City Year receives Carnegie grant to prepare more young adults for the teaching profession
Funding will advance national service as a pathway to education careers
Boston, Dec. 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With growing numbers of unfilled teaching positions and a shrinking pool of education majors, City Year, Inc. and the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York announce a “blueprint for change.” The initiative reimagines national service as a key driver for workforce development, with a focus on building a pipeline of future teachers and education professionals in New York state.
A $1.5 million grant from Carnegie will help City Year establish a statewide coalition of practitioners, service providers, employers, public institutions, elected officials, and philanthropic and community leaders committed to advancing innovative education career pathways in the state.
This includes developing a formal pre-apprenticeship experience for AmeriCorps members serving in schools as City Year student success coaches. Student success coaches are tutors, mentors and role models who partner with classroom teachers to provide students with academic and interpersonal skill development support throughout the school day, helping students to reach their potential and stay on track to graduate from high school.
The new pre-apprenticeship positions these young adults to gain paid, on-the-job training with classroom instruction and nationally recognized credentials to prepare for a teaching career—making entry into the profession more accessible and affordable.
“At Carnegie, we believe that participating in a service year can be a powerful on-ramp to mobility-wage careers in education,” said Saskia Levy Thompson, a program director for Education at Carnegie Corporation of New York. “Through this grant, we are supporting City Year’s work to build clear, accessible pathways into the teaching profession and help meet workforce needs in New York schools.”
City Year’s coalition aims to add 1,000+ young adults serving as student success coaches throughout New York state and to set hundreds on a path to teaching careers by 2030.
This effort builds on City Year’s track record of strengthening the nation’s educator pipeline, with 6,000 alumni who have become teachers. Many City Year alumni continue to work in those under-resourced schools and communities where they served as student success coaches. More than 80% of City Year alumni teachers remain in the teaching profession after three years, which is longer than the national average. Current data show that service with City Year New York City and City Year Buffalo could lead to the addition of 100 career teachers in the state over the next five years.
“With Carnegie's critical support, we will work to create a scalable, sustainable service-to-education model that strengthens our focus on cultivating the next generation of education leaders,” says Jim Balfanz, CEO of City Year. “Through this alignment of education, service, and public-private partnerships, which includes the State University of New York, we will advance a highly skilled educator workforce by attracting more young people to teaching and education careers in New York state.”
About City Year
City Year is a trailblazing, youth-powered organization with a dual mission: advancing academic outcomes for all students and developing the next generation of leaders through national service. Research shows the more time a student spends with a City Year AmeriCorps member serving as student success coach, the better the student outcomes—academically, interpersonally, and in terms of attendance. A public-private partnership, City Year is a proud member of AmeriCorps, operating in 29 U.S. cities with international affiliates in the U.K. and South Africa. Today, 40,000 alums continue to lead and serve where they live and work. (www.cityyear.org)
About Carnegie Corporation
Carnegie Corporation of New York was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. Today the foundation works to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for