History

In April 2004, two leading Baltimore foundations – the Baltimore Community Foundation and the Morton and Jane Blaustein Foundation – offered the community a vision for nurturing Baltimore’s most talented youth that would also begin to bring together the community’s public and independent school systems.

Hosting a conference that brought more than 20 representatives of thriving public and independent school partnership programs from across the nation to Baltimore, the foundations challenged the local independent and public school communities to think big.

As representatives from public and independent schools grew to know each other better over the following months, a gradual yet powerful consensus grew around the idea of founding a program unlike any other in the United States: Independent and public schools would develop one-to-one partnerships that would create summer and after-school learning programs to benefit Baltimore City Title I middle grades students.

Partnerships within the Middle Grades Partnership would be true and two-way, with mutual recognition that all parties had much to learn from and to teach each other and that there was much to gain for independent schools and public schools alike.