Communities in Schools of San Antonio announced Thursday it will be receiving a $7 million contribution from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to assist the organization's mission of helping marginalized students overcome educational obstacles in underserved parts of San Antonio.
CIS-SA is a local affiliate of Communities in Schools Network and National Office, founded in 1977 and formerly called Cities in Schools. It's a community-based outreach program whose goal is dropout prevention. Scott, the former wife of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, donated $133.5 million to the national office.
Rey Saldaña, president and CEO of Communities in Schools National Office and former San Antonio councilman, said the donation was a game-changer for underserved and under-resourced students nationwide. It will enable CIS to push toward its goal of bringing its model inside every one of 70,000 Title I-eligible schools in the country — of which it currently only operates in 3,000.
As part of Scott and Bezos' divorce in 2019, she received 25% of the couple’s Amazon stock, giving her a 4% stake in the company, which amounts to about $38 billion. Today, her estimated net worth is more than $55 billion. Since the divorce, she has donated nearly $9 billion to more than 780 organizations, with a focus on marginalized groups like women-owned, Black-owned organizations and LGBTQ charities.
According to Jessica Weaver, CEO of CIS-SA, the pandemic has brought instability and social isolation to many students, and Scott's donation will help the organization carry on its mission of supporting students who sometimes slip through the cracks of the educational system. She added that the investment will give an enormous leg up to the work done by CIS-SA for 36 years and will help students overcome the impact of the pandemic.
CIS affiliates work with schools and service providers to help students obtain resources like food, housing, counseling, access to technology for remote learning and basic health care so that they can focus on school.
CIS-SA works in 160 schools in 12 local school districts. In 2020-21, it had a 100% retention rate for students enrolled in its programs remaining in school, 98% of K-11 students promoted to the next grade and 90% of seniors graduating or receiving a GED.
It's not the first investment Scott has made in San Antonio education: Last June, she donated $40 million to the University of Texas at San Antonio, earmarked for UTSA's strategic growth plans. UTSA President Taylor Eighty called the gift "a tremendous investment in our collective future" as a Hispanic-serving institution in San Antonio.
