BOSTON – The Boston Foundation has awarded Teach Plus a grant for $200,000 over three years, Teach Plus CEO Celine Coggins announced today. According to Dr. Coggins, the grant will be used to develop, expand, and mobilize a network of reform-minded teachers in Boston.
“Our organization has worked to elevate the voices of current classroom teachers in policy that directly impacts their day-to-day work. The teachers with whom we work represent a diverse, solutions-oriented and student-focused voice that will bring fresh ideas to local policy challenges,” said Dr. Coggins. “The Boston Foundation was our founding partner and has supported us since the beginning. The grant from the Boston Foundation will help us continue to bring authentic teacher voices to the table and to further teacher-created policy solutions.”
Founded in 2009, Teach Plus supports almost 200 Teaching Policy Fellows and Alumni and over 5,000 teachers in its network nationwide, with programs in Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Washington DC. Its mission is to improve the achievement of urban children by ensuring that a greater proportion of students have access to excellent, experienced teachers. Teach Plus runs three programs designed to place teacher leaders at the center of reform: the Teaching Policy Fellows Program, the T+ Network, and T3: Turnaround Teacher Teams. The programs focus on demonstrably effective teachers in the second stage of their careers (in most cases, years 3 through 10) who want to continue classroom teaching, while also expanding their impact as leaders in their schools and in state and district policy.
Michelle Boyers, Chief Operating Officer at Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School (part of the Boston Public Schools), is the chair of the Teach Plus board of directors. For more information, visit www.teachplus.org.
The Boston Foundation, Greater Boston’s community foundation, is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the nation, with assets of $796 million. In Fiscal Year 2010, the Foundation and its donors made more than $82 million in grants to nonprofit organizations and received gifts of almost $83 million. The Foundation is made up of some 900 separate charitable funds established by donors either for the general benefit of the community or for special purposes. The Boston Foundation also serves as a major civic leader, provider of information, convener, and sponsor of special initiatives designed to address the community’s and the region’s most pressing challenges. For more information about the Boston Foundation, visit www.tbf.org or call 617-338-1700.
Discretionary grants from the Boston Foundation are made possible through a family of funds known as the Permanent Fund for Boston, which has allowed the Boston Foundation to make critical grants to support Greater Boston for over 90 years. The Permanent Fund for Boston exists today due to the generosity of donors, often through bequests, enabling the Foundation to meet the most pressing needs of the community.
For more information about the Boston Foundation and its grant making, visit www.tbf.org or call 617-338-1700.
For more information about Teach Plus, visit www.teachplus.org.
