3 Philly schools just won $600,000 in from Jeff and Janine Yass
"We would love to do more in Philadelphia," Janine Yass said.
Janine and Jeffrey Yass, the Pennsylvania billionaires who have poured millions into school-choice causes, gave away $600,000 to three Philadelphia schools this week.
Salt & Light Academy for Boys won $500,000 as a finalist for the Yass Prize; Girard College, and Cooking4Autism each won $50,000 as semifinalists. The awards were given Tuesday at the conclusion of a summit on education innovation held at the National Constitution Center, which featured speakers including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The three Philadelphia schools were among 26 from across the U.S. competing for the funds from the Yass’ educational philanthropic fund. Jeff Yass is a Republican megadonor and the richest person in Pennsylvania; Janine Yass is a founder of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School.
Salt & Light, based out of the New Covenant Church of Philadelphia in West Mount Airy is a microschool serving 22 students.
Salt & Light employs a hybrid model, with students enrolled in a cyber charter school but also receiving tailored academic and other support from in-person staff. Its founders are Jéneen Winters Barlow and Omar Barlow. Both are educators; Omar Barlow is also a pastor and former chief executive officer of Eastern University Charter School, closed by the school district in 2019 over academic and compliance issues.
momGirard College, a historic boarding school in North Philadelphia founded in 1848 by financier Stephen Girard, educates students from economically disadvantaged families in a residential setting. (It was founded for “poor, white, male orphans,” integrated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965, and later opened to girls and students from single-parent homes.)
Cooking4Autism focuses on culinary education and life skills for neurodiverse students. Its co-founder is Sheila Armstrong, a parent of a son with autism who wanted “to provide the programs and environments she once searched for as a parent navigating the system.”
Armstrong was a plaintiff in the landmark school funding lawsuit that resulted in Pennsylvania’s school-funding formula being determined as unconstitutional and ordered replaced. She has also been affiliated with the group Moms for Liberty.
The top Yass Prize, which comes with $1 million, was awarded to the Learning Lounge in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, “a learning model that unites education freedom, rural opportunity and community renewal to help rebuild the economic and civic life of communities that have lost schools and educational options.”
The prize honors schools deemed by the Center for Education Reform as “sustainable, transformational, outstanding and permissionless.”
“We are so honored to be able to do this work, and to find and support heroes who never stop advancing great education for kids. Across every sector, region and type of community, the members of the Yass Prize community go above and beyond to do right by kids,” Janine Yass said in a statement.
The Yasses’ school-choice advocacy has long drawn fire from advocates of traditional public schools, who often say that their efforts come at the expense of schools that must take all students.
‘We would love to do more in Philadelphia’
Yass said her school choice work stems from a desire to send her children to a school closest to her home.
That school happened to be a private school, the Haverford School, where she met David Hardy, an educator from Philadelphia.
“He was the gentleman that showed me what was going on in the city, where his boys would have gone to school if they didn’t get into the Haverford School,” Janine Yass said. “I was shocked, Jeff was shocked. And the fact that we had the freedom to choose where our children went, and that 99% of the people in Philadelphia do not have that freedom, was appalling to me.”
The Haverford School’s upper school tuition currently nears $50,000 per student.
Janine Yass’ friendship with Hardy led to the founding of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia, a charter still in existence today. Hardy has led Girard College for the past few years.
Janine Yass, in a Tuesday interview, said much of her family’s work is focused elsewhere in the country.
» READ MORE: Billionaires Jeff and Janine Yass are offering full scholarships to students from closing Philly schools
“We would love to do more in Philadelphia,” she said. “It breaks my heart that we can’t do more in Philly,” but “they won’t let us start charters. We’ve been dismissed from the conversation.”
The Yasses did make headlines after they offered “Opportunity Knocks” scholarships of $8,000 to any student who opts to leave a closing Philadelphia School District school to attend a city private school.
Janine Yass said there’s been lower-than-expected interest in the scholarship to date, but that she’s still interested in the effort.
