Investing in Quality Education

Anna Smukowski, LISC Investor Relations and Capital Strategies & Yvonne Nolan, Vice President of Charter School Financing

This January marks UNESCO’s fourth International Day of Education and creates an opportunity to celebrate progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education. “Quality Education” enables upward economic mobility, reduces inequalities and is a key to fostering tolerance and more peaceful societies. Promoting educational opportunity is at the foundation of the work LISC does in neighborhoods across the country.

1.18.2022 - LISC Stories

LISC believes that all children deserve access to a successful public school in their community. But, historically, there has not been equitable access to high-quality public schools given the pervasive impact of racist policies and systemic racism on Black and Brown families and communities. Great K-12 public schools help students reach a level of educational attainment that provides economic opportunity and leads to success in the workforce. In 2003, LISC created a national program to finance charter school real estate development across the country. LISC Charter School Financing (CSF) funds school construction for high-quality public charter schools that predominately educate students from families with incomes below the national average and that educate Black, Latino/a/x, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Indigenous students and other students of color.

Building and renovating facilities remains a major hurdle for new and existing public charter schools looking to meet the demand for quality education within their communities. Quality charter school operators have remained committed to overcoming these facilities challenges in order to continue educating children. Through the CSF program, which is backed by U.S. Department of Education Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities Program awards, LISC finances projects that build or modernize school facilities and invests in high-quality schools that occupy those spaces. Decades of research shows that conditions of school buildings affect student health and performance. By providing access to affordable capital for nonprofit public charter schools in historically under-resourced communities, we can help preserve precious public resources for use in the classroom, so that children and teachers can thrive.

One example is Evergreen Charter School in Hempstead, N.Y. Evergreen is an environmental justice-focused independent school, primarily educating students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It was founded by Círculo de la Hispanidad in 2010 in response to strong and growing interest from local families. The local nonprofit saw a clear need for expanded educational opportunities, especially for immigrant and other underserved families. School leaders developed an approach focused on preparing children to live in a global community, one that respects and values the environment as well as the dignity of all people. Evergreen has consistently outperformed nearby schools in educational achievement. In 2021, LISC provided a $4.3 million acquisition and predevelopment loan in anticipation of a construction project to build a LEED-certified facility.

In order to meet evolving needs for charter school operators and in response to the demand for CSF’s successful Spark Opportunity Grant Program, LISC received a 2021 CDFI Fund award to seed a Charter School Predevelopment Loan Fund. The fund will provide low-cost capital for charter schools that cannot find sufficient capital for early-stage financing needs. The predevelopment loans will support schools predominately focused on educating students of color and/or schools that are led by people of color (POC). Our strategy of addressing the early-stage predevelopment financing gap for charter schools, and also further targeting those schools that are POC-serving and POC-led, is critical to bridging racial wealth, education, and opportunity gaps throughout the country.

In addition to funding school construction, CSF also supports schools with direct technical assistance and through SchoolBuild, a resource portal that provides expansive content on facility financing and development. SchoolBuild is a one-stop shop for charter schools, no matter their stage of facility development. It helps charter school leaders understand their funding needs, identify partners for all phases, and learn about best practices for completing projects through best practice guides, vendor listings, and an interactive Project Cost Calculator. The ultimate goal is to make charter school real estate projects easier to complete and to help school leaders focus on providing high-quality education to their students.

Outside of K-12 education, the LISC Early Childhood Facilities team fills an important gap in the early education and child care landscape by providing capital, thought leadership and technical resources for early childhood education facilities. Investing in child care facilities supports local caregivers, drives jobs and fuels local economies, while also offering the opportunity to address questions of racial and gender equity.

By providing access to affordable capital – we can help preserve precious public resources for use in the classroom, so that children and teachers can thrive.

You can see this at work with LISC’s financing of Beautiful Beginnings Child Care Center in Providence, R.I. Beautiful Beginnings is a program of Jammat Housing and Community Development Corporation, a community-based, minority operated nonprofit that provides affordable, high-quality child care to Rhode Island families. In addition to a $10,000 planning grant and $65,000 recoverable grant to support classroom expansion and improvement, LISC provided a $600,000 loan to transform an old Verizon warehouse into a child care center serving local families. LISC has subsequently provided additional funding to further renovate the building and improve the health and safety of the outdoor play space by adding shade trees, surfacing, and additional play elements.

While there are many organizations that focus efforts on curriculum, leadership development and other aspects of programming, CDFIs like LISC have taken the lead on supporting the facilities infrastructure and organizational capacity of these nonprofit operators. By investing in high-quality facilities and the people who lead them, we can address educational inequality, improve economic mobility, and enable every child’s fundamental right to education.

For additional information on LISC’s education work visit LISC Education and look at our Project Profiles, which highlight investments made through the LISC loan fund:

Anna Smukowski, Senior Director of Capital Programs, Enterprise Community Loan Fund
Anna Smukowski serves as ECLF’s senior director of capital programs, assisting ECLF’s capital and lending teams with capital raising and fund structuring. Prior to this position, she led LISC’s $200 million retail note offering, coordinated LISC investor relations and positioned LISC’s capital raising within ESG, impact and social bond frameworks. Anna also managed $50 million in LISC’s Paycheck Protection Program deployment and has structured and managed affordable-housing and economic-development funds as well as pay-for-success work through a Social Innovation Fund grant award. Anna is passionate about values-aligned investing from the individual to the institutional level and has worked on updating and implementing missionaligned investment policy statements at LISC and ECLF. Anna started her career as a strategy and operations consultant at Deloitte. Anna holds a bachelor of science degree from New York University Stern School of Business and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Yvonne Nolan, Vice President
Yvonne manages LISC’s charter school portfolio, and CSF’s strategic partnerships and initiatives. Yvonne also leads LISC’s research and policy contributions to the charter sector, including LISC’s online platform, SchoolBuild: From Idea to Construction, and serves on the Charter School Lenders Coalition and other industry fora. Yvonne has more than ten years of finance and operational experience. Yvonne previously worked as Director of Operations at Achievement First Public Charter Schools in Brooklyn, NY, and as an Associate in Market Risk Management and Analysis at Goldman Sachs. Yvonne holds a BA in Economics from Syracuse University

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