Building a Southern Education Justice Movement
Through grantmaking, technical support, and convening, the OTL Pooled Fund offers deep engagement with our Black, Brown, and Indigenous-led grassroots partners.
In the U.S. South, our grantee partners are working to create the conditions for all children to learn and thrive. The primary movement-building focus in the South is on school discipline reform, as more southern states permit corporal punishment than any other region.
To learn about all our southern grantee partners, contact Mike Woodward, Regional Program Officer, South:
cmw@schottfoundation.org
Highlights of Our Grantee Partners Building a Southern Education Justice Movement
ARKANSAS
Working to keep public dollars in public schools, the Arkansas Coalition for Education (ACE) is a coalition of organizations that advocate for state education policy that ensures every child in Arkansas has access to an excellent public school, promoting equitable and quality education for all children.
ACE is dedicated to lifting up the historically left-out: low-income families, students of color, students with disabilities, rural Arkansans, student parents, LGBTQ+ youth, and English Language Learners. Arkansas does better when every student does better.
GEORGIA
At the forefront of making Georgia’s public education system more equitable is Fund Georgia’s Future (FGF).
FGF is a statewide coalition of students, parents, educators, and advocates working to dismantle inequities and ensure every Georgia student has access to high-quality education, regardless of zip code. They organize, educate, and advocate for full and fair funding and against policies that harm public schools and students.
LOUISIANA
The Louisiana Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (LAROS) is expanding the community schools model in the state. LAROS is an alliance of parents, students, and community and labor organizations fighting to reclaim the promise of public education as Louisiana’s gateway to a strong democracy.
LAROS believes that the best way to ensure each and every child has the opportunity to pursue a rich and productive life is through a system of publicly funded, equitable, and democratically controlled public schools. LAROS aims to unite parents, students, educators, and community members to drive the transformation of public education, shift the public debate, and build a statewide movement for equity and opportunity for all.
An ongoing focus of LAROS is restoring a true investment in public education through community schools, which aim to foster a collaborative partnership between the public schools in a neighborhood and the people/services of the community.
MISSISSIPPI
Every day, in Mississippi and eighteen other states across the country, students are at risk of being subjected to corporal punishment, or the act of inflicting physical pain as a form of discipline.
The Mississippi Coalition to End Corporal Punishment was created to eliminate corporal punishment in public and charter schools across the state of Mississippi. The Coalition has adopted an action research intervention strategy to push for the adoption of more effective alternative discipline strategies.
NORTH CAROLINA
The mission of the Education Justice Alliance (EJA) is to dismantle the school-to-prison and school-to-deportation pipelines, eliminate the criminalization of Black, Brown, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities and secure educational equity for all students in the public school system.
EJA is helping lead efforts to protect North Carolina’s youngest learners from early grade suspension, and earlier this year released a report with Duke Children’s Law Clinic on the practice and its alternatives.
To learn about all our southern grantee partners, contact Mike Woodward, Regional Program Officer, South: cmw@schottfoundation.org