RedefinED atlanta 2020-2022 Impact Report

table of contents

Founded in 2016, redefinED atlanta envisions a city where every student receives equitable access to educational opportunities and resources. We believe these conditions will allow students to develop a strong academic foundation, self-determination and a sense of well-being. That’s why redefinED atlanta engages communities, advocates for equity, and funds critical work to drive systemic improvement in K-12 public education for students and families.

We address the systems that have oppressed Black, Latinx and under-resourced communities and anchor our efforts in public K-12 education. We know racial inequities are significant barriers to reaching Atlanta’s full potential. However, we believe that the knowledge, experiences and strengths of Black, Latinx and under-resourced communities are essential in changing it for the better. Our goal is to transform Atlanta into a place where every student in every community receives a great K-12 public education.

Our work is driven by the core values of excellence, sustainability, community, equity and integrity. We recognize inequities within our education system and work to make positive, enduring change, balancing patience and using data, both quantitative and qualitative, to inform our decision-making. We hold ourselves accountable for outcomes. Guided by families’ visions for their children’s education, we engage in asset-based thinking, utilizing existing strengths, concentrating resources and acting with urgency.

Lastly, we commit to identifying how we can improve and make active changes in ourselves before seeking change in others.

Ed Chang serves as our founding executive director. Since our launch, redefinED atlanta has steadily expanded its team and built a diverse board to engage with communities, listen and learn, and advocate for educational equity.

Ed Chang Executive Director

Tyler Burrell Director of Operations

Emily Castillo León Senior Director of Schools

Dennis Dent Communications Director

Dariun Maxwell Programs & Operations Associate

Sarah Hall Executive Assistant

Angira Sceusi Vice President Chief of Staff

Lee Shaw Jr. Director, Donor Engagement

Mary-Kate Starkel Vice President Development

Danesha Thompson Pressey Director Public Engagement and Advocacy

Adah Pittman-DeLancey Vice President Impact & External Relations

Ayana Gabriel, Chair Vice President, Community Impact Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta

Kim E. Anderson Principal Chrysalis Lab

Perri D. Chandler Community Volunteer & Facilitator Anti-Defamation League

Curley M. Dossman, Jr. President Georgia-Pacific Foundation

Chip Gross Managing Director Work & Co Atlanta

Patrice Johnson CEO & Founding MOM Inspired MOM

Dena Kimball, Immediate Past Chair Executive Director Kendeda Fund

Staci Walker Per Staci Independent Consultant

Kevin Huffman Former Partner The City Fund

Lita Ugarte Pardi Programs Knowledge Director

PEAK Grantmaking

Hunter Pierson, lll Vice President Goldman Sachs

Geri Thomas Chief Diversity Officer & Georgia President (Retired) Bank of America

Dear friends and colleagues,

Following one of the more tumultuous periods in recent history, I am proud to share our first-ever impact report. This report covers our commitment to race, equity and inclusion (REI); our support for students, families, school-level talent and schools; our response to COVID-19; and the milestones we’ve achieved across the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years.

The inequities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and the egregious murder of George Floyd — and other countless Black and Brown people - were not new social issues. The compounding of all these occurrences elevated awareness outside of communities that know these experiences far too well and painfully reminded many people of all that remains unresolved.

In Atlanta’s time of need, we partnered with many philanthropic organizations to assess our role and how we could rise to serve in these challenging times. We operate with the belief that the most pressing issues deserve the boldest and most urgent action, and the past two academic years were a true test of our principles. What was new for redefinED atlanta over the last couple of years, and what will be the case moving forward, was how we took on these vital social issues.

During the pandemic, students at all grade levels experienced some gap or academic shortfall. In addition, teachers’ and school leaders’ mental health declined, and parents everywhere are still navigating the impact of remote learning and COVID-19 related school closures.

While it was clear there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, something needed to be done. We grappled with how to address the immediate needs of families and school communities while also wrestling with the longer-term, more systemic challenges.

