Dear John,

We’re just one sleep away from AQE’s Champions of Education Gala, and we heartily hope you’ll be able to join us! Come to the DCTV Firehouse in NYC tomorrow – Thursday, October 9 – as we celebrate 25 years of fighting for a quality public education and universal child care across New York State. Come celebrate how far we’ve come and look ahead to what’s next.

This year, we’re proud to honor one of our earliest and most dedicated partners, The Schott Foundation for Public Education. Founded in 1991 as a family foundation by Lilo Leeds and her son Greg Jobin-Leeds, and later transitioned to a public foundation in 2007, Schott has been a driving force for education and racial justice for more than three decades. From its earliest days supporting the creation of AQE in 2000, Schott has been at the heart of some of our proudest victories, including securing the Foundation Aid formula in 2007 and stopping its repeal a decade later. The foundation’s leadership, including Dr. John Jackson and former longtime Program Officer Cassie Schwerner, has helped shape AQE’s work and continues to fuel BIPOC youth- and parent-led advocacy organizations across the country, bridging philanthropy and grassroots movements to create lasting, transformative change.

On top of the many folks we’ll be honoring, we’ll be celebrating with music and poetry too! The Resistance Revival Chorus and National Youth Poet Laureate Stephanie Pacheco will take the stage, there’ll be raffles and giveaways, and every guest will receive a limited-edition 25th Anniversary AQE sweatshirt – a small token of our gratitude for being part of this movement.