DALLAS --  Two grants totaling $5.25 million have been awarded to Uplift Education, a non-profit organization that operates college preparatory public charter schools in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area. Awarded were grants of $4.75 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and $500,000 from the Rees-Jones Foundation. These grants will be used to support the opening of two new Uplift schools in the Dallas area, the expansion of Uplift’s central office staff to support this growth, and performance management diagnostic resources to insure that Uplift grows with quality as it grows in size.

The grant from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation provides start-up funding for two new feeder schools (kindergarten through grade five or kindergarten through grade eight) for two of Uplift’s urban service areas that each serve predominantly low income, minority students and for performance management diagnostic resources. The Rees-Jones Foundation is also supporting the opening of one of the new schools Uplift is planning to launch this summer with the Museum of Nature and Science as an institutional partner.

The opening of these two new schools is part of a four-year strategic growth plan that calls for Uplift to open four new schools in total. This will bring the number of students that Uplift educates annually in each of the five communities it presently serves to between 1,400 and 1,600, which will total more than 7400 students by 2013.

“These two grants will enable Uplift to bring the consistency and rigor of its successful school model, with its focus on community engagement, to help more students in underserved communities in the metroplex,” said Rosemary Perlmeter, Uplift Education’s executive director. “Philanthropic support is critical for public charter schools, particularly in opening a new school, since state funds are not provided for charter school facilities.”

“We are excited to be working with Uplift Education to offer additional high quality education options, particularly for students and parents who have historically not had many choices at all,” said Zeynep Young, Texas program director at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. “Our investment in Uplift Education will also help them to expand with quality and will support continuous improvement in student achievement.” The Dell family foundation has made more than $80 million in education-related grants in Texas to-date and nearly $60 million to-date to support charter schools in 18 states across the US.

Public charter schools receive substantially less funding than traditional public schools from the state. This makes grant funding and other philanthropic support essential, particularly in the first three years of a school’s operation before it has grown to the number of students that will allow it to become self-sustaining. At the present time, Uplift educates 3,300 students in its five schools: Hampton Preparatory (Southwest Dallas), North Hills Preparatory (Irving), Peak Preparatory (East Dallas), Summit International Preparatory (North Arlington), and Williams Preparatory (Northwest Dallas).