2022
Grants Awarded

This gift is given in honor of W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone and the 100th Anniversary of Combined Insurance.

This general operating grant is made by the Board of Trustees in honor of the service of Pamela Calvert on her retirement.

Communities United develops community leadership to build a shared root cause analysis of problems impacting their communities, to develop and advance innovative power-building strategies, and to engage in creating transformative systems change. Co-Executive Directors Jenny Arwade and Raul Botello as Stone Leader(s) for Change will explore and document the evolution CU has experienced in its 20-year history as a healing-centered organization through seeing the power of young people and community members using their lived experiences and doing direct action to create transformative systemic change.

Chicago Freedom School supports young people to take action for justice in their personal lives and communities. Executive Director Tony Alvarado-Rivera as a Stone Leader for Change will strengthen his leadership skills to navigate the organization more effectively into the post-pandemic era. To do this, Tony will focus on coaching, continuing education, and self- and collective-care

This grant will support the engagement of State Institutes of Higher Education partners to review and develop actionable steps to prepare the Early Childhood Workforce in Pennsylvania.

Illinois Action for Children will provide training and technical assistance to help child care providers apply for the state’s upcoming Strengthen and Grow grants opportunity.

In addition to promoting policy recommendations developed from Black Educators Initiative, this effort will be a stepping off point for NCTR into the policy landscape as it develops relationships and experience in effectively promoting its policy priorities.

Through EdImpact, Rennie and its partners will engage key stakeholders to ensure federal dollars are invested in equitable and effective practices that will enable students and communities to recover from the disruptions causes by COVID-19.

This project will gather timely information that will inform strategies for building interest in early childhood policy efforts, and ultimately, will influence the State’s early childhood policymaking decisions.

As Dr. Tony Watlington becomes the first new School District of Philadelphia superintendent in 10 years, Teach Plus will invest the new superintendent in teacher leadership and solidify Teach Plus’ connection over his first six months, opening avenues for increased district-wide impact over policies and instructional practices.

Despite the feeling that the nation is emerging from the pandemic, the education crisis is far from over as schools address unfinished learning, a teacher shortage, and mental health issues resulting from pandemic illness, deaths and economic harms. This grant supports the Rapid Response Desk (RRD), a collaboration that gathers district-informed input and monitors education challenges so that it is poised to influence policy and budget decisions that will be most impactful for these challenges.

The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) will develop a toolkit that can be broadly available to early care and education (ECE) stakeholders and educators.

This general operating grant continues the storytelling and policy work of Calafia- a youth media fellowship.

Youth Communication (YC) will leverage the transformative power of teen-written narratives to address the systemic issues of inequality that directly impact youth across New York City.

The grant designed to the Youth Justice and Power Union will support BIPOC youth organizers and members ages 14-25 to lead basebuilding and campaign work to decrease the scope of Boston policing and shift funding to youth jobs, affordable housing, and community-led safety and wellness.

This general operating grant supports Oakland Kids First (OKF) to build power and equity for high-need Oakland students by providing transformative youth leadership programs, amplifying youth voice in student organizing campaigns that improve school culture & climate, and activating youth power to advocate for policies that increase educational equity.

This grant supports the Dignity in Schools Campaign, a national coalition of over 100 organizations fighting to end school pushout. Funds will advance local campaigns for Solutions Not Suspensions, engage youth in leadership structures and support collective national action.

This grant provides trainings, technical assistance, resources, and legal services to youth-focused organizations and youth. Education Law Center (ELC) aims to deepen understanding of student rights among Philadelphia organizations and youth to build their advocacy capacity. ELC will learn from the experiences of youth and elevate their voices in our advocacy.

This general operating grant supports work to strengthen intergenerational organizing model through continuing to develop youth leadership in all aspects of DRUM’s Organizing work.

This grant supports Ujima.

This general operating grant supports work to develop sustainable youth leadership through a healing and justice approach to advance systems change and effective policy implementation aimed at creating supportive school climates, and shifting public investment from punitive to restorative approaches.

This grant provides support for Chicago Freedom School’s NorthStar Liberatory Training Collective, which develops young leaders into trainers of trauma-informed, healing-centered practices that teachers, cultural workers, and youth workers can use in classrooms and youth programs.

This general operating grant will advance educational justice through youth power. Californians for Justice builds youth power through leadership development — deepening skills of youth so they can advocate for student-centered reforms — and organizing and advocacy to improve school systems and culture for low-income students of color.

