Robert Golden accepts the City of Fresno’s Youth Leader Award from Mayor Jerry Dyer at this year’s “State of the City” event earlier this month. Photo by Gabriel Dillard

Founded in 2021 by former team captain and seven-year NFL veteran Robert Golden, Golden Charter Academy of Fresno is a public charter school that is a first of its kind in the nation — a K-8 environmental school that shares a campus with a zoo. Through a partnership with the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, the school sees students engage in daily, hands-on environmental learning activities.

“We have a mission to inspire powerful young minds,” said Golden, a former Pittsburgh Steeler. “What’s really cool about our pathway through environmental education is that we give kids the opportunities to understand what environmental literacy is.”

At Golden Charter Academy, environmental literacy is encouraged in real-world settings, often addressing community issues, including planting more than 200 trees in communities lacking shade.

The school’s young scholars have also built three monarch butterfly weigh stations, aiming to help support the struggling species’ population, and have also taken a bite out of food insecurity, partnering with local farmers to provide a free farmers’ market on campus for families.

Golden said the students are not just learning about environmental issues — they’re also practicing leadership and advocacy, engaging leaders at city hall to advocate for the school’s new facility, which broke ground earlier this year.

“They also had the opportunity to go and advocate for their school down at City Hall to help us begin to develop our state-of-the-art facilities,” he said. “We really try to give them the opportunity to practice civic engagement and civic action right now to let them know that they can be a difference-maker in their communities.”

Golden said the school’s long-term goal is to “serve the whole child” — a vision supported by community partnerships with local nonprofits such as Tree Fresno and the Chaffee Zoo.

“We’re really a community school and we try to do an educational approach that serves the whole child,” he said. “It’s been a community effort and we’re proud to be that catalyst to really be able to provide children these experiences.”

Boasting a 90% retention rate and with more than 600 students currently on the waitlist, Golden said the academy’s success speaks for itself.

“At the end of the day, people vote with their feet,” Golden said.

In the fall, the academy will add a seventh-grade class, expanding by a grade each year until they reach eighth grade next year when the academy’s new $24.5 million campus opens.

“This is something that we’ve been doing for the last four years now — we’ve been growing a grade every year,” Golden said. “We’ve been down this road before and it’s exciting to be able to welcome new families into our community.”

Golden even hinted at the possibility of incorporating a high school class once the academy outgrows its K-8 model in spring 2027.

The school’s approach to education has not gone unnoticed. Golden received the City of Fresno’s Youth Leader Award at this year’s “State of the City” event earlier this month, recognizing him for his dedication to fostering positive change in youth education and community involvement.

“It’s an honor to be able to receive this award from our city,” he said. “However, I can help pave the way to make life better for them is my ultimate goal.”

Golden, who was a team captain throughout his football career — from Pop Warner youth leagues all the way to the NFL — said his journey from professional athlete to educational leader was driven by a desire to give back.

In 2018, Golden walked away from the professional sporting world, returning to the Valley to drive the change he envisioned for his community.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to give children the opportunity to be civically engaged and do civic action is because a lot hasn’t changed since I was growing up in the areas that I grew up in,” he said. “In order for change to happen, you have to be the change and that is one of the things that is near and dear to my personal mission — to be able to change the world by letting people know that their life means more.”

Community engagement was also on full display this year for the academy’s annual “Meet the Moment” fundraiser. The event brought families, educators, donors and local leaders together for an evening of dinner, entertainment and storytelling.

“We were able to bring a lot of community members together, people got an idea of what it is that we’re doing at the school — the type of educational approach that we look to provide for our scholars,” Golden said. “It was a great opportunity just for people to get an initial glance at what we do at GCA.”

The school, which operates on a lottery admission system due to overwhelming demand, continues to expand its reach across the community.

Golden is proud if he can lead by example.

“If I was able to do it then they can do it as well,” he said. “If they get that from my life story, then the City of Fresno will be in a much better place once these kids become adults.”