Fair and Just School Climate

Every day, Native youth and communities demonstrate the ability to thrive and persevere despite historical, structural and institutional inequities. Native youth have shown that they are invested in a better future – not just for Native people, but for all Americans. By working in partnership, funders believe that we will see Native communities make great strides in healing, restoration, and advancement of our greatest resource – our youth.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education, in partnership with Native Americans in Philanthropy, with support from Nike N7, recently released a set of recommendations for helping Native youth live healthy lives. These recommendations came directly from Native American leaders who hold expertise across health, physical fitness, education and youth development sectors. The report, Original Instructions, outlines both challenges and opportunities to philanthropy. It’s a first step towards using our resources to recognize and learn from the resilient Native youth.

A groundbreaking new report released yesterday details the barriers facing Native youth in urban public schools and highlights inspiring solutions already being implemented in communities across the country. Our latest webinar covers the Native Urban Indian Family Coalition's Resurgence: Restructuring Urban American Indian Education to understand how to scale up these promising alternatives.

Featuring Janeen Comenote, Executive Director of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition (NUIFC) and Dr. Joe Hobot, President and CEO of the American Indian OIC, this webinar is a useful introduction for those new to issues affecting Native youth, and also provided new data and tools for experienced activists and advocates.

The struggles for racial justice and educational justice have been interlinked from the beginning of our nation’s history. It was under Black leadership during Reconstruction that the South saw the first state-funded public schools. The long, arduous work to win and maintain school integration was a keystone struggle during the Civil Rights movement. And today, the most powerful and energetic movements for education justice — fighting for fair funding, strong neighborhood public schools, and restorative justice — are those that take an intersectional approach to organizing.

In June the Schott Foundation hosted a special extended-length webinar diving deep into implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. While discussing the minutiae of education policy is rarely an exciting activity, the panelists on our webinar showed how important it is that advocates and community members know how ESSA works: the future of our children’s education depends on it.

Since their founding, local public schools and their educators have produced America’s most brilliant artists, scientists, doctors, musicians, lawyers, presidents, and more — people from all walks of life, contributing to society in a myriad of ways. The neighborhood public school is often the center of a civic and cultural life, recognized as the key to each community's future. The fate of public schools affect the fate of everyone: it's why they were one of the first institutions built by freed slaves during Reconstruction, and why they were so central to desegregating our towns and cities a century later.

And while the struggle continues to make our public schools more equitable and just for every child, we must also celebrate and protect those aspects that are now under threat by privatization, disinvestment, and resegregation. That's why the Schott Foundation is proud to lift up some of the countless success stories that our public schools produce every year from coast to coast.