Our Past
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Ted Forstmann and the late John Walton first met as donors to the Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF), which was founded in 1993 to provide scholarships for low-income families in our nation's capital. When more than 8,000 applications poured into WSF for the 1998-99 school year, the two men realized there was real demand among poorer families for alternatives to the public school system.
This need in Washington convinced Ted and John that low-income parents everywhere would welcome the opportunity to choose a private or parochial school over their assigned public school, even if it meant they had to pay a portion of the tuition themselves. After the DC scholarships were awarded, they began thinking of a way to take the program nationwide and truly open the doors of educational opportunity. John and Ted first announced the formation of the Children's Scholarship Fund at the New York Public Library on June 9th, 1998. Then Ted, John and CSF's new staff traveled across the country to secure partnerships in major cities and states. Once the partner programs were in place, we began to get the word out to parents through local community organizations, churches, and the private schools themselves, and scholarship applications began to roll in. The demand for scholarships was much higher than anticipated. By the March 31 deadline, the parents of more than 1.25 million children had applied.
An astonishing 43% of the eligible population in Newark, NJ, applied for scholarships. In New York, 168,000 applications came in – representing 32% of those eligible to apply. Other cities with especially notable numbers of applications included Los Angeles (26% of those eligible), Baltimore (38%), St. Louis (32%), and Philadelphia (35%). Parents all over the country were sending the same message: they wanted alternatives for their children's education, and they were willing to pay something out of their own pockets to get it.
On April 21, 1999, the first Children's Scholarship Fund scholarships were awarded to 40,000 children all across America. Ceremonies were held in New York, Los Angeles, and many other CSF cities. In New York, Ted Forstmann explained his goal for the scholarships, saying, "Every child, regardless of their parents' income, should have access to a quality education – an education that will not only prepare them for successful private lives, but help them to build cohesive communities and a strong democracy."
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Our Present
Originally, CSF was planned as a four-year program, and families were not promised anything beyond that. But it quickly became obvious that to truly ensure the children would gain a solid foundation, we would have to fund them through the 8th grade. So, after the first four years, we went back to our partner programs and generous donors in an attempt to extend the original awards through 8th grade and allow younger siblings to get scholarships, too. Most of the partner programs not only agreed to extend the original scholarships through 8th grade and add siblings – they also awarded brand new scholarships.
Today, many of the CSF partner programs continue to offer new scholarships annually. The CSF national headquarters in New York administers almost 8,600 scholarships in New York City, as well as providing matching funds and program support for the partner programs nationwide.
