Thank you

The purpose of Ed100 is to improve the future for kids by supporting informed and active school communities throughout the state of California. Thank you for being part of the mission!

This post serves two purposes:

1. Summarize what we do.
2. Ask for your help.

I must ask this first: Please donate. We are a very lean nonprofit organization. We stretch every dollar to keep Ed100 going and do the work effectively. We rely heavily on volunteers (including, well, me). Your tax-deductible contribution supports a LOT of work here, as I’ll explain.

What does Ed100 do?

Ed100 plays a unique role in the California education system:
we explain it.

The education system is massive and complex. It has to be! There are about 10,000 school communities in this state, each with varying needs. Each needs a core group of people who know their stuff… including parent leaders, site council members, non-profit advocates, school board members, and student leaders. The system implicitly expects all of these influential volunteers to know what they are talking about, magically, even as conditions evolve and school teams change. Is it any wonder that myths persist and mistakes are repeated?

Ed100 is free, so anyone can learn.

Ed100 enables anyone to “school up” on the system intentionally and efficiently, so they can make a difference for students. Each lesson in Ed100 explains an important education issue plainly, in English and Spanish, with the right amount of supporting context and without expecting prior knowledge. A simple quiz reinforces the main point of each lesson, and the lessons fit together as a course. Pass the whole course and you earn your certificate as an Ed100 Graduate. Discussion guides for each chapter help communities apply what they are learning together.

Every week we release something new, like a blog post or a significantly updated lesson. Meanwhile, in the background, we answer questions, deal with technology changes, incorporate new data, and plan for new ways to support our readers.

All for free.

You inspire us to work hard

We get a lot of exciting work done. We keep our 100 core lessons up to date in English and Spanish. We send an email every week to our subscribers, often associated with new posts to our blog — this one features our 39th post of the year. We added or updated 64 charts with interactive data. Among many other topics we demystified Basic Aid. We explained how California prevents districts from financial disasters. We described the Byzantine process for closing a school. We explained the essential role of schools in universal vaccination.

We presented Ed100 in person or online at more than a dozen events for leaders of PTAs, school districts, and other organizations. We added a new way to work through the Ed100 lessons in 10 weeks program.

But there’s so much more we could do. That’s where you come in.

New ways you can help. Want to get involved?

Donations make this work possible. Volunteers make it joyful.

We have big ideas for 2025, if enough readers like you want to join us. We are really excited about involving volunteers in new ways. How do you want to be part of the team?

Ed100 community volunteers. Community journalism has been growing in importance with platforms like NextDoor and Patch. We are looking for about 10-20 volunteers throughout the state who will bring Ed100 posts to the attention of their community. It’s a small task and a great way to contribute to your community. We hope to make this a fun team that meets occasionally online. Who knows where this will take us? Please use this form to sign up.

SEO consulting. At present, we spend exactly zero dollars to promote Ed100. In effect, we count on readers to spread the word organically and hope that Google sees fit to show our pages in search results. I’m sure we could reach more school communities with the right help and a few partnerships. Is that something you would like to do?

Ed100 for teachers. Over time, teacher colleges have increasingly used Ed100 lessons and quizzes as curricular material. We could do better at this. We need a consultant (funded or volunteer) to help us build the right plan. Is it you?

Ed100 in Chinese. We’ve heard the community feedback that Chinese speakers want to use Ed100, too. There are technical and linguistic challenges to put the infrastructure in place. To overcome the obstacles, we need a committed donor or two. Is it you?

Board consulting. At present, we operate without an advisory board. We could really use a small team of critical friends to help us fix that. If you have experience leading a high-functioning nonprofit board and love our mission, we want to hear from you.

Want to help? Please contact us. Use this form (best) or reply to this email (also great). Thank you again for your support. Oh, and please do hit that Donate button at the top. It really helps!

—Jeff, Carol and Selisa