As we continued to lead with the support of community advocates and policymakers, this was the time to reimagine a new delivery system for public K-12 education.

That’s why, in late spring 2020, we released a new, five-year strategic plan (2021-2025), which established clear goals and implementation pathways to fully integrate REI recommendations into all aspects of the organization and our work.

We designed this plan to facilitate our progress towards our vision - every child in every community in Atlanta receiving a great public education. We spent more time looking beyond school buildings and examining how the social determinants of health influence students’ academic outcomes. In addition, we explored how we can drive change in communities alongside people. Given our broader scope, we also expanded our staff and our board.

I am proud of the work we’ve led and humbled by the road ahead and the challenges we have yet to tackle. As we move from pandemic to endemic, the issues of affordable housing and the displacement of many families we serve have only increased. We are exploring expansion to support families in some metro Atlanta districts and address conditions for students experiencing the most significant public education disparities. We are optimistic that our uncompromising commitment to listening and uplifting community advocates’ work will help impact change at the highest levels and guide where we serve next.

Ultimately, with our broader and renewed focus on REI, I believe our organization is in a healthier place to contribute to ongoing support efforts to address longstanding systemic issues and make a difference for all students and families in Atlanta. I appreciate you taking the time to read more about our work and how we are moving forward.

Yours in service,

Ed Chang Executive Director

Centering Race, Equity and Inclusion:

Before we developed our five-year strategic plan, our board spearheaded a race, equity and inclusion (REI) analysis of our organization. Our aim of serving as an equity-centered philanthropic model in the Southeast led us to Frontline Solutions and their Equity Footprint™. Through their consultation and framework, we generated our 2021-2025 goals.

Ultimately, we believe that if we uphold equity as a core value, we must continually strive to center how we do our work. To move closer to every student in every community receiving a great K-12 public education, we must work with an understanding of the role race plays in the formation and perpetuation of the current systems.

We must also aspire to be an anti-racist organization that centers on equity and inclusion in our internal operations and our external programs, policies and practices. While moving through this journey, we acknowledge that as a staff and board, we begin this collective work at different points of entry and knowledge. We commit to our growth, individually and organizationally. We prepared this report as the first account of our work to date.

We will report annually to hold ourselves accountable and share our progress, learnings and unlearning.

We identify transformation as a commitment to growth within the seven domains of Frontline Solutions’ Equity Footprint™: Leadership and Governance, Grantmaking, Communications, Organizational Culture, Operations, Investments and Evaluation and Learning.

Our REI vision is the future state redefinED atlanta imagines when transformation around race, equity, and inclusion has been achieved.

Our expressed commitments are the baseline for how we’ll do our work. We aspire to be a trusted advocacy partner to children and families, schools, district personnel and the broader Atlanta community.

Through our grantmaking, we aim to be a collaborative funder that provides financial resources to sustain community-led organizations, cultivate school-level talent, foster great schools and transform systems. We will serve our community as an engaged partner that centers community members in our grantmaking and provides pivotal non-financial support to grantees.

Since 2021, we have committed to:

• attracting and retaining staff with diverse identities, backgrounds and deeply lived experiences in public schools and the public school systems;

• further diversifying our board to include more perspectives from public school parents and people from under-resourced communities;

• creating an inclusive working culture that celebrates differences, promotes universal belonging and fosters professional and personal growth;

• adopting participatory grantmaking practices to include people with experiences in public schools and the public school system in the decisionmaking process;

• partnering with communities to advance racial justice in education and on other issues, including housing, health and economic stability;

• amplifying voices, ideas and solutions from Black people, people of color and people living in underresourced communities;

• providing support and resources to organizations led by people of color, particularly Black and Latinx leaders engaged in critical work at the intersection of equity and education; and

• continuous learning and evaluation of our internal and external strategy and decision-making.

