Videos
Quality public education for all is a centerpiece of the American promise and an aspiration to which generations have worked to fulfill. During Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s, one of the very first things Black policymakers in the South did once elected was to institute universal, compulsory public education for all children, regardless of race or wealth. The subsequent campaigns of terror that undid much of Reconstruction's achievements and inaugurated Jim Crow across the South segregated those schools, creating two separate and unequal systems of education.
Do your schools provide enough resources to students in your community? Do you ever wonder why some schools have more resources than others? How does funding in your school district work?
According to a 2015 bipartisan Foundation Budget Review Commission Report, Massachusetts schools are underfunded by $1 billion and $2 billion! So what is being done to solve this education crisis?
Black and Brown students are demanding that their school districts end the school-to-prison pipeline and invest in solutions that create a true sense of safety, dignity and opportunity for learning. They are advocating for schools that are sufficiently resourced, affirming of their identities, provide culturally responsive social and emotional learning, and offer mental health supports to students who need them. Students are also calling on school officials to decriminalize their learning environments from racially unjust policies and practices — including the removal of police from our schools.
What if we used wealth to heal, not harm? What if money was spent trying out concepts that challenge or shatter the structures and systems that have created inequity and disparity?
Please join us for a lively conversation about how foundations can lead with racial equity and better serve the needs of communities of color. Speakers include Chicago-based funders Megan Bang (Spencer Foundation) Bruce Boyd (Arabella Advisors), and Angelique Power (Field Foundation).
The new book Lift Us Up, Don't Push Us Out! features voices from the frontlines of a growing movement for educational justice across the United States. Organizers and activists recount their journeys to movement building, lift up victories and successes, and offer practical organizing strategies and community-based alternatives to traditional education reform and privatization schemes.
The last few decades of disinvestment and privatization have devastated public schools across the country, especially those in poor and distressed neighborhoods and communities of color. But we shouldn’t simply try to roll back the clock: long before the present crisis many schools were already failing the children who needed an opportunity to learn the most.
Out of that failure a growing movement of parents, youth, educators and community advocates are charting a better path forward: community schools. The community schools model holds at its core both research-proven methods and hard-won local insight from community members about what is most needed locally, which is what makes it a powerful evidence-based equity strategy!
Schott Foundation President & CEO Dr. John H. Jackson talks about the importance of love and happiness as we work give students the opportunities they need.
For over two decades the Schott Foundation has been a bridge, connecting philanthropy with community to resource broad based community-led movements for education equity. Part of building and reinforcing that bridge includes challenging structural racism in philanthropy and uplifting solutions rooted in equity through critical and thoughtful dialogue and trust in the power of community voices and community organizing for sustained change. We explored the unique journeys of three white philanthropic leaders striving toward race, gender and economic equity. Participants talked about when they first got “woke,” what they consider their role in philanthropy to be, how they have dealt with mistakes and criticism along the way, where they go for resources and support in their journey, how they hold themselves accountable to communities of color, and much more!