Low-income families face limited choices if they wish to have their children educated in a faith-based school and we have long sought ways to catalyze a solution. Grantees have included:
- Partnership Schools, a network of Catholic Pre-K through 8th grade schools in Harlem and the South Bronx achieved enormous success serving approximately 3,600 children in Harlem, the South Bronx, and Cleveland, Ohio. Seventy-two percent of their elementary school students were accepted to top-tier selective high schools.
Our support included general operating support, expansion to a failing elementary school it took over, St. Charles Borromeo, and sponsoring its work with Teach Like a Champion (another Heckscher grantee) to implement its Reading Reconsidered curriculum. On July 1, 2024, the agreement between the Archdiocese of New York and the Partnership terminated and the Archdiocese assumed direct management for the seven New York schools. The Partnership continues to successfully manage four Cleveland schools, where it is poised to make similar gains, and is looking to expand its work in selected school choice states.
- Cristo Rey (New York and Miami) schools utilize an innovative educational model that integrates rigorous academics with professional work experience. Education at Cristo Rey occurs in the classroom and at corporate offices. A key element to the Cristo Rey curriculum is the four-year, integrated Corporate Work Study Program (CWSP). The CWSP enables students to earn and pay for more than half of their tuition, gain professional work experience and network of professional relationships.
- Marymount Manhattan’s “Ruth Smadbeck Communication and Learning Center” provides speech-language and audiological clinical services enabling students to learn diagnostic testing and treatment techniques for a wide range of pediatric communication disorders.
- Student Sponsored Partners (SSP) collaborates with social services agencies to identify students in foster children and children whose families require preventive services and provides tuition assistance and one-on one mentoring throughout their high school years at select faith-based schools in NYC. In addition to supporting tuition for a number of SSP students, Foundation Staff also served as mentors to individual SSP students, all of whom went on to graduate from competitive colleges.
- Matching grants to increase board and individual support to schools with strong leadership such as the Notre Dame School, one of the premier independent, Catholic secondary school for young women in NYC, where 100% of its graduates are traditionally accepted to four-year colleges and universities and 95% awarded academic scholarships and St. Jean Baptiste school. We have also supported Hebrew Charter School Center, Shefa School, and De La Salle Academy.
- We conceived of a unique faith-based mentorship concept working with the Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) that connected students from local African American churches with churches in the students’ “college town” – seeking in effect to provide a faith-based link between home and school environments. This program was designed to build a sense of community and a nurturing environment for the college student away from home by providing academic support (tutoring, supplemental instruction, financial resources), career and life lessons guidance within a student’s traditional faith setting – a local AMEC church.
See also our work on Combating Antisemitism.
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