Not all students throughout the 43 school districts within San Diego County have equal career pathway opportunities. But the Classroom of the Future Foundation (CFF) is one organization that strives to address the local opportunity gaps.
At CFF, our vision is “Together, we can prepare every student to pursue their dreams.” Therefore, the theme of this year’s impact report is TOGETHER.
In 2023, CFF, our partners, and our donors helped San Diego County students with contributions in the form of scholarships, grants, awards, STEM programs, career pathways events, and provided thought leadership to our 43 school districts. Together, we provided advancements and achievements in the areas of innovation in education, college and career pathways, plus diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom.
In 2024, your donations can help us make a larger impact on the lives of local students and educators.
SCHOLARSHIPS
On May 18, 2023, CFF hosted the 20th Annual “Innovation in Education Awards”, the premier celebration of educators and students in San Diego County. Thanks to our partners at the USS Midway Museum, The Nancy Stabb Foundation, and Bruce Braciszewski, CFF provided fourteen $2,000 scholarships to students from the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program. Together, CFF, our partners, and AVID addressed closing the opportunity gap in college graduation rates among diverse and underrepresented demographic groups.
For some inspirational and heartwarming stories, we recommend reading the 14 bios of our 2023 Class of AVID Scholars—see the PDF below.
GRANTS
CFF proudly provides grants to programs, schools, and districts each year to support the innovation in education, college and career pathways, plus diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom. Your donations, corporate sponsorships, and grant funding from other community-based organizations give CFF the ability to make an impact with our grant programs.
In 2023, CFF was an awardee of San Diego Foundation’s “Expanded Learning County Grant Program” to deliver a high-quality summer learning program over the course of summer 2023 and summer 2024 in the total amount of $150,000. To make an impact with these funds, CFF partnered with EDforTech—who specializes in offering fun, engaging, and memorable K-12 STEM education experiences with robots and STEAM lab kits—to create and execute a summer program in the underserved areas of North County and South County. The program created an opportunity to build STEM skills for 30 students from The San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians—a historically disadvantaged and isolated community— and 30 students from Feaster Charter School—where 100% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. Together, the team of San Diego Foundation, EDforTech, and CFF provided the students with four weeks of STEM experience in robotics, engineering design, math, and coding.
AWARDS
Since we were founded in 1997, CFF has been involved in programs and fundraising to help districts with discovering educational innovation solutions to benefit local students and educators. In 2004, we created the “Innovation in Education Awards” program to recognize achievements by innovative districts, schools, educators and their programs. Now entering its 21st year in 2024, we’ve expanded our awards program from the original four awards—Inspire, Innovate, Achieve, and Impact—to a total of 15 categories with our Special Awards.
In 2023, we awarded $25,000 from the annual CFF “Innovation in Education” STEAM Grant Program to four exceptional classroom or district programs in San Diego County. Here are the annual award categories:
- The INSPIRE Award ($5,000) is given to a program that inspires, excites, motivates, sparks and/or influences students to learn and teachers to teach through exceptional, unprecedented or extraordinary programs.
- The INNOVATE Award ($5,000) showcases the creativity of a program that facilitates enhanced teaching and learning.
- The ACHIEVE Award ($5,000) showcases an innovative program that is able to quantify program results/achievements that drive student learning.
- The IMPACT Award ($10,000) is the most prestigious award given to a program that embodies all of the first three attributes: inspire, innovate, and achieve which culminate to realize the fourth… IMPACT on teachers, students and your community.
For more about our winners, please visit 2023 Class of Awardees in the PDF below, including all of our Special Award winners.
Together with our corporate sponsors North Island Credit Union, National University, SDG&E, and CyberCatch, we provided these four innovative programs with recognition for their efforts, awareness about the program, and $25,000 in funds to grow the program. Combined with all of our corporate sponsors, we provided over $55,000 in grant awards at the 20th Annual “Innovation in Education Awards.”
EVENTS
In order to connect business, community, and education leaders to support educational innovation throughout San Diego County, CFF hosted three major events in 2023.
- CFF’s 6th Annual “College and Career Pathways Summit” presented by CyberCatch was held on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 to highlight innovative strategies in College and Career Readiness (CCR).
- CFF’s 20th Annual “Innovation in Education Awards” was held on Thursday, May 18, 2023, at Qualcomm Incorporated to recognize educational innovation throughout the county.
- CFF’s Supe Tank 3.0 was held on October 26, 2023 at University of San Diego. Supe Tank is a unique way for superintendents to share innovation that is taking place in our 43 school districts by pitching their project—a program, initiative or idea—to a room full of potential partners.
THANK YOU
On behalf of the Classroom of the Future Foundation’s Board of Directors, Advisory Board, and Leadership team, we appreciate all of your support throughout 2023. Together, we’ve positively impacted the career pathways for thousands of San Diego County students to prepare for the job opportunities of tomorrow.