The pandemic provided an immediate period of reflection regarding our REI commitments. Schools and communities faced extraordinary challenges — far greater than we knew how to plan for — at the start of our strategic planning period. It was a seminal moment, and we realized we couldn’t maintain business as usual. So from 2020 to 2021, we launched a three-tiered approach to meet the moment with urgency and mindfulness.

Schools began closing in March 2020 and remained closed for the rest of the 2019-2020 academic year.

There were many concerns around public education, ranging from the effectiveness of remote learning to the lack of digital access available to some students. We listened to families, teachers and school and district leaders. We heard uncertainty about what to expect regarding student proficiencies in the coming school year. Next, we got to work applying those insights, seeking ways to project where student proficiency would be in the 2020-2021 school year and how to support families remaining in the district.

Quantifying the Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on Metro Atlanta Student Proficiency

We generated a report to quantify the impact of school closures on students. We engaged Empower K-12, a research organization, and partnered with Learn4Life (L4L), a regional education partnership, to publish the Quantifying the Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on Metro Atlanta Student Proficiency report. Empower K-12 works to boldly accelerate learning by providing stakeholders with high-quality data systems, robust strategic analysis and an equityoriented, collaborative improvement mindset. With our focus on children in the city of Atlanta, engaging with L4L expanded the projected impact of the report to include districts in the Atlanta metro area.

Our collective action helped inform eight metro districts about projected student proficiency for the 2021-2022 school year. Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Lisa Herring also cited the report in community meetings during the 2020-2021 school year.

The For Us, By Us Atlanta Fund

raised to support families in Atlanta Public Schools

201

$100k grants awarded through the FUBU Atlanta Fund

Even before the pandemic, we knew multiple factors impact a child’s learning experience. That’s why we were alarmed as COVID-19 sickness and deaths, historical rates of rapid unemployment, lingering eviction moratoriums and the digital divide – among other disruptions – interrupted families’ daily lives and students’ learning at the start of the pandemic. There was clearly work to do outside of supporting children’s education.

Parents’ and caregivers’ hardship stories dominated our check-ins with grantees, teachers and school and district leaders. We saw Atlanta Public Schools implement a food distribution program for students and families in the city while also working to distribute Chromebooks and wi-fi hotspots for remote learning. We realized that the basics were most pressing as the school year rolled into summer. How would Chromebooks and wi-fi hotspots power on if the electricity was off in a child’s home? What dedicated workspace would a child have if they experienced an eviction?

We shared these experiences with other philanthropic organizations and raised $100,000 to support families

in Atlanta Public Schools. We granted the funds to two local parent groups, Atlanta Thrive and the Latino Association for Parents in Public Schools (LAPPS). They created the For Us, By Us (FUBU) Atlanta Fund out of their immediate recognition that the rapid spread of COVID-19 severely – and disproportionately – impacted Black and Latino communities.

Atlanta Thrive is a parent-driven organization that empowers families to disrupt inequities in the education system. LAPPS is a support network to empower Latino parent voices within schools. Together, they led the efforts to distribute critical financial assistance to families in Atlanta Public Schools struggling with housing, food insecurity and other basic needs, including utility bills.

The FUBU Atlanta Fund awarded 201 grants – up to $599 each – to families in 15 zip codes across the city. These families included 474 children who attended 61 different schools.

The parent-led organizations formed valuable relationships while conducting their outreach and fund promotion. They drew attention to the needs of parents and caregivers during this time while spreading the word about the small-dollar grants from the FUBU Atlanta Fund. In addition, they worked with the Atlanta Public Schools Office of Partnerships and Development

to connect with school social workers and families experiencing the greatest reported needs and the Atlanta Solicitor’s Office to reach families via food distribution sites. They also spread the word through media outlets like the Rashad Richey Morning Show on WAOK, Rose Scott’s Show on WABE and the Atlanta JournalConstitution.

At a critical moment, the FUBU Atlanta Fund helped hundreds of families and, more broadly, served as a powerful example of community-driven philanthropy.

