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about us
mission
redefinED atlanta was founded in 2016 to advance a vision of Atlanta where every student in every community has access to a great K-12 public school. Our mission is to engage communities, advocate for equity, and fund critical work to drive systemic level improvements toward that vision.
our core values
Community
We serve the visions and aspirations families have for their children’s education, and are guided by community. We engage in asset-based thinking, leverage existing strengths and act with compassion. We work with under-resourced communities to achieve great K-12 public schools for all Atlanta students.
Equity
We strive to serve as an example of what philanthropy can be when it partners with the community. We provide support to meet students’ and families’ different needs and remove barriers by concentrating resources to address inequities.
Integrity
We seek truth, use data to inform decisionmaking and operate with honesty. We commit to identifying how we can improve and to making active changes ourselves, before seeking changes in others.
Excellence
We recognize the inequities inherent within our current educational system, and we actively work toward defining a high bar of excellence, disrupting the status quo and holding ourselves and our partners accountable for outcomes.
Sustainability
We work to make enduring positive change. We resist silver-bullet thinking and simultaneously engage in replicating success and promoting innovation. We balance patience with a sense of urgency, and our immediate actions and quick wins are aligned to our long-term strategy.
our staff
Ed Chang Executive Director
Dennis Dent Director of Communications
Dariun Maxwell Program & Operations Manager
Tyler Burrell Vice President of Operations & People
Emily Castillo León Associate Vice President of Schools
Sarah Hall Executive Assistant
Meiling Jabbaar Engagement Manager
Angira Sceusi Incoming Executive Director
Aache Harrison Associate Director of Advancement
Associate Vice President of Development
Denesha Thompson Pressey Director of Public Engagement & Advocacy
Vice President of Policy & Strategy
Vice President of Advancement
Tiffany Scott
Aarti Sharma
Mary-Kate Starkel
Ayana Gabriel, Chair Vice President, Community Impact Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
*Board Chair
Curley M. Dossman, Jr. President, GeorgiaPacific Foundation
Patrick Dobard, Partner, City Fund
E. Anderson Principal, Chrysalis Labs
Perri D. Chandler Community Volunteer & Facilitator, Anti-Defamation League
Chip Gross, Seceretary Managing Director, Work & Co
Lita Pardi Senior Knowledge and Learning Director, PEAK Grantmaking
Patrice Johnson CEO & Founding MOM, Inspired MOM
Hunter Pierson, Treasurer Vice President, Goldman Sachs
Kim
Staci Walker Independent Philanthropy Consultant
Geri Thomas Chief Diversity Officer and Georgia State President, Bank of America (Retired)
from our executive director
Dear friends,
Metro Atlanta schools are currently undergoing a period of significant transition. Students in Atlanta Public Schools (APS) will start the 2024 academic year under the leadership of a new superintendent. APS and neighboring districts may be seeing moderate improvements in test scores, but districts are still working fervently to address community needs as families face economic and mental health pressures that intensified during the pandemic and have yet to subside.
Nationwide and in metro Atlanta, schools are struggling to attract and retain high-quality teachers, hindered by low pay, unrealistic expectations and demanding working conditions. At redefinED atlanta, we remain committed to our belief that great schools have great teachers. Our continued investment in teacher development reflects our commitment to ensuring that every neighborhood benefits from excellent schools.
While the pandemic exacerbated learning disparities, recent test scores indicate gradual progress in literacy and other areas. As schools gradually return to pre-pandemic operations, it is crucial that we maintain our focus on advocating for systemic changes and innovative school designs to address entrenched inequities.
That is why redefinED atlanta exists. Founded in 2016, we are a pivotal resource for students, families, educators and community members. Despite changes in superintendents and Board of Education members, the needs of children, parents and educators must remain central to decision-making processes. Our team, comprising educators, parents and public school alumni, is dedicated to fostering connections among these groups and advocating for increased local autonomy in schools— so that schools are designed and led by the community members closest to home.
