individuals that necessarily have huge deep pockets. It's mostly educators who see our work and they really believe in it. And sometimes, it's our students and their families as well. And then, finally, we have philanthropic organizations who provide funding for our work. So, those are our three income streams.
Molly O'Donnell:
That's great and really wonderful that you already have that kind of demonstrated footprint around the fee for service in particular. And as you all think about where you seek to go over time, having all three of those and demonstrated that you can do all three of those is such a game changer.
I'm really excited about the ways in which you are really thinking deeply about what needs to be, what are your building blocks for growth and scale, really thinking about, okay, getting your team in place, running with that team for a year. But then, you're also, from what I can tell, really already thinking about, okay, you have a fee for service line. You have this base of really committed small dollar individual donors, which is super beautiful. And then, philanthropy.
And as I think about where you all can go over time thinking about both, where would you want to be geographically? Because it sounds like you have a real theory as to why New Orleans matters as a place to do this work. So, where else would you want to go? And how would you think about tying the impact you could have in those communities to the revenue available in those communities? And really think about those things together.
And so, it sounds as though you're already doing this, but really thinking through those integrated choices as you pursue that long-term vision and center healing and care, hopefully for yourself and your team, which it sounds like you do. So. really, really grateful for the time and excited to stay tuned on the ALAS story.
Nicole Jarbo:
As Lisa Maria continues to hire her wider team and pursue a range of funding activities, she'll need to be strategic about where to focus in order to reap the most impact. Thank you to Lisa Maria for being so vulnerable and sharing your pitch with us. And Molly, for your always fantastic mentorship and advice. You're the best. All right. Let's break down a few things we can learn from Lisa Maria and ALAS's story. First...
Lisa María Rhodes:
Educators don't do their job for the paycheck. They love their kids and they care.
Nicole Jarbo:
Yes, educators, even when the system gets you down, remember the passion that got you into teaching in the first place. Second...
Lisa María Rhodes:
Who made the systems? People did. So, who can change the systems? We can. So, my real question is, who are we not to?
Nicole Jarbo:
See something you don't like? Do something about it. Third...
Lisa María Rhodes:
Proximity is not like a nice to have. It's actually how your impact will be most sustainable, most effective.
Nicole Jarbo:
Make sure that your solutions are informed by the people most impacted by the problems. Thanks for tuning into Pitch Playground from 4.0. I'm your host, Nicole Jarbo. Learn more about Pitch Playground at pitchplayground.com and leave us a review if you like the episode. Next episode, we'll be hearing a pitch from founder of the Hedge school, Dr. Erin Flynn.
Dr. Erin Flynn:
Consent-based literally means that the student gives their consent to do what we're asking. Choices are only freedom. What we get to choose to do in this world is the only sense of freedom that we have in reality.

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