The Innovation Fund: Pandemic Education and Restart

raised to develop the redefinED atlanta Innovation Fund: Pandemic Education & Restart

$15k

$170k grants available to Atlanta Public Schools and non-profit organizations

As the pandemic exacerbated disparities, we doubled down on our belief that the people most impacted by inequities should lead the work. To fuel the development of such plans from school personnel and community-based organizations, we developed the Innovation Fund: Pandemic Education and Restart, with $170,000 thanks to the support of partners such as the Rotary Club of Atlanta.

Grants of up to $15,000 were available to Atlanta Public Schools and non-profit organizations serving students and families in Atlanta. Individuals and unincorporated groups interested in the fund could also apply for the funding in partnership with public schools in Atlanta. Proposals were required to align with one of Transcend Education’s 10 Leaps for Equitable, 21st-Century Learning to meet the defined parameters of being equitable, achievable, systemic and scalable.

The fund, which launched October 2020, awarded 24 grants and was depleted by January 2021. Upon review of the proposals, we saw strong alignment with the recommendations outlined in the Quantifying the Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on Metro Atlanta

Student Proficiency report. Grantees’ efforts trended towards five support themes: science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); social-emotional learning; parent and community-led initiatives; racial and social justice; and talent support and development.

community power building theory of change

sustaining factors

advancing our core work

pipeline of advocates

community

sustainingf actors

active civic community strong leaders and elected

intersectional coalitions

equitable and racially just actions and policies advance

power & influence

Positive change and leadership can be lasting over time when all sustaining factors are in place and active.

citywide messaging

sustaining factors

The Community Power Building Theory of Change requires ongoing relationship building as the driving force to support and ignite three sustaining factors: narratives, coalitions, and a pipeline of advocates. These sustaining factors provide the conditions for communities to grow power and influence by increasing an informed K-12 public education voter base to hold elected officials accountable for advancing equitable policies.

To secure racially just and equitable policies in K-12 public education, redefinED atlanta believes:

• The most extreme and pressing inequities deserve the boldest and most urgent actions.

• Collaboration with the community is critical and funders should allocate resources to people most impacted by inequity to drive change.

• Grantmaking efforts are most effective when paired with community power building.

To drive the conditions that ensure all students have opportunities, well-being and self-determination, redefinED atlanta partners with communities in Atlanta to ignite three sustaining factors.

We aim to grow an informed pipeline of advocates, drive citywide awareness about opportunities to improve K-12 public education and activate intersectional coalitions working to advance equity through collective actions.

redefinED atlanta brings together diverse groups of stakeholders to serve, anticipate and adjust to the rapidly evolving education landscape.

We believe a civically engaged community with strong leaders holding elected officials accountable to the needs of every student in every community will secure equity in education.

Engagement and Advocacy

We are committed to listening, learning and working alongside families, community members, school-level talent and district leaders to advocate for equity. Building relationships is foundational to our engagement work and is the crank that propels the sustaining factors to create the conditions for every student to receive a great K-12 public education. With an informed and active pipeline of K-12 public education advocates working together to amplify the unique needs of children and families, we project that civic engagement in support of great schools will grow. Engaging with residents in neighborhoods across the city helps us identify families’ needs and desires for their children’s education and informs our advocacy.

Voter Education and Mobilization

Since 2020, we have invested in parent and caregiver fellows at schools serving Atlanta Public School students. In the summer of 2021, we onboarded a director of public engagement and advocacy to grow the program and support the development of more K-12 public education advocates. This timing was critical for Atlantans, with the mayoral, city council, and Atlanta Board of Education elections scheduled for the fall. The 2021 Atlanta Board of Education race was highly significant since it was the last time all seats were on the ballot at once before staggered elections went into effect.