Our 2022-2024 impact report details our progress from spring 2022 to spring 2024, outlining our objectives, highlighting our partners and illustrating our commitment to race, equity and inclusion. This report reflects a period of transition from the pandemic. Yet, the challenges that emerged—learning gaps, mental health issues, teacher shortages, safety concerns and housing insecurity—continue to warrant our focus. Ensuring that students are safe and engaged and learning remains the hallmark of a quality education.
redefinED atlanta is dedicated to engaging with public education stakeholders to listen, learn and identify opportunities for advocacy and growth. We apply our expertise, leverage relationships and mobilize resources to incubate ideas and innovate in response to community needs. Our work will persist in shifting more power to school and community leaders who possess a deep understanding of their students’ needs.
As we move forward, we must establish new standards for how schools serve students and families and how districts support educators and administrators. We are committed to championing this work and exploring opportunities to innovate and improve the way public schools address the current needs of current students and future needs of our metro Atlanta workforce.
Looking Ahead …
After 8 years of dedicated service, I will be stepping down as the founding executive director. I am delighted to announce that our current Vice President & Chief of Staff, Angira Sceusi, will step into this role on October 1.
Before joining redefinED atlanta, Angira served as director of finance and director of talent initiatives at YES Prep Public Schools in Houston, a school district representing almost 20,000 students. She also previously worked as a high school math and computer science teacher in the Houston Independent School District, where she earned a United States Congressional Recognition for her work in STEM teaching.
Angira began her career as a financial analyst and spent 10 years in energy finance. She co-led Royal Bank of Canada’s U.S. oil and gas origination business before entering the education profession. Sceusi holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in information systems management from Carnegie Mellon University.
She also holds a master’s degree in educational leadership from the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems at Yale University. Sceusi serves on the board of Horizons Atlanta, the board of her local neighborhood association, a member of the Junior League of Atlanta and a graduate of Leadership Buckhead.
Steadfast organizations require steadfast leadership, and we are grateful for your commitment, Angira.
Yours in service,
Ed Chang Executive Director
about this report
In our commitment to address educational inequities, we focus on amplifying the voices and agency of the most affected: parents and students. This year, our impact report highlights our dedication through vivid profiles of those making a real difference in Atlanta. By showcasing our partners - the champions of change - we illustrate our belief in the power of community and grassroots influence. Our approach isn’t just about solving problems but empowering those directly impacted to lead the way. Together, we’re creating a future where every child has access to quality education, demonstrating that bold actions can make a significant difference in tackling pressing inequities.
Between the spring of 2022 and the spring of 2024 we have invested over $3m $4.8m in grassroots community mobilization and policy efforts (or about 36% of our total grantmaking) in our school-level talent efforts to improve teacher and leader pipelines (or about 25% of our total grantmaking) to grow great K-12 public schools and improve school district efforts (or about 39% of our total grantmaking)
$4.4m
Between the spring of 2022 and the spring of 2024 school years, we made a total of $12.2M in investments, with 78% of this funding going to organizations led by people of color.
As part of our ongoing work to center race, equity and inclusion in our grantmaking, we operate with an understanding of the role that race plays in the formation and perpetuation of current inequitable systems. Our understanding is not stagnant; as individuals and as a team, we are on a learning journey.
Our Why
We believe that Atlantans experiencing the greatest inequities in public education – parents and students – need to have the most agency and voice in the quality of schools for their children and where their children get to go to school.
We believe that when active and engaged citizens build their own power, they will be able to ensure that elected officials and other formal decision makers are held accountable and are responsive to the needs of communities, with the ultimate outcome of adopting equitable and socially just policies and practices that benefit their children.
Our How
Sustained systemic change requires a consistent pipeline of leadership within the community, a growing voice and citywide narrative that expresses the urgency and importance of education and a broadening tent of intersectional coalitions that can work together to bring the most pressing issues to the forefront and to ensure that actions and positive disruption takes place.
That’s why we invest in organizations working to empower students, parents and community members to be active in their children’s education through school engagement and advocacy, including:
• Our Turn
• Atlanta Thrive
• EdConnect
We also invest directly in family and community engagement efforts led by local public schools.