This general operating grant will support statewide, youth-led outreach, training, and advocacy model, wthe work of  Foster Youth in Action program.

This grant allows the Foundation to address the timely issues of the environment, which impacts all issue areas funded by the Foundation, by supporting current early childhood grantees in a project that brings together experts in environment and early childhood to mobilize the early childhood sector to advance solutions to the environmental issues we face.

This grant is awarded in honor of Michael Conway.

This is a general operating grant to support the work of The Education Trust-New York.

Rennie Center will continue to partner with Boston Public Schools to build capacity for integrating transformative social-emotional learning into instruction by supporting SEL coaches who work directly with schools to embed SEL practices. Separately, Rennie Center will advance policy reform efforts through Open Opportunity – Massachusetts, a cross-sector network of 40+ organizations.

Building from the base of parents who engaged in fighting for Pre-K-12 funding, Public Policy and Education Fun will continue to work with parent leaders to build statewide demand for universal childcare. This birth-12 agenda will ensure that families and children have the support they need at every stage of development.

With general operating support, NTC will embrace next-level leadership — establishing best practices for school systems, creating transformational change for educators, and accelerating students’ social-emotional and academic growth after the most challenging year in K-12 education.

This general operating grant will support (1) discounts to leaders and teams that want to attend its institutes, (2) increasing its offerings of affinity learning communities, and (3) expanding access to its training offerings through the launch of asynchronous course(s).

This grant supports LiberatED’s general operations. Primarily, the grant will support creating secondary-level content and curricula through its educators’ Fellowship and Youth Leaders Program.

Thjis grant will  put in place strengthened data and measurement systems and improved data collection, management, analytics, and communication tools aligned with NCTR’s Strategic Levers for Equitable Residencies. Developing these data systems will enable NCTR to partner closely with its national network of teacher residencies to support a continuous learning approach in order to improve their support of Black educators and position itself to conduct a quasi-experimental study of the Black Educators Initiative in the fall of 2024.

This grant will strengthen Internationals’ capacity to create schools that close the achievement gap for MLLs. These activities will deepen Internationals’ impact on MLL educator practice within and beyond the network and build the organization’s capacity to advocate for policies and practices leading to more equitable educational opportunities for MLLs.

This grant will allow LEAD Hubs to create a Diverse Leaders Network (DLN) designed to mobilize a statewide collective focused on strategies for recruitment, development, placement, and retention of a leadership pipeline of district and school leaders that reflects the diversity of students in the state.

Given the growing spotlight on SEL and education across the political spectrum and the tremendous need to provide students with academic, social, and emotional supports, CASEL will strengthen strategies at the federal level to ensure SEL in policy and positively affect learning recovery at state, district, school, and classroom levels.

This grant provides general operating support to Advance Illinois for work to ensure a more equitable education system that enables all students to achieve success in college, career, and civic life.

This will extend 2022 efforts by engaging experts, policymakers, and practitioners to collaboratively create metrics that can guide the incorporation of P-3 content and strategies into statewide policy for, and IHE implementation of, principal preparation programs. The final product will be a report that can inform states and IHEs.

This grant support the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

This grant provides general operating support for the New York City Early Childhood Research Network at the New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute.

This grant provides general operating support for Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children with an emphasis on early care and education and its intersections with child and maternal health.

This grant will support the launch of a new child care movement network that engages partners and stakeholders across policy, research, communications, and organizing to center racial and gender equity in child care in order to create and enact a bold, equitable agenda.

Working with its national, state- and community-based partners in geographies deemed ripe, NAEYC will combine federal insights and state-specific strategies that bring parent and provider voices together under an advocacy umbrella to push for systems improvements. Through this work, NAEYC and its partners will build stronger state-level infrastructure to engage parents and providers together in collaborating to increase investments and advance improvements in early childhood systems.

This grant supports the workforce development program in San Francisco and the roll-out of Jumpstart’s workforce programming to all sites nationally. The Jumpstart SFSU Practicum connects future teachers with high-quality coaching, mentorship, and hands-on experience, resulting in better outcomes for children and a strong pipeline of early educators.

Funding to pay community-based birth workers is critical and largely absent, legislative action and Medicaid MCO funding can change this. This project will convene a collective of community-based birth workers to build a data consortium providing evidence-based policy recommendations to ensure the sustainability and scale of this critical workforce. Key deliverables include the development of a data for action toolkit, evidence-based advocacy training, and virtual hill visits.

