Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC) is proud to announce the recipients of the 2025 Boulder Fund, a multimillion-dollar grant program investing in innovative leaders of color committed to ensuring young people of color have opportunities to build generational wealth and thrive. Since its inception in 2018, the Boulder Fund has committed $6.9 million in grants, supporting 50 organizations nationwide.  

Grants were awarded to leaders who offer novel solutions to persistent barriers of systemic oppression, marginalization, and misrepresentation in communities of color across the nation, which include solutions to increasing access and interest in STEM, leadership and professional development for educators and youth, financial literacy for high school students, and more. These grants fill a particular vacuum in funding, as many institutions have recently rolled back funding and programming aimed at addressing racial inequities across the nation.   

The Department of Education (ED), under the direction of Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, enacted a reduction in force (RIF) to lay off approximately 50% of its workforce today. This dismantling of ED under the guise of layoffs is a direct attack on America’s public schools, students, and teachers. And it’s something Americans simply don’t want. According to a recent Marist poll, 63% of Americans oppose eliminating the ED, including 64% of Independents.  

Let’s be clear: No matter what this administration says, a Department of Education with just half its staff cannot do the job that Congress and the American people have mandated it to do. It’s time for all of us in this Network to demand that our representatives are transparent about the impact of these cuts, and that they protect every student’s right to have an equitable education. Families deserve to see a clear plan outlining how programs and services will continue to operate at full capacity moving forward. It is essential that practitioners—including teachers, students, parents, and principals—are actively involved in the development of this plan, as they possess the firsthand knowledge and experience needed to ensure the federal partnership functions effectively.  

As we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy today, we cannot ignore the inauguration of President Donald Trump. It is salt in the wound that his inauguration would fall on the day we honor our country's most revered—and willfully misunderstood—civil rights leader.  

We who do this work hold two competing ideas in our minds: the hope that the arc of the moral universe really will, through our collective efforts, bend toward justice, and the reality that progress toward racial justice is always met with backlash. But no one election and no one elected official was ever going to mark the end of our struggle. And we were never going to be in a place where our collective effort would not be needed.  

I may not call myself a political person, but that doesn’t mean I’m not an advocate. I’m actually more political today than I’ve been in my entire life—though it’s not a primary part of my identity and only shows itself outside of my professional life.

I like to call myself a Jane of all trades—I’ve worked in U.S. K-12 education for close to 15 years, including as an Operations School Leader, a founding member of an education tech startup, and a Director of Talent Development for an education nonprofit. I’m also a parent.

The EdLoC Network gathered in Baltimore last month for our National Convening to face head-on one of our most difficult challenges: How can we sustain multiracial coalitions amid, and in support of, our fragile democracy?  

At a time when our work and our very right to exist have been called into question, we know the only way forward is to go together. We see the forces working so hard to divide us; we won’t do their work for them. 

Many of us vividly remember getting our first paycheck as a postgraduate, it really felt like finally hitting it big—until realizing how much of it goes towards paying off student loans. Student loan debt is a widespread experience, and disproportionately impacts people of color, individuals from low-income households, and first-generation college students. As leaders of color, we are uniquely positioned to understand that student loan debt is one of the biggest barriers to economic prosperity for our communities. Pursuing higher education is meant to open doors and opportunities, not shut them.  

Marvin Smith, Policy Council Member 

Transitional phases throughout one’s life can result in a significant amount of financial hardships. When I graduated college in Chicago, after a move from the greater Boston area where I grew up, I was fortunate to receive an inheritance of $5,000 left to me by my grandmother, Nidia de los Santos. She was a hard working and loving woman who moved her life from the Dominican Republic and diligently saved money for years, amassing a small nest egg of which I benefited from when she passed away. It was this gift that allowed me to secure an apartment and purchase the basic necessities to get me through my first few years as a young adult. These funds helped me begin a new life in a new city. 

The attacks on education over the last few years have left parents and educators exhausted, scared and searching for answers. Education will continue to be a key voting issue in 2024, and we know that extremist politicians and groups will continue to manufacture fear and use divisive rhetoric when it comes to our students’ education.

Ensuring every student in our country, especially students of color, have access to honest, inclusive curricula is essential to the successful functioning of American democracy. That’s why we are so pleased to welcome Dr. Heather Harding as an Executive in Residence for EdLoC.

At Jeremiah Program (JP), we often get the question, “Why focus on single moms?” We often answer, “Why not?” Women experience poverty at higher rates in our country, with American Indian, Black, and Latinx women being disproportionately impacted. These are facts.

We envision a world where poverty is no longer feminized, where race is not divorced from gender, where career and financial opportunities are not gentrified, and where women who experience poverty have a seat at the table to influence solutions for their families and their community.

I was proud to represent EdLoC at SXSW EDU 2024 and be among the disruptors and innovators who come together to push boundaries and drive progress. I was invited to represent EdLoC on two panels because EdLoC is that disruptor. We think bigger and deeper. We look beyond classroom walls. We apply a multi-sector, multi-racial lens. We connect dots that others do not. 

For students of mixed-status families, recent changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) have created barriers that jeopardize their opportunities to receive essential aid. Mixed-status families may include students who are legal permanent residents or U.S. citizens, and therefore eligible for federal financial aid, but whose parents are undocumented. 

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was overhauled this year, and some new changes are posing challenges for mixed-status families. The main issue is the requirement for all contributors to have their own StudentAid.gov account, known as the FSA ID, to complete the FAFSA. Contributors need a Social Security Number (SSN) to proceed with this process, posing a significant obstacle for mixed-status families where some contributors may not have an SSN.

On January 31, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a markup of H.R. 6951, the College Cost Reduction Act, which was introduced by Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC). The Committee voted to report the bill favorably on a party-line vote (22-19), and the bill now awaits consideration on the House floor. 

In June 2021, our former State Superintendent of Education made a statement that, at the time, we thought would elicit some pushback from organizations and or individuals who were working in partnership or alongside communities of color regarding education. In this public statement, she spoke about how standards should not be “handed down” from Washington DC, New York, or Los Angeles and she also stated that “Critical Race Theory ideology has no place in South Carolina schools or classrooms.” 

Congress must act to ensure that the 400,000 children who will benefit from the Wyden-Smith deal, do so! And, it must not rest on this legislation. Our democratic future rests on all children living freed from the horrors of poverty.

This deal, imperfect in many ways—and yet, better than nothing they’d say—must pass.

In the shadow of today’s decision, we remain committed as ever to multi-racial solidarity and to realizing our vision of a world in which young people and communities of color have the support to capitalize on opportunities, build generational wealth, and thrive. That vision may seem farther today, but that is why our work cannot stop. Those who seek to oppress and divide us will only continue to do so, designing and redesigning the system to exclude us from its benefits. And so, we continue to demand, disrupt, and dismantle.