Siegel Family Endowment reimagines schools as critical community infrastructure with release of new whitepaper

NEW YORK, Sept. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Siegel Family Endowment, a foundation focused on understanding and shaping the impact of technology on society, launched a new whitepaper that explores how reimagining schools as critical community infrastructure can help address the vast challenges facing public education across the country.

With the pandemic only exacerbating the deep inequities that exist throughout our education systems today, the paper examines how schools can leverage their physical spaces, digital networks, and social connections to better serve all students, families and educators, as well as enrich the community-at-large. Building upon Siegel Family Endowment's multidimensional approach to infrastructure, the paper outlines the intricate role that schools play in their communities and charts a path forward for how both systems can be strengthened in tandem to create greater opportunity for all.

"The disruption of the past three years has exposed just how crucial schools are to the communities they serve," said Joshua Elder, Director of Grantmaking at Siegel Family Endowment. "By viewing our education systems as bigger and more comprehensive than the buildings in which they operate, we have an opportunity to propel both schools and the neighborhoods they are situated in to a brighter future. We hope this whitepaper can act as an invitation to learn, share and partner to catalyze change for the next generation of learners."

The paper is part of Siegel Family Endowment's on-going investments to envision an education system that benefits everyone. This work is centered in innovative partnerships with cutting-edge organizations including Reimagine America's Schools, Education Reimagined, and Transcend Education - all of which also contributed insights to the whitepaper.

"Schools have long existed at the heart of community and community at the heart of schools," said Katy Knight, President and Executive Director of Siegel Family Endowment. "For our nation's education systems to become the most effective and powerful versions of themselves, we as funders must serve as society's risk capital and invest in those thinking beyond traditional silos to invent new ways to serve students and communities, now and in the future."

To showcase the proven impact of this approach, the whitepaper looks at people, schools and communities that are already dreaming, designing, and implementing holistic and multidimensional approaches to their education systems. These case studies include:

• An ambitious and long-lasting partnership in Burlington, Kansas between school districts and government entities that pools resources for digital infrastructure and sparks innovation
• A set of competency-based public lab schools in Philadelphia and Allentown, Pennsylvania that are designed to build strong social infrastructure and encourage real-world learning
• An effort to empower caregivers to design digital opportunities and spaces to build school community in Oakland, California.

Visit siegelendowment.org/schools-as-community-infrastructure to learn more and to download the white paper. To share your ideas or explore ways to work with Siegel Family Endowment, contact [email protected].

Siegel Family Endowment is a foundation that aims to understand and shape the impact of technology on society through our lenses of learning, workforce, and infrastructure. Founded in 2011 by David M. Siegel, co-founder and co-chairman of the financial sciences company Two Sigma, we believe that philanthropy is society's risk capital – it can help drive innovation by investing in local leaders and community-born solutions, fostering prosperous and equitable futures for all. Our work is centered around funding organizations that address society's most critical challenges, while supporting innovative civic and community leaders, social entrepreneurs, researchers, and more that are driving this work forward.

Tori McKnight 
201-927-2937 
[email protected]

SOURCE Siegel Family Endowment