In 2022, we expanded our grantmaking from $20,000 to $150,000. Along with increased funding, we broadened its purpose from onetime events to plans that stretched throughout the school year. This grantmaking was reserved for Title I schools addressing barriers theyidentified as priorities for their community. During the 2022-23 school year, we invested in 16 schools to support their family and community engagement efforts.
In 2023, we started connecting with Clayton County families and community members to understand their K-12 education needs. In January 2024, we formed the Clayton County Grant Advisory Council with nine grassroots leaders to guide our efforts in the district.
Our initial investment in Clayton County focused on boosting family and community engagement in K-12 education. We are allocated $100,000 for programming to support families and enhance their involvement in their children’s education. Eligible nonprofits and public schools in Clayton County could apply for grants of up to $25,000 each.
Partnering with families and the community is crucial for improving student outcomes and ensuring equitable education. This engagement is key to achieving our mission of providing excellent K-12 education for every child in every community.
Meeting Families Where They Are
Tonya Holmes acknowledges that sometimes families see social workers as only getting involved when there’s a problem, and she’s working to change that. “I’m here as a resource,” she says. Tonya used the F.A.C.E. grant funds to increase parent engagement and student attendance at Fickett Elementary School
Dr.
Robin Christian Talks Family and Community Engagement Efforts at BaMO
There’s this myth that when schools serve a large population of families of color, that families are not engaged. As a school, we counter that myth: we remain big on family engagement. With its grant, redefinED atlanta is helping us provide incentives to increase attendance rates amongst our students.
In 2022, we also launched the Atlanta Reimagining and Innovating for Schools Everywhere (ARISE) Fellowship with 11 fellows. To account for the unique needs that exist in each community, we intentionally selected people from each APS cluster who lived, worked and served in the respective area. The fellows engaged in a nine-month learning journey to grow community power and influence by exploring the levers that drive systemic change.
The fellows were trained in the tenets of equitable grantmaking and charged with allocating $150,000 in grant funds to support a solution. Through exploring academic proficiency data and considering Atlanta Public Schools’ Goals and Guardrails policy, they identified literacy as the focus of their cohort’s participatory grantmaking efforts and focused on the Douglass Cluster as the neighborhood with the greatest opportunity for impact.
ARISE grant allocation decision-making was informed by insights from students, parents, educators, school leaders and members of the Atlanta Board of Education and Atlanta City Council. Ultimately, 10 fellows completed the fellowship and selected nine non-profit organizations as the recipient of the inaugural ARISE Grant Fund.
In the spring of 2024, through the same equitable grantmaking process, the second cohort of the A.R.I.S.E. Fellowship created a $150,000 grant aimed at supporting Atlanta Public Schools’ goal of career and college readiness for middle and high school students within the Carver Cluster. The goal of the investment was to provide wrap-around support that helped students excel academically, and lead to student achievement at home and beyond. Wraparound services included:
• Summer learning and experiences that develop curiosity, skills, and knowledge (i.e., work-based learning)
• Out-of-school/after-school learning (i.e., literacy support, tutoring, discovery, and exploratory project/problem-based learning)
• SAT/ACT and ASVAB prep and support
• Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship
• Mentorship and apprenticeship for college and career (ie., technical and trade opportunities)
Thanks to our A.R.I.S.E. alums, we granted $50,000 to each of the following organizations: Close Ties Program, National Black Arts Festival and RE:IMAGINE ATL
Our Why
We believe that broadening access to great public K-12 schools is a matter of equity, especially for students and families who have been historically underserved by their local schools and districts. By supporting the launch of new high-quality public charter schools, we are helping make a great education a reality for families now— while we also work with local districts in their efforts to respond to the systemic needs of their students, schools and communities.
Our How
We help grow great schools by:
• Advocating for freedom and flexibility at the school level so that principals have the autonomy to design their budget, staffing and curriculum to meet students’ needs.
• Supporting advanced accountability at the school and district level to ensure that leaders act with urgency to drive student achievement, growth, well-being and opportunity.
• Funding the incubation, planning and launch of new public charter schools serving highneed Atlanta communities.
• Driving innovation by doubling down on efforts to introduce specialized, highdemand public school models such as public Montessori and healthcare career pathways.
• Providing customized technical assistance and support for charter schools through one-onone leadership coaching.
• Deploying loan guarantees to address the unfavorable financing landscape for new-start charter schools
• Partnering with existing high-quality schools to explore, plan for and scale to serve new students through additional classrooms, grade bands and campuses.
• Hosting the Atlanta Schools Data Project to ensure metro Atlantans have clear, relevant, publicly available school performance data in a way that parents, caregivers and community members can understand.
School Highlights
redefinED atlanta supported the expansion, replication, or launch of eight public charter schools in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. When these schools reach their full enrollment potential, they will serve a total of 4900 deserving metro Atlanta students.
In 2022, Amana Academy, one of the state’s oldest and most well-regarded public charter schools, expanded its footprint to a second campus in Mableton. The school offers the Expeditionary Learning curriculum and focus on STEM to students in the south Cobb and west Atlanta communities. In its first year of operation, Amana West was honored with the Georgia Charter School Leader and Teacher of the Year awards. Learn more at amanaacademy.org.
In 2023, Cobb County gained another great school with the addition of Miles Ahead Charter School in Powder Springs. Founded by an 18-year veteran of Atlanta Public Schools, MACS offers Coding as a Next Language, preparing scholars with strong 21st century skills and takes a whole child approach to social emotional learning and character development. Visit milesaheadcharter.org for more.
Sankofa Montessori opened its doors in Clayton County in 2023 as metro Atlanta’s first K-6 tuitionfree public Montessori school. Sankofa utilizes the Montessori model of learning to provide a culturally responsive, child and family-centered Montessori education that empowers every child with the knowledge, skills and agency to lead a life of purpose. To learn more about Sankofa Montessori, visit www.sankofamontessori.org.
Amana Academy West: New elementary school on Girl Scouts’ 270 acres of woods
Our Why
We believe that great schools have strong teachers and instructional leaders. For every student in every community to attend a great public school, we must increase the number of high-quality teachers and leaders in Atlanta and retain them in student-facing roles where they can make the greatest impact.
Our How
Soon after we launched in 2016, we began to hear from our district school and charter school partners about their consistent needs for additional teacher pipelines. In response, our investments focused on growing the new teacher talent pool.
In 2018, we supported the expansion of the Relay Graduate School of Education to Georgia to bring highly trained new teachers to Atlanta Public Schools and KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools.
To date, Relay has trained over 250 new teachers for metro Atlanta schools and will grow to produce 100+ teachers per year.
We have also helped support 40 APS school leaders and school leadership teams access Relay leadership training.
Our school-level talent work extends beyond teachers, too. Since 2017 we have supported school leaders in incubating and launching 13 schools in metro Atlanta.
In 2024-25 we are turning our attention to the next layer of school-level talent work: teacher retention. Stay tuned on our work in this area.
As the preceding pages make clear, our team focuses every day on achieving our vision of growing Atlanta into a city where every student in every community receives a great K-12 public education. Our grantmaking, advocacy and community engagement strategies are deeper and broader than they were when we launched in 2016, which reflects how our mission has grown more inclusive and committed to serving all of Atlanta’s students who have yet to access the education and opportunity they deserve. We are proud of the progress we have made – and keenly aware of the need to continuously grow and adapt.
Ultimately, we look to serve in communities that have needs not currently being served by the existing educational infrastructure. Through our close work with families and residents, we understand the economic and educational hardships that are making it difficult to live in the City of Atlanta. In 2023, we began answering the call to expand our reach into neighboring communities while also diving deeper into our work in Atlanta Public Schools.
Our primary geographic focus now includes the City of Atlanta, Clayton County and the community of south Cobb. We are partnering directly with school districts and families in these counties to learn about their desires for additional K-12 public education support, and in 2024 we began making grantmaking and community partnerships in these communities to support school growth and family engagement initiatives.
At the same time, we are also listening and learning more about our secondary geographic area – DeKalb, south Fulton, and Henry counties. You will hear more about our work in these communities soon, and we welcome the opportunity to learn directly from local families and the people and organizations serving them.
