In November of 1989, a group of citizens from the eight
central parishes of Acadiana - the Cajun country of south Louisiana - met to
discuss the growing problems in public education.
They proposed a radical new idea: why couldn't public
schools have endowments like those that support American universities? From that
meeting The Acadiana Educational Endowment was
founded, believed to be the first comprehensive foundation for public education
in the world. To date, the AEE has distributed over $200,000 to the schools of
our region, and has founded numerous other projects and initiatives.
In 2001, the AEE expanded its mandate nationwide, and
created The American Public School Endowments to handle this enlarged
mission.
In addition to donations and grants, APSE has created
booksXYZ.com to generate support for US public education. This website will
generate seed capital to create pilot programs, to write and administer grants,
and to stimulate research and training for teachers, teaching, and learning.
It our belief, however, that an improvement in schools is
ineffective in a vacuum; education is strongest within a community that is
actively involved with, and interested in, general intellectual activity. So in
addition to generating revenues for public education, booksXYZ.com will also
stimulate writing, publishing - and reading - in communities everywhere,
allowing us to approach our mission from two directions simultaneously.
