Empowering the local government leaders of tomorrow.

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Transform Your Team

Training: Community Engagement

Learn how to understand the different ways to engage communities and create an effective plan for running your events.

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Training: Program Design

Learn how to design a program that effectively meets your users' needs and create a process map of how your program will function.

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Training: Storytelling Strategy

Learn how to identify the core elements and themes within your service and turn them into a cohesive story for use in different channels.

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Check out our other trainings here >>

Recruit Your Team

New Tools for Government Hiring

In collaboration with Code for America, we created this playbook to help local government Human Resources teams improve their recruitment and hiring processes.

Check out the playbook

Public Service Fellowship

We are currently developing a talent pipeline for local government that will launch in 2018.

Latest News

July 2017

The government hiring playbook we wrote with Code for America is now live!

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May 2017

The NYC Dept. of Veterans Service recently announced the launch of the NYC Veterans Mentoring Initiative, designed during one of our workshops.

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February 2017

Fast Company profiled the piloting of our workshops to train local government public servants in design skills.

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About Public School

We founded Public School to help local governments design and deliver better public services by leveraging their greatest asset: public servants. Public School develops talent pipeline programs to help college students with barriers to employment access local government jobs and trains existing public servants on creative problem-solving skills.

Public School is a not-for-profit organization based in New York City and is fiscally sponsored by Community Solutions.

Our Team

Dave Seliger

Executive Director and President

Dave formerly worked at the NYC Mayor's Office of Tech + Innovation where he led talent innovation initiatives, including the redesign of nyc.gov/jobs. Dave previously co-founded and led Designing for Financial Empowerment and Civic Service, as well as served in the Mayor's Office of Housing Recovery Operations and the Office of Emergency Management.

Contact: dave [at] publicschoolnyc.org

Pamela Puchalski

Board Director

Pamela is an urban development expert and a Senior Fellow at New America. Pamela previously served as the director of Resilient Communities at New America and created the strategy for 100 Resilient Cities. Pamela has also led the creation of the Global Cities Initiative at the Brookings Institute and worked at the London School of Economics and the Center for Architecture.

Katie Beck

Board Director

Katie is the Vice President of Workforce Development at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. Katie was formerly the chief operating officer of 4.0 Schools, a nonprofit focused on innovation in education, and led strategy and innovation for Teach for America in New Orleans.