About the NISN Facilities Project
The U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program awarded a multi-year grant (Award #U282T180018) to the NACA Inspired Schools Network (NISN) to expand opportunities for Native American and other underserved students to attend high-performing, innovative, and culturally responsive charter schools. The award supports documentation and dissemination of information and best practices in facilities needs assessment, planning, and resourcing, as well as direct technical assistance to 15 schools in three states.
About the NACA Inspired Schools Network
NISN is a community of Indigenous schools and partners located throughout the nation. Since 2015, NISN commits to creating long-lasting impact through community design rooted in Indigenous genius. Culturally relevant education, continuous reflection, and improvement guide our work. The Network is comprised of a growing number of schools and partners collectively transforming communities with Fellowship opportunities, facilities and operations development for schools, a resource hub for curriculum development, youth empowerment, and Indigenous Educators Corps programs. The NISN movement inspires Indigenous excellence. Learn more about NISN’s impact by visiting nacainspiredschoolsnetwork.org.
Why this Work is Important
Facilities create environments where talent can flourish and are important aspects of any school design. However, schools often struggle to plan, secure, build, and pay for the facilities they need to launch and grow. When developing culturally responsive charter schools, there are additional considerations for facilities that are often overlooked in available resources for facilities development. NISN began with the question: How and why do a school’s physical spaces nourish student learning, culture, holistic child development, and community engagement?
Getting Started
“Facilities” is a big topic for educational leaders and needed knowledge and support changes over time. For this project, “facilities” includes the buildings of a school, as well as land/land access, the campus grounds and built environment, transportation, facilities-related areas of governance, financing and fundraising, planning, and community engagement.
NISN has designed learning content for those who are envisioning a future school through to those running well-established schools. Likewise, content and resources are suited for schools located on Tribal land as well as urban and rural geographies. Good entry points for exploring the site are the Navigating this Site and Resources page, where viewers can identify content relevant to their needs, and the Learn from Other Practitioners page, which includes other videos that are part of the Facilities 101 series and case studies showing real stories from the field.