MacKenzie Scott donates $133 million for in-school support services

[demmiblue]

Source: WaPo

Another money bomb has fallen from the bank account of MacKenzie Scott, this time a large donation to support a group that provides services inside schools for at-risk students, aimed at helping them thrive and graduate.

Communities In Schools, a network of nonprofit groups that work in K-12 schools across the country, said Thursday that the national office and its affiliates had been given $133.5 million from Scott, the billionaire philanthropist who has been doling out her fortune at an astounding rate. Since divorcing from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Scott has made donations of more than $8 billion. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Scott has also given significant gifts to colleges, including more than $800 million to historically Black colleges and universities. She no longer discloses grant recipients, leaving it to the organizations to make information about the gifts public if they so choose. As with other Scott donations, Communities In Schools got a call out of the blue from her staff with the news that she wanted to make the contribution, according to its president and CEO, Rey Saldaña.

Communities in Schools trains and provides staff members who work out of about 2,900 high-poverty schools in 517 districts across the country. These staff provide a range of academic and other support services meant to help students succeed and graduate.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/03/mackenzie-scott-donation-schools/

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Link to tweet

I adore this woman!

[Hoyt]

1. Wish every rich guy had an x-wife like McKenzie Scott.

[h2ebits]

6. +1000

[JudyM]

2. A call out of the blue.

Crazy. And wonderful to imagine how life-changing this will be for folks!
Generosity like this gives some hope.

[NBachers]

3. My eyes first read Scott McKenzie, who wrote "If You're Going to San Francisco." But this is a

huge donation from MacKenzie Scott!

[PSPS]

4. How nice that meeting public needs depends on the whims of our untaxed oligarchs.

[in2herbs]

5. There was a news report about a year ago that disclosed the amount of $$ she

donated at that time. A sizeable donation to say the least. However, the report also disclosed that even with the sizeable donation her wealth increased, not decreased.

When the rich stop making money off of donating money I will consider them charitable, not until then.

[summer_in_TX]

7. Wonderful!

I taught at a school with a great Communities in Schools provider for several years, until funding was cut and we lost the program.

They served students and their families, providing support groups for struggling kids, a place for them to go before school where they could talk and have support to finish homework. Single moms in need of diapers for their babies or clothes for the kids had access to that too. Kids that would have had too much on their minds to pay much attention to learning had some of their anxiety alleviated, a safe support group to help them when they were struggling socially or academically. It was just a wonderful program, but as federal matching funds were cut our district decided they could no longer afford it.

My own thought is that school districts can't afford NOT to. That's bound to be even more true now after the disruption of the pandemic.