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PARTNERS
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21st Century School Fund
The 21st Century School Fund (21CSF) was founded in 1944 on the premise that communities are responsible for creating healthy, safe, and educationally appropriate learning environments for their children. The mission of the 21CSF is to build the public will and capacity to improve urban public school facilities. This mission is grounded in a vision that good public schools should be a reasonable expectation and a reality in urban communities throughout the nation.
Across the country and locally in the District of Columbia, 21CSF pursues five basic objectives to achieve this mission:
- Advocating for major improvements to public school teaching and learning environments, for community use of school buildings, and for community participation in decision-making about school facilities;
- Providing information and policy analysis to community organizations, parent organizations, school systems, and local and state governments on issues that impact education infrastructure;
- Developing and disseminating technology to support planning, monitoring, and citizen participation in school facility decision-making;
- Facilitating cooperation among public agencies, private sector organizations, nonprofit organization and communities to creatively finance school design and construction, including the development of public private partnerships; and
- Initiating and supporting collaboration among community organizations to enhance their ability to advocate for improvement of school facilities as one way to improve public education.
In July of 2002, the 21st Century School Fund also launched the Building Educational Success Together (BEST) initiative, which is a research, constituency-building, and communications collaborative focused on improving urban public school facilities. Our partners in this collaborative include the Education Law Center of Newark, NJ; the KnowledgeWorks Foundation of Cincinnati, OH; the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities in Washington, DC; the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group of Chicago, IL; the Ntional Trust for Historic Preservation of Washington, DC; and Mark Schneider at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The mission of the BEST initiative is to secure the policy changes needed to improve facility conditions for students and teachers, and to make schools centers of their communities. Specifically, BEST is pursuing policies that:
- Require broad public involvement in decision-making about school facilities;
- Enable and support shared community use of school facilities;
- Establish effective management and oversight practices for school facility planning, design and construction; and
- Secure adequate funding for school facilities maintenance and capital improvements.
The 21st Century School Fund is supported by the Ford Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, the George Gund Foundation, individual contributions and contracts consistent with our mission.
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