The Yass Prize has announced that Partnership Schools is the recipient of one its first Alumni Awards. The transformative award will enable the network to expand to include additional schools.
The Partnership Schools network exists to help children in low-income communities beat the odds and flourish, and this award is a powerful step forward in our effort to serve more students.
Sixteen organizations are among the Alumni Award winners, and the Yass Prize is investing over $20 million in the group. Partnership Schools is the only school turnaround organization to receive the award.
The Yass Prize, which has been granting awards for educational innovation over the last five years, is funded by Philadelphians Janine and Jeff Yass. As the Yass Prize organization states, the award is more than an annual prize; it is “a movement to find, reward, and expand outstanding organizations across every sector and state, fostering partnerships that accelerate impact with the speed and urgency students deserve.” To date, the Yass Prize has distributed over $60 million to educational organizations—public, private, and charter schools, as well as support organizations and ed tech innovators.
Partnership Schools were recognized by the prize in 2021 before receiving this alumni award. Other Catholic Yass Prize honorees include the Cristo Rey Network and Chesterton Schools. Additional Northeast Ohio schools recognized by the Yass organization include Dreams Academy in Akron.
The award funds provide significant momentum for the Partnership’s effort to impact more students by assuming management of additional schools in coming years, with a focus on Ohio. Kristen Gengaro, our executive director, explains, “Ohio has led the nation in offering school choice funding. Partnership Schools’ work puts us right where the expansion of school choice meets an unmet demand for high-quality educational options in working-class communities.”
The four schools currently in the Partnership network include St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis in St. Clair-Superior, Archbishop Lyke in Lee-Harvard-Miles, and Metro Catholic on the near west side.
Our Cleveland schools are a proof-point of what is possible when urban Catholic schools get the support they need to serve their communities. For example, in January of 2020, St. Thomas Aquinas announced its closure due to low enrollment before getting a second chance with the Partnership model. Enrollment has risen by over 30 percent in the last five years, and as Principal Rachael Dengler says, “We are still uniquely St. Thomas, a 125-year-old St. Clair-Superior community anchor. But we are becoming an even stronger, even more impactful version of ourselves as a Partnership school.” This year, when Cleveland public schools has announced a wave of closures similar to those Catholic schools know all too well, St. Thomas is open and ready to serve more students as an anchor in the neighborhood, thanks to past support from visionary donors.
“There is so much talent, resilience, and drive in the families and neighborhoods we serve, and we’re eager to help more children and communities flourish,” says Kristen.
The Partnership model, which began in New York in 2013, has evolved in Ohio’s unique school choice ecosystem. The network even received support from the Yass Prize last fall to share lessons learned in Ohio with Catholic schools in Texas, where public funding for parental choice is launching this fall, over twenty years after it began in Cleveland.
We are profoundly grateful to Jeff and Janine Yass and the Center for Education Reform for believing in our students, the communities we serve, and the vision we share of joyful, excellent, faith-filled schools that are an option for any family who seeks them, regardless of income.
