ReModel Education

Explore ReModel Education partnerships for charter schools and youth programs: practical skills, mentorship, shared planning, and potential grant-funded resources

Through ReModel Education, the Hernandez Foundation is developing partnerships that connect academic learning with practical life skills, mentorship, career exploration, and hands-on projects.

We invite charter schools, after-school programs, and community organizations to help shape manageable pilots around the young people they serve. Together, we can pursue funding for meaningful student experiences and resources that strengthen participating programs.

Beyond the student experience, we aim to pursue funding for reusable materials, staff development, family resources, and other eligible program costs.

These potential benefits would be planned with each partner and governed by the funding agreement. Our goal is to create lasting value—not simply add another responsibility.Build Real-World Readiness. Strengthen Your Program.

Students need opportunities to put learning into practice. Schools and community organizations need partnerships that fit their priorities, respect their teams, and bring clearly defined value.

The Hernandez Foundation is developing ReModel Education partnerships to connect strong academic foundations with practical life skills, mentorship, career exploration, and hands-on projects.

We are seeking charter schools and youth-serving organizations interested in designing a manageable pilot together.

Our approach is straightforward: listen first, plan together, pursue appropriate funding, and evaluate what students and partner organizations gain.

We welcome conversations with:

• Charter schools and other schools
  Practical learning that complements classroom instruction, electives, and expanded-learning programs.
• Youth nonprofits and community programs
  Mentorship, life skills, family engagement, and student-led projects within a trusted local setting.
• Arts, sports, martial arts, and enrichment providers
  Projects that connect existing activities with responsibility, communication, planning, and everyday decision-making.
• Career programs, employers, and community professionals
  Age-appropriate career exploration, project feedback, demonstrations, and supervised learning experiences.

Employers, professionals, foundations, and donors can also help shape career experiences, contribute expertise or materials, or support an approved pilot.

Our initial outreach focuses on South Orange County and North San Diego County. Other locations may be considered as resources and delivery capacity develop.

Age groups, activities, and staffing would be selected for each partnership rather than treated as one program for every learner.

Your organization does not need to adopt an entirely new educational model.

We can begin by exploring one useful addition: a workshop series, an after-school module, a semester project, family workshops, or a school-year pilot.

The proposed program would be developed with your team to complement existing instruction and your educational approach. Depending on the agreed scope and available resources, ReModel could contribute curriculum development, project resources, mentor recruitment, fundraising support, and evaluation planning.

The starting point is not “Here is our program—make room for it.” It is “What would be genuinely useful to your students and your team?”

WHAT STUDENTS COULD EXPLORE

• Financial literacy and everyday decisions
  Budgeting, saving, consumer choices, household costs, and age-appropriate financial problem-solving.
• Career exploration and entrepreneurship
  Conversations with approved professionals, career research, workplace communication, and small enterprise concepts.
• Hands-on design and problem-solving
  Projects connecting mathematics, writing, science, technology, arts, and design to a practical need.
• Leadership and community service
  Team responsibilities, respectful communication, planning, accountability, and meaningful service.
• Practical life skills and family learning
  Organization, digital responsibility, goal setting, and workshops that help families reinforce learning beyond a program session.
• Modules would be adapted to students’ ages, accessibility needs, and the host’s priorities. The pilot would complement—not replace—required academics or professional support services.

A student team identifies a school or neighborhood need, researches the people affected, develops a proposed solution, and builds a model or presentation.

The team prepares a budget, compares alternatives, and explains its decisions to educators, families, and approved professionals.

A garden improvement, gathering space, community service initiative, or student enterprise could become the setting for practical learning.

This is an illustration of a proposed pilot—not a report of a program already delivered.

A successful partnership should support the students in front of us while helping strengthen the organization serving them.

Beyond direct program delivery, we would seek grant and donor support for eligible resources such as reusable equipment and learning materials, staff development and implementation time, family engagement resources, accessibility supports, and program evaluation.

These potential benefits would be identified with your team and included in the proposed budget. Where approved, resources could continue supporting your organization’s work beyond the pilot.

Our goal is to leave your organization better equipped—not simply add another responsibility.

Funding is not guaranteed. Any award must follow its approved purposes and restrictions. Equipment ownership, resource licensing, continued use, reporting duties, and any partner contribution would be documented in the agreement. A partnership inquiry is not an award of unrestricted funding.

• Listen and identify a useful starting point.
  Discuss your students, current strengths, unmet needs, schedule, and available staff capacity.
• Design the pilot.
  Agree on the cohort, activities, responsibilities, budget, and evidence that would make the pilot worth continuing.
• Plan funding and safeguards.
  Identify suitable grants or donors and establish the approvals, staffing, supervision, insurance, permissions, and information-handling arrangements needed before launch.
• Launch an agreed scope.
  Begin only after the necessary resources and responsibilities are confirmed. No organization is expected to commit to undefined costs or a schoolwide rollout.
• Evaluate and decide together.
  Review participation, completed work, skill development, and feedback. Improve, extend, or conclude the pilot based on what the evidence and partner experience show.

These proposed partnerships are program collaborations, not arrangements to acquire or control a school or nonprofit. Participating organizations would retain their governance and authority over their own operations.

A written agreement would define each party’s responsibilities for curriculum approval, staffing, supervision, student records, finances, communications, and evaluation. Partner personnel time and any financial contribution would be identified in advance.

Neither participation nor grant support would create an obligation to enter a future affiliation or expand the program.

Before a youth-facing pilot begins, we would establish screening and training requirements, supervision practices, communication boundaries, reporting procedures, required permissions, and privacy protections with the host organization.

Mentoring and life-skills activities are educational, not clinical treatment. Where specialized services are needed, their provision would require appropriately qualified professionals and separate arrangements.

Pilot evaluation could include attendance, project completion, age-appropriate skill assessments, and student, family, and staff feedback. Any public results would distinguish goals from achieved outcomes and protect participants’ privacy.

Tell us about your organization, the learners you serve, and an opportunity you would like to create.  We will explore whether a ReModel Education pilot is a good fit and what it would take to make it practical.