Media Coverage of Elevate 215 BTO Planning Grants 2022 – Philadelphia Inquirer, WHYY & Tribune

Five Philly schools stand to get millions of dollars for ‘beating the odds’

“Maybe this is the way that we’re going to start scaling really good practices in schools,” said Stacy Holland, executive director of Elevate 215.

Kristen A. Graham

Philadelphia Inquirer

November 21, 2022

Five city schools will get millions to further their work “beating the odds” — accelerating student progress in schools that have diverse populations and educating large numbers of children living in poverty.

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Three Philadelphia district schools and two charters will get $50,000 planning grants, then implementation grants of up to $275,000 annually for at least three years. The schools are Juniata Park Academy, a K-8; Morton McMichael Elementary, a pre-K-8 in West Philadelphia; Middle Years Alternative, a 5-8 in West Philadelphia; Pan American Academy Charter School, a K-8 in Fairhill, and Alliance for Progress Charter School, a K-8 in North Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has been attempting school improvement for decades, and the goal was to use data to find bright spots and build on them, said Stacy Holland, Elevate 215′s executive director.

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The aim is to take the schools’ positive trajectory “and actually replicate it,” Holland said. “Maybe this is the way that we’re going to start scaling really good practices in schools.”

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At Juniata Park Academy, the focus is on establishing and maintaining strong school climate and culture, said principal Marisol Rivera Rodriguez. The school also plans to prioritize “professional learning communities” — daily, grade-specific, teacher-led groups that build educator efficacy.

“The planning grant is going to help us leverage our strengths to propel our school moving forward,” said Rodriguez. “The pandemic did hit us hard.”

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Principal Shakae Dupre of MYA — Middle Years Alternative — knows her school, which accepts students from every neighborhood in the city, excels at “growing kids.” It does that through bombarding them with opportunities: every middle-school sports offering there is, Algebra I for all, clubs galore, and more.

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The money is wonderful, Dupre said. But the recognition is nearly as important.

“It’s a huge deal to me and my school community,” said Dupre. “Achievement and proficiency is what gets noticed, but the significance of acknowledging schools that have figured out how to move kids, that’s more powerful.”

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Read the full article here.

Philly schools that ‘beat the odds’ could receive millions of dollars under new grant strategy

Aubri Juhasz

WHYY

November 26, 2022

Across any struggling school system, there are bright spots — schools where students are doing better than expected despite significant challenges.

That’s the idea behind millions of dollars in new grant funding announced this week by the nonprofit Elevate 215, which has fundraised and given more than $100 million to Philadelphia schools over the last decade.

The goal is to “accelerate student outcomes” at successful schools and in the process learn what makes them successful in the first place, said Stacy Holland, Elevate 215’s executive director.

“What did you do to get those gains and what do you need to keep moving forward in a positive trajectory?” Holland said. “The end goal of this is how do we name the practices that these schools are doing so then you can replicate and scale.”

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For Dollette Johns-Smith, the principal at Morton McMichael, a small Pre-K-8 school in the Mantua neighborhood, just being eligible for the grant felt like a “big victory.”

“It was nice to bring that back to the staff and say, ‘Hey, this is your work. Look where we started and where we are now,’” she said.

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Holland, with Elevate 215, said the decision to focus funding on schools that are good and could be great feels novel.

“Sometimes what we tend to do is we go to the top or the very bottom and we really don’t pay attention to the schools in the middle that with just a little support could actually improve their performance and that’s where you have a good majority of kids,” she said.

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Johns-Smith welcomes the support and recognition.

“For our school community to know that everything that we’ve been doing over the course of the years wasn’t done in vain, that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

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Read the full article here.

Three district schools selected for ‘Beat the Odds’ planning grants

Philadelphia Tribune

December 13, 2022

Three School District of Philadelphia schools have been selected as the first cohort of Elevate 215’s “Beat The Odds” planning grants.

Juniata Park Academy, Middle Years Alternative School and the Morton McMichael School are among a group of five public district and public charter schools that will receive grants that will help these schools build on their track record of success and continue to elevate performance and expand their impact to even more students.

Alliance for Progress Charter School and Pan American Academy Charter School were also selected by Elvate 215. Each school will receive $50,000 to support a six-month planning process to identify science-backed strategies they can adopt to further improve student progress.

Following the planning process, the schools can then apply for implementation grants of up to $825,000 each. The schools identified collectively serve 2,875 students, of whom 90% are Black or Latino and 85% are low-income.

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Read the full article here.