Durham Public Schools Foundation

Championing public education - the durham community supports and celebrates our public schools. Durham's public schools reflect the racial and socioeconomic diversity of durham and embody cultures and practices that equitably serve every student. In 2023-24, we onboarded 3 vista members for the following roles: volunteer and events coordinator, communications coordinator, and corporate volunteer and dps alum coordinator. The vistas enhanced our work in and with dps, adding team capacity for communications and also created a path for dps volunteerism.growing together: in fy 23/24, we continued efforts to support enrollment, in partnership with dps and the dps growing together initiative. Growing together is the school district's current redistricting plans. We supported them in this work through a) a yard-sign campaign for ten high-priority elementary schools at risk of losing significant enrollment, b) by creating a website that shared highlights from all elementary schools as well testimonials from educators and parents at each school, and c) by incentivizing elementary principals to knock doors in their attendance zones to recruit families to their schools.advocacy: our latine parent collective continues to work in collaboration with the coalition every child nc. As a result of this continued collaboration, the parent collective helped plan and participated in three action days in raleigh to advocate for every child's constitutional right to a sound basic education. Additionally the parent collective joined forces with durham can to advocate for free universal lunch for all students in our school district.

Investing in our people: our students are empowered to drive meaningful changes that address challenges they identify in their schools. Great educators choose to work and stay in dps because they feel valued as professionals and are provided meaningful support to grow and innovate. In 23/24, we deepened our partnership with the dps career and technical education team by a) membership in their business advisory council, b) donating to and serving as the fiscal agent for the acceler8 career exposure event, c) adding business partners who contributed to school workdays and donated funds, and d) supporting dps senior staff to attend the durham chamber of commerce intercity visit with our executive director and chief of partnerships.college scholarship program - we completed our fourth scholarship cycle this year, awarding $61,500 in scholarships to 27 graduating dps seniors. We continue to hone our online application process and outreach to schools where we have had fewer applicants. Scholarship applications received increased by 20% this year. We've hired an intern to help give administrative support to the program. They've also provided technical assistance to students navigating our scholarship applications and community members reviewing applications. Teacher leadership academy - the dpsf tla creates a pipeline of teacher leaders in dps who develop an understanding of the role of the teacher in driving change in their school and community grounded in the history and current context of inequity in durham and public schools that guides their work in advancing more equitable schools. The current cohort consists of 4 dps teachers who teach in our elementary schools. Their experience in the classroom ranges from 7 years to 25 years, and they've worked over two years to use those experiences to better understand how social issues, public systems and goods, and students' backgrounds and customs all play a role in their education. These teacher leaders have completed over 50 hours of professional development on various topics, including durham education history, the impact of community on schools, and implicit bias within their curriculum. These 4 teachers are taking what they've learned and directly impacting over 300 dps students. They will work and present a problem of practice through the lens of a teacher leader and the solutions they've found to address the issue.school-level grants - the dpsf grants program aims to improve education quality, knowledge sharing, collaboration, sustainable impact, and equitable distribution of power and resources for dps students, educators, staff, and families, especially for those most historically harmed by systemic oppression. Through our cohort model, the annual grants cycle comprises two different programs, innovation grants and the whole schools fund. Available in the fall of each school year, innovation grants are open only to dps students, teachers, staff, administrators, parents, and/or caregivers for projects that directly center and impact their school or school communities. Innovation grants fund projects aimed at increasing equity, accessibility, resources, and opportunities within dps schools.this year, we funded $121,257 across 27 schools supporting 42 projects. In addition, we supported projects at the district level amounting to another $15,000 in support to dps. We also awarded $13,000 in summer camp scholarships for dps students through the summer joy fund. Our digital literacy program, a grant funded initiative in partnership with north carolina central university, hosts dps parents across the district to invest in their own computer skills. The course was created to provide foundational and proficient computer skills, while also learning the different tools used within our school system for parents to communicate and engage. In 2023-2024 we hosted 5 rounds of the 5-week course.

Equity through innovation - students, educators, families, and community leaders come together to create innovative, transformative learning environments that ensure all our students not only attend school together, but thrive together. We helped build power among parents-of-color and supported teachers and principals in centering equity in their schools.community schools incubator - best practices for community schools recommend conducting comprehensive needs and assets assessments every 3-4 years. These assessments are followed by an analysis to set priorities, ensuring that partnerships between the school, families, and community organizations effectively address students' social, emotional, health, and academic needs. Durham public schools (dps) community schools completed their assessments in fy 23 and successfully maintained or expanded partnerships based on updated and relevant needs during fy 24. Across the three schools, 33 sustainable partnerships were actively providing services and strengthening the capacity of our community schools.family engagement at dpsf is done through a framework of school, family and community partnerships. This is a multidimensional approach where families can learn to sustainably grow healthy food, celebrate the richness of their culture, use an innovation grant to enjoy the wonders of science, be models of civic engagement, be part of one of our tutoring programs, all while advocating for a quality education for all our children in dps. We accomplish this by providing safe spaces for dps parents to come together and organize as we support the whole family. Our family engagement projects include homework with amigos, a program that supports academic achievement in partnership with the durham county library and the duke service learning program and leap tutoring; alianza por la educacin (parent advocacy), in which latinx parent leaders work to support the transformation of our schools; and sembrando raices, which began as a community garden for latinx families on the grounds of one of our community schools, club boulevard elementary. The initial mission of sembrando raices was to improve food security for working-class latinx families, a need that has become increasingly important in recent years. As the program has evolved, sembrando raices has become a safe, public space where over 30 working-class latinx families gather every friday from march to november to tend the garden, harvest and share food, and most importantly, discuss and organize around the issues that affect their lives. Educational advocacy continues to be at the forefront of the work. Our goal is to continue to support these projects to increase their impact in the community.