The Charles M. and Millicent P. Brown Family Foundation granted $24,500 to the Chatham Education Foundation in support of AVID–a national academic success and college readiness system. The funds were used to send more than 25 Chatham County Schools’ educators to AVID’s three-day Summer Institute.
According to Christopher Poston, CCS Executive Director of Excellence and Opportunity, AVID, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, “delivers exceptional professional development for our teachers, empowering them to support students from K-12. Through AVID, students gain invaluable strategies and tools for success, including organizational skills, problem-solving techniques, and critical thinking abilities.”
AVID is offered as an elective in middle and high school, providing students with the essential skills to prepare for college and careers. For many of our students, who are first-generation college-goers, AVID opens doors to explore various career paths and develop as young scholars.
Charlie and Renee Brown, who, along with Charlie’s siblings, manage the Brown Family Foundation, said this is what drew them in. “The AVID program hit the sweet spot,” Charlie said. “We liked that it applied to first generation college students and to the Hispanic/Latino population. It is a big attraction for us to support the ones who don’t have support. And we also liked that AVID can expand to a larger group. We’d love to see it throughout the entire school system.”
To help make that happen, as part of the grant, the Browns stipulated that the teachers who attend the AVID Summer Institute come back prepared to facilitate professional development sessions for their own colleagues. “We wanted our gift to be a gift that kept on giving,” Charlie said.
This gift is not the first to support AVID from the Brown family. In 2023, their foundation granted CEF $25,000 to aid in expanding the AVID program to all of CCS’s middle schools.
Originally from Illinois, Charlie and Renee Brown met on the first day of kindergarten and attended the same public schools. They are strong supporters of public education, and like Charlie’s parents Charles M. and Millicent P. Brown who began the foundation in 2000, the couple believe in giving back to their local communities and focus their efforts on funding educational opportunities in marginalized populations.
“My parents modeled the behaviors they wanted to instill in their children,” Charlie said. “And when we moved to Chatham County in 2014, we knew we wanted to do something for the local school system. Superintendent Dr. Anthony Jackson convinced us that AVID met our criteria.”
Dr. Jackson proclaims AVID “disrupts the predictability of who succeeds and who fails.” And the results in Chatham County Schools speak for themselves as 100% of AVID graduates are accepted to a 4-year or 2-year college, and, in 2023-24, AVID seniors earned more than $18 million in scholarships and financial aid, receiving acceptances from more than 590 colleges and universities.
The AVID program is currently available as an elective in 13 schools within the CCS district, including all high schools and all K-8 and middle schools. Both Chatham Central High School and Jordan Matthews High School have expanded their AVID programs school-wide so that all teachers are trained in AVID strategies, benefiting all students in the schools, not just those in the elective. Other schools, including Seaforth High School and numerous elementary schools, are also working to bring AVID strategies to all of their classrooms.