A grant will support Erikson Institute’s Early Teaching and Learning Academy and Policy and Leadership Department, which, through professional development opportunities and key policy initiatives, help young children gain equitable access to high-quality care and early educational experiences which set the foundation for optimal development, lifelong health, learning, and success.

Council for a Strong America will build policymakers’ and the public’s support for increased investments in high-quality early childhood education and care, coupled with investments in a strong early childhood workforce, by elevating the voices of members from law enforcement and business communities

This grant provides general operating support for Children Now.

This is a general operating grant to Youth United for Change.

This grant will support for the Leadership Development Continuum, a series of after school and summer programs, internships, media production, and paid employment that enables young people to advocate for systemic change.

The grant provides general operating support to the RYSE Center.

This is a general operating support grant to Philadelphia Student Union.

Oakland Kids First (OKF) builds power for BIPOC Oakland students through youth leader development, Oakland Youth Vote Coalition leadership, and building sustained election infrastructure in order to realize the historic Measure QQ – Oakland Youth Vote (OYV) campaign win after it passed with 67% of the vote in 2020.

This grant supports Mikva Challenge‘s Citywide Youth Council Program that promotes youth voice and youth leadership by providing young people with the knowledge, skills, agency, and access to have a meaningful impact on public policy decisions that significantly impact Chicago youth.

This is a grant to Make the Road New York to support the Urban Youth Collaborative.

This grant provides general operating support to Make the Road New York.

This grant supports Juvenile Law Center‘s Youth Engagement projects that create opportunities for youth with experience in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems to use their personal stories and experiences as a platform for social change in their communities.

This grant supports the youth leadership development program goal of deeper sustainable partnerships and youth impact on policy and practice.

This is a general operating grant.

The Center for Court Innovation’s Youth Justice Board is an after-school program that brings together young people to study and propose solutions to the public safety challenges that most affect them.

This is a grant to Bend the Arc New York to support the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing.

This grant supports the Youth Action Board of the Chicago Continuum of Care.

This grant will support leadership coaching to monitor and assess the extent to which UIC novice school leaders are infusing elements of social emotional learning into their practice.

This grant provides general operating support to NYC Leadership Academy.

The general operating grant will be used to engage and support a coalition of Massachusetts equity advocates from civil rights, disability rights, parent, educator, and education reform communities to demand and secure policies that will increase opportunity and achievement for low-income students and students of color.

This grant provides general operating support to Teach Plus.

This grant provides general operating support to Partners in School Innovation.

This grant will support the growth and expansion of the EdPrepLab initiative to support education preparation programs with a focus on deeper learning, equity, and the science of learning and development.

This general operating grant supports the work of Chicago Public Education Fund.

This grant will support the Center for Collaborative Education‘s statewide advocacy campaign with the goal of leveraging state policy changes to transform Massachusetts’s current education assessment system.

This is a general operating support grant.

This grant will support Bank Street’s TESOL Residency program and continued conversation with early childhood thought leaders toward further development of compensation strategies and policy solutions to move toward pay parity.

This grant is restricted to provide Stone Foundation Fellowships in Early Childhood Development Leadership through the Center for Urban Education Leadership’s program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This grant is restricted to the Center X Teacher Education Program (TEP) at UCLA for the Stone Scholars Scholarship Program.

This grant supports Strategies for Children to ensure that increasing public investments and policies are aligned, scalable and targeted to improve the lives of low-income children.

Start Early, formerly The Ounce, will: (1) Capitalize on opportunities to advance the early childhood (EC) system in Illinois; (2) Advance the EC workforce, and (3) Lift up learnings for Illinois to inform and benefit from national conversations.

This grant provides general operating support to ParentChild+.

This grant supports New America‘s Early & Elementary Education Policy Program to continue to inject PreK-3rd grade policy ideas into the national education conversation and produce new policy insights to propel PreK-3rd reforms in states, school districts, communities, and schools.

Building on work carried out through current and previous Stone Grants, NAEYC will advance the quality of early childhood higher education programs by using NAEYC accreditation as a lever and engaging higher education leaders in championing investments in degree programs that prepare an effective, diverse, well-prepared and well-compensated ECE profession.

This is a general operating grant to Latino Policy Forum.

This grant provides general operating support to Illinois Action for Children.

This is a general operating support grant.

This is a general operating support grant for T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood National Center.

Advocate Children’s Hospital Healthy Steps Program, in conjunction with Advocate Medical Group, will continue to engage and support physician practices serving socially-vulnerable communities to promote effective screening and management for child mental health issues and unmet social needs.

This grant provides general operating support to BUILD.