Fair and Just School Climate

Less than 0.3% of philanthropic dollars go to Native groups. This fact was pointed out at Philanthropy New York’s event, “Invisible No More: Native Realities in a Post-Election Era”, by Schott Foundation Vice President of Programs and Advocacy Edgar Villanueva. Alongside Edgar were Native Americans in Philanthropy CEO Sarah Eagle Heart, American Indian Law Alliance President and Executive Director Betty Lyons, and moderator Patricia Eng, who is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at The New York Women’s Foundation. The panelists discussed concerns of and hopes for philanthropy’s engagement with Native partners. Each panelist identified gaps in support for Indigenous communities but emphasized that these issues affect us all: the planet that the Native community is fighting to protect is a shared responsibility for all of us, and we must collaborate with others to save it.  

In our webinar earlier this month, “How to Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline for Girls of Color,” we were joined by Dr. Monique W. Morris, author of Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, and Aishatu Yusuf, who is currently working on participatory research aimed at interrupting school-to-confinement pathways for girls. You have probably heard of the school-to-prison pipeline, but Dr. Morris prefers to use the term school-to-confinement pathways to better describe the relationships that lead girls of color into contact with the juvenile legal system. As explained in our infographic, the U.S. Department of Education reported that black girls were suspended six times more than white girls, nationally. Dr. Morris and Aishatu unpack the issue in our webinar, providing possible solutions.

In honor of #GivingTuesday on November 29th, the Schott Foundation has reached out to some of our grantee partners to get the low-down on what they do, who they’re doing it for, and the challenges that they handle like rockstars every day.

The Schott Foundation has partnered with Southern Echo to support them in their efforts to engage African American parents and students in rural Mississippi in advocacy for school discipline reform policies, while also advancing alternative, community-based programs.

In honor of #GivingTuesday on November 29th, the Schott Foundation has reached out to some of our grantee partners to get the low-down on what they do, who they’re doing it for, and the challenges that they handle like rockstars every day.

The Schott Foundation began partnering with BAGLY in 2014 to support their work around school climate and the LGBTQ youth experience in Massachusetts.

This year, The U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights released data collected from public schools in the 2013-2014 school year, which aimed to highlight equity and opportunity gaps in our nation’s public schools. One statistic further set in stone what too many parents and students already know through experience: black public preschool children are suspended at higher rates than whites. Specifically, “Black preschool children are 3.6 times as likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions as white preschool children.”