RAISE the floor campaign
CHPS launched the Raise the Floor Campaign to fundamentally change how the public, private, and non-profit industries collaborate to support public schools to ensure every student in America has access to facilities that bolster their learning and wellbeing.
the GAP
There are numerous programs and entities or organizations that are focused on improving school building performance — CHPS being one of them — in a variety of different ways. Yet, current efforts are siloed. Addressing the quality of America’s school facilities is so urgent, the need for improvements is so widespread, and the barriers that must be overcome are so complex that no one entity can tackle this system on their own. Schools need a concerted and coordinated nation-wide effort to better construct and maintain school buildings for the long haul.
the FACTS
We need collaboratively-designed, whole systems solutions to ensure that we have a complete reset in what school buildings should and must provide to all students, regardless of their geographic location or economic status. We need a moonshot so that, within one generation, every student thrives in the best schools in the world.
the SOLUTION
We are calling this campaign ‘raise the floor’ because the U.S. has some of the world’s best school facilities — state-of-the-art learning spaces that ‘raise the ceiling’ for what is possible for our educators and students. However, these best-in-class schools exacerbate the social inequities between our highest- and lowest-performing schools.
This campaign seeks to lay the groundwork for a multi-year effort. CHPS will start by actively recruiting partners and will be engaging nonprofits, entrepreneurs, NGOs, school districts, government agencies, philanthropists, change agents, solutions providers, and subject matter experts who share a commitment to this common vision and bring diverse expertise and perspectives in the areas of systems change, all aspects of design and construction of learning environments, student performance and health, school and district facility planning and operations, policy, procurement, fundraising, scaling impact, and much more to:
Align on the current state — what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s needed.
Map the dozens of programs support K-12 school facilities across a multitude of organizations.
Learn from and leverage successful impact models from other non-profits in other sectors such as affordable housing and climate change.
Participate in a change lab which will be designed to create an actionable “moon shot” for our nation’s schools, getting public school facilities to a B+ grade or better within one generation.
JOIN us
CHPS is seeking partners interested in helping to shape this program. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more and exploring partner opportunities.
In addition, to build momentum for this campaign, CHPS encourages individuals and entities who share our vision of scaling better schools and raising the floor across the U.S. to sign a statement of support, sending a clear message to industry leaders that this needs to be a priority.
