2012 Award for Excellence in Collaboration

2012 Award Recipient:

The Partners Program at The College Preparatory School

The mission of The Partner’s Program is to create relevant and responsive programs that bolster students’ academic success and improve their access to high quality college preparatory educational opportunities. At the same time, part of the mission is to engage students who typically have excellent educational access and support them in making a commitment to educational equity.

Pictured (left to right): Marcia O'Neil-White (Executive Director, Buffalo Prep), John Fanning (Director, The Partners Program), and Andy Hoge (Director of Admissions and Placement, New Jersey SEEDS)

Photo Credit: Jamie Baldwin, The University of Chicago Collegiate Scholars Program

Excerpts from their nomination:

Innovative, cross-sector collaborations are the bread-and-butter of The Partners Program, and are at the core of how they do their work. As a small organization with an operating budget under $200,000/year, The Partner’s Program is still hundreds of thousands of annual dollars away from constructing the comprehensive grade 6 – grade 16 college graduation pipeline of which they dream. This shortfall does not stop their drive to provide services, however. In their own words: “But our low-income Oakland public school students and their families need this pipeline now! They can’t wait.”

To accomplish these program-building projects, their strategy has been to forge multiple innovative, win-win collaborations to fill the gaps in the pipeline, including building relationships with funders who are enthused by the kinds of collaborative efforts that bring organizations together to make the most of limited resources. Three of the innovative collaborations The Partners Program leads include:

• College Counseling Collaborative – a nine month college counseling support program for low-income Bay Area public school students, including a week long summer college application boot camp at University of California Berkeley Extension.
• The Partners Program Academic - Year Middle School Partnerships – an after-school tutoring service that provides paid tutors to two high-need Oakland middle schools.
• The Oakland Summer Summit - a working group of more than 50 local public school administrators, local city agency administrators, funders, and non-profit program providers and advocacy agencies who meet regularly to improve opportunities and programs for low-income public school students throughout Oakland.

For more information about The Partners Program, please contact John Fanning.

 

2012 Award Nominees:

Congratulations to our two award finalists, Breakthrough Greater Boston (formerly Breakthrough Cambridge) and Families United in Educational Leadership (FUEL).

We were pleased to receive 15 nominations for the second annual award. Please click on the links below to read more about these outstanding organizations, programs, and individuals.

Aim High
Antonio Aponte, The Boys' Club of New York
Breakthrough Greater Boston, formerly Breakthrough Cambridge
Breakthrough Collaborative
Chicago Scholars
College Possible™, formerly Admission Possible
Community Partnership School
Families United in Educational Leadership (FUEL)
New Jersey SEEDS
Project GRAD Atlanta
Rutgers Future Scholars
Scripps College Academy
St. George's Independent School
The Partners Program
WilsonDailyPrep

To read about the winner of the 2011 Award for Excellence in Collaboration, Middle Grades Partnership, please click here.

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