Under the direction of the director of public engagement and advocacy, we conducted voter registration and mobilization training with parents and caregivers, who then activated their children’s school communities. The program promotes organizing principles and supports parents and caregivers in understanding how elected officials’ jobs impact their day-to-day lives, especially their children’s educational experiences. The program has supported up to 20 fellows annually and grown our network of people across the district working to amplify civic engagement for K-12 public school education. In addition, redefinED atlanta has run get-out-the-vote campaigns since 2020. Through digital campaigns, we

amplify key election dates, provide a central website to check voter status and motivate site visitors to create a voting plan, including voting down the ballot. We believe that when families vote and remain engaged beyond election cycles, K-12 public schools will serve the needs of every student.

Families have power, and we are leveraging resources and relationships to support Atlanta Public Schools in being the best they can be.

Education Community Convening

We have facilitated quarterly convenings for more than 20 local education non-profit organizations since the start of 2020. With the onset of the pandemic, many participants expressed a greater sense of responsibility to work collectively in serving the expanding needs of children in Atlanta Public Schools. The Atlanta Board of Education’s introduction of a policy known as Goals and Guardrails in the spring of 2021 catalyzed the collaborative to grow into a working coalition. After the policy passed in October 2021, the collaborative’s participating organizations initiated efforts to formalize their partnership and announce the coalition and its focus during the 2022-2023 school year.

To advance our mission, we will grow partnerships, collaborate across issue areas and organize for collective action. We are pooling expertise and resources to be proactive and responsive as K-12 public education continues navigating the pandemic’s impact on children and schools.

Atlanta Reimagining and Innovating for Schools Everywhere (ARISE) Fellowship

We gathered valuable insights from public education stakeholders during our response to COVID-19. The

prevailing sentiment was a request for help identifying where individuals could get engaged in supporting public education. With varying resources, time and interest areas among inquiring stakeholders, we turned to our education community to help co-design a learning experience that would address how individuals could get involved in supporting children and schools. From historical context about public education, Atlanta Public Schools and student performance data to mentorship, community listening and engagement, and participatory grantmaking, we developed the ARISE Fellowship.

Over 2021, we partnered with five community organizations serving families and community members in Atlanta, bringing a specialty lens to the co-design process. EdConnect and Fathers Incorporated work directly with parents and caregivers in and out of schools. Goodie Nation supports edpreneurs and offered experience with incubator and accelerator fellowship program design. Next Generation Men and Women serves students and TeachX’s work spans teachers and students. With our added funder lens, we designed a nine-month fellowship that aims to grow community power and influence by exploring the levers that drive systemic change for all of Atlanta’s children.

In 2022, we launched the pilot with 11 fellows representing

every cluster in Atlanta Public Schools. We look forward to reporting on their impact and our learnings in 2023.

CCRPI data and apply what they’ve read to their child’s needs. Moreover, what resounded was that parents and caregivers wanted to support schools in serving their children and others.

In 2021, we took the insights we’d gathered, consulted with data analysts and embarked on developing a tool to create a family-friendly way to understand publicly available data about schools, highlighting the core categories of interest to parents and caregivers.

We completed the Atlanta Schools Data Project website in January 2022 and are broadening our feedback loop to extend beyond groups that informed the tool’s development. In this phase of the tool’s development, we are engaging various education stakeholders, and we secured a third-party entity to conduct qualitative feedback regarding the resource.

Atlanta School Data Project

Since our founding year, parents’ and caregivers’ stories have informed our work. We’ve heard their challenges when seeking the best school for their child’s needs. The underlying sentiment of most conversations was the desire for their children to thrive in school and beyond. For families researching available schools for their children, we’ve heard questions about how to read

We will identify trends and apply the input to the Atlanta Schools Data Project website before officially launching it during the 2023-2024 school year.

Catalyzing Impact Through Investments

We believe in foundational elements as the basis for great schools. Schools with active parent and community engagement, great teachers and dynamic school leaders are most often supportive environments for children to learn and grow. We see positive outcomes for students when the best teachers and school leaders are given the trust, freedom, flexibility and support to make changes that serve the unique needs of their students and communities. Our role as a collaborative funder is to provide financial resources to sustain community-led organizations, cultivate school-level talent, foster great schools and transform systems

Investment Insights:

Since 2017, redefinED atlanta’s first year of grantmaking, our funds have flowed to one of three areas: Community and Parent Empowerment, Strong School-level Talent and Equitable Schools and Systems. While these categories have remained constant, our contributions have varied over time. For example, between 2018 and 2020, redefinED atlanta significantly increased its funding of strong school-level talent as part of a successful effort to bring the Relay Graduate School of Education to Atlanta. Additionally, the Community and Parent Empowerment portfolio has grown steadily over time.

$4,881,500

Schools & Systems

$5,062,337

Community

$5,337,499

Talent Pipeline

Community and Parent Empowerment

We cannot disregard families or their experiences when supporting children in schools. Therefore, we invest in organizations anchored in K-12 public education whose missions, campaigns and initiatives center on advocacy for positive student outcomes. We also invest in schools to grow their partnerships with community organizations to drive positive results for students in school and beyond.

Parent and Community Engagement in Schools

We believe that great schools have active parent and community engagement. In the 2018-2019 school year, we launched a family engagement microgrant fund to support Title I schools and schools on the Turnaround Eligible Schools list. The family engagement microgrant fund provided up to $1,000 for eligible schools to host a family engagement event, support parents with speaking to their state and local legislators, or transport parents to talk about issues impacting the school community during the Georgia legislative session. We welcomed our vice president of impact and external relations in January of 2020 to develop a comprehensive community impact strategy and deferred the family engagement microgrant fund due to the pandemic.

In the summer of 2022, we launched our Family and Community Engagement (FACE) grants. The $150,000 investment fund evolved from the family engagement microgrant fund and will aid schools aiming to strengthen their family and community engagement efforts throughout the 2022-2023 school year. Under this new framework, the grant amount is larger and allows schools to implement a one-year strategy with additional assistance from our engagement team. We believe the investments will impact schools’ family engagement efforts and provide opportunities for redefinED to build deeper school-level relationships and inform our work.

Community and Parent-led Organizations

Advocating alongside community members can take various forms, such as time and thought partnership, informing audiences through convenings and reports, and grantmaking for impact. Our Community Engagement Theory of Change is the framework by which we grow relationships, and it also serves as a lens for our advocacy efforts. The investments we have made in organizations through our community portfolio are unrestricted and paired with capacity-building allocations to aid with each organization’s self-assessed needs. In addition, we provide recommendations regarding consultants and tools, such as a capacity-building

assessment called iCAT, to aid in organizations’ evaluating their needs (without penalty to them for opting not to engage with the consultants or use the tool). We’ve simplified our reporting and replaced some with interviews in which we capture insights and document them ourselves.

Partner Spotlight:

EdConnect is a non-profit (501c3) that informs African American families of their K-12 educational options across metro Atlanta, targeting low-income and working-class communities. EdConnect engages families in advocacy to enhance and expand high-quality education options that empower youth and successfully prepare them for college completion. Since 2013, EdConnect has reached more than 1,000 parents in person through workshops, event canvassing, and private consultations educating parents on using data platforms (i.e., Great Schools and APS Insights) to explore education options – public school transfers, charter schools, and private schools using the Tax Credit Scholarship or Special Needs Scholarship. We initiated a partnership with EdConnect in 2021, granting funds to aid with growing their reach among families in the city of Atlanta.

Our Turn is a national youth empowerment group fighting for educational justice. Our Turn focuses on high school and college-aged students (ages 16 – 25) who identify as any or all of the following: low-income, firstgeneration, non-US-born, undocumented, local public school students impacted by inequity, and/or students of color. Our Turn focuses on activating the power of students and believes that young people should lead the way in pursuing an equitable education. We formed our partnership with Our Turn in 2021, investing in their strategy to build capabilities and platforms for students — in partnership with families and community leaders — to organize and mobilize youth.

Strong School-level Talent

For years Georgia experienced a dwindling pipeline of teachers. For children to receive a great education in our city, schools need highly prepared teachers continuously entering the talent pool in Atlanta. Our investment in school-level talent aims to reinforce district and school leaders’ ability to sustain quality learning environments for children by providing an additional pathway for training highly prepared teachers.

Partner Spotlight:

Relay Graduate School of Education offers prospective and current teachers an evidence-based, practical curriculum. It incorporates equity, inclusivity and cultural responsiveness into every aspect of teaching and learning. Relay’s teacher residency model is a powerful and proven value-add to the Atlanta educational ecosystem. Our investment in 2017 brought Relay GSE to Atlanta as of 2018. They have plans to expand, grow their impact and serve children and schools across Georgia.

Equitable Schools and Systems

Community responsiveness, autonomy and accountability are themes that have guided our efforts to foster great schools since our founding in 2016. Through our schools and systems focus, we have made major strides in support of Atlanta Public School students and some surrounding districts, though COVID-19 caused significant setbacks.

We’ve invested in 16 school leaders who’ve launched schools in metro Atlanta, 87.5% of whom are Black, and we continue to invest in school incubator programs to recruit and train school leaders best equipped to serve Atlanta families. As part of our focus on engaging communities, we supported the launch of a new program in 2021 for a two-year community co-design process. This pace gives incoming school leaders time, space and resources to get to know families and design their school to meet the community’s needs and desires. The first community co-design effort has seen favorable outcomes, and we’re excited to continue this offering for aspiring school leaders.

Partner Spotlight: Atlanta Unbound Academy and Resurgence Hall

Our partners at Atlanta Unbound Academy launched their K-6 public charter school in the 2020-2021 school year and, in their second year of operations, expanded to include grades 7-8. We’ve also witnessed our partners at Resurgence Hall, a public charter school, report one of the highest student academic achievement rates for schools serving Atlanta Public Schools students, grow into two campuses with a capacity for 400 middle school students. In the meantime, other schools are moving toward approval for a Fall 2023 launch.

Atlanta Public Schools

In 2021, we made one of our most significant investments in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Kendeda Fund. We committed a multi-year investment to launch Atlanta Public Schools’ Center for Equity and Social Justice. The Center’s expressed mission “is to positively impact the lives of our learners and learning communities so that every single one of our students thrives — not by accident, but by design.”

learnings & the journey forward

Moving forward, the beliefs that guided our work during the pandemic will continue to be our focus as we work to secure racially just and equitable policies in K-12 public education. Specifically:

• The most extreme and pressing inequities deserve the boldest and most urgent actions.

• Collaboration with the community is necessary. People experiencing the greatest inequities should lead this work and we will help elevate their voice.

• Grantmaking efforts are most effective when paired with community power building.

We see this work unfolding in new ways and, perhaps, in new places. The overarching theme for the work ahead is a sense of urgency around accountability and innovation. As we move into a new phase of COVID-19, we have to reshape and reimagine what education can be – returning to what existed for Black and Brown children before the pandemic is not an option. Looking ahead, we will focus on three buckets of work:

1. Building a pipeline of talent in the community to sustain change and provide stable leadership,

2. Evolving our grantmaking to include more participatory grantmaking and community-facing work, and

3. Removing barriers for innovative schools to exist, including district school redesign, facility solutions for new schools, and co-design processes with educators and community members. In addition, we’re looking at where we do this work and whether families, educators, school-level talent and district leaders welcome partnership in driving the conditions for every student, regardless of zip code, to have opportunity, well-being and self-determination. The city of Atlanta is changing — and growing. Needs are evolving. Education is intersecting with housing

and displacement and more. Our aim is to honor the commitment we made to realizing an Atlanta where every student receives a great K-12 public education. Understanding where our families are going, among many other considerations,will help guide our way.

We are grateful for your support, and we hope you will stand with us as we explore the exciting opportunities in 2022 and beyond.

redefinedatlanta.org | info@redefinEDatlanta.org