Communities for Just Schools Fund (CJSF)

History

Communities for Just Schools was founded in 2010 as a fiscally sponsored project of NEO Philanthropy, a funder of numerous left-of-center and liberal project organizations. Originally named the Just and Fair Schools Fund, the project served as a grantmaking entity with funds going to organizations primarily focused on identity politics-based issues. The project claimed to aid “youth of color, LGBTQ youth, and immigrant youth,” whom the organization claimed to be “systematically denied” chances to succeed in public schools. ⁵

The New Venture Fund took over as fiscal sponsor of the organization in 2015, shifting its mission by increasing grantmaking to smaller organizations and partnering with a broad array of left-of-center and liberal organizations to push race, gender, and other identity-based issues broadly related to education. ⁶

Grantmaking

Communities for Just Schools (CJSF) makes grants to various organizations that promote left-of-center policies at the local or state level. CJSF’s 2024 annual report lists 77 “Community Partners”: most center on race, such as Abolitionist Teaching Network, Black Lives Matter at School, and Critical Exposure; some are tied to immigration and Latino advocacy such as Juntos and Movimiento Poder; and a others focus on LGBT advocacy, like the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network. ⁷

According to the 2024 annual report, the organization has granted $36 million dollars since 2016. Annual grants began increasing in 2021 and peaked at $6 million in 2023 before declining to just over $4 million in 2024. ⁷

Activities

Communities for Just Schools Fund (CJSF) oversees several programs and operations with its partner organizations to promote specific left-of-center education policies focused on:

• Mandated ethnic studies and identity-based curricula, ¹
• Removal of police from school grounds and race- and identity-based discipline policy, ²
• Altered grading and testing standards, ¹
• Expanded access to illegal immigrants and broader on-site social services, ² and
• Gender and sexual orientation integrated into classes and services. ⁴

A central aim of CJSF and its partners has been to replace educational discipline practices, such as suspensions and expulsions, with “restorative” alternatives such as counseling, while reframing school safety and discipline policies around race, identity, and “emotional safety.” ⁷

CJSF has advocated for a critical race theory-aligned form of Social Emotional Learning (SEL), which it brands as “culturally affirming,” an educational framework that deemphasizes traditional academics and assessment and in favor of subjective measures such as emotional competence. These ideas are detailed in its 2020 “Radical Report: Centering Organizing Praxis for Holistically Safe Schools.” ²

Additionally, CJSF previously gave its input on the development of K-12 “collaborative assessments” as alternatives to traditional exams, meeting with a consortium backed by the Gates, Chan Zuckerberg, and Walton foundations known as the Education Funders Strategy Group. Proponents describe these models as more “equitable” and “holistic,” while critics note that they reduce the role of objective exams and make academic performance more difficult to measure or compare across students and schools. ⁷

CJSF and its partner organizations have promoted policies by organizing students and parents, staging demonstrations, filling administrative complaints and lawsuits, running media campaigns featuring student testimony, door-to-door canvassing campaigns, and lobbying school officials. ⁷

Partner Organizations

CJSF’s 2024 annual report highlights Community Partner “wins,” including: ⁷

• Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies, which successfully lobbied for Minnesota Department of Education Social Studies Standards to require “the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity with a focus on the experiences and perspectives of people of color within and beyond the United States. Ethnic studies analyzes the ways in which race and racism have been and continue to be social, cultural, and political forces, and the connection of race to the stratification of other groups” for all K-12 students. These curricula are anchored by three benchmarks: Ways of Knowing, Identity, and Resistance. ⁸
• Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) and Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) led the campaign for the Chicago Board of Education to adopt a “Whole School Safety” framework in July 2024. The policy removed school resource officers from all campuses beginning in the 2024–25 school year and required every school to establish Behavioral Health Teams, Culture and Climate Teams, and Whole School Safety Committees. The framework defines safety broadly to include “physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust” and mandates the use of restorative discipline practices—such as conflict resolution circles and counseling interventions—in place of suspensions, expulsions, and police referrals. The framework emphasizes subjective measures of “emotional safety” and “trust” and frames discipline and school safety through race and identity explicitly, embedding these perspectives into school-level committees and staff training. ⁹
• Black Organizing Project, which led the “George Floyd Resolution” eliminating the Oakland school district’s police force and inducing the district to pledge $7 million for counseling. ⁷
• Hearing Youth Voices, which lobbied for CT’s broadest school-policing reform to date, which mandates public reporting of student-police interactions by demographic and directs the state Department of Education to provide resources for and encourage the adoption of “community-partnered restorative practices” as alternatives to disciplinary removals. ⁷

Leadership

Allison R. Brown was the founder of Communities for Just Schools (CJSF), previously working for the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) as well as Open Society Foundations (OSF) before founding CJSF in 2010. Brown served as the group’s public face and head of the organization until passing away in 2020. ¹⁰

Jaime Koppel has served as Co-Director since 2016. ¹¹

Since 2023, Manuela Arciniegas has worked as the Executive Director for CJSF. She received her Ph.D. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology from NYU. ¹²

Funding

Communities for Just Schools (CJSF) has previously received funding from left-of-center grantmaking foundations. The largest donors include The Ford Foundation, which made grants totaling $9 million between 2015 and 2021; ¹³ the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, granting $5.65 million between 2017-2023; ¹⁴ the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which granted $4.7 million between 2020-2023; ¹⁵ the NoVo Foundation, founded by Warren Buffett’s son Peter, contributed over $4.7 million between 2019 and 2023; ¹⁶ and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund contributed $1.45 million between 2018-2022. ¹⁷ To its parent organization, New Venture Fund, the Surdna Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation made grants totaling tens of millions of dollars since 2015, respectively. ^{18 19}

MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, made a $10 million contribution in 2022. ¹ In 2025 CJSF received a grant from Yield Giving, MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropic initiative started in 2022. ²⁰

The organization has received from other organizations including the NEA Foundation (the charitable arm of the National Education Association), the Arcus Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Hill-Snowdon Foundation, the Kolibri Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Raikes Foundation, the Stuart Foundation, and the Skyline Foundation. ⁷

CJSF’s 2024 annual report listed representatives from three organizations on its executive committee: the Andrus Family Fund (a program of the Surdna Foundation), the Hewlett Foundation, and the Oak Foundation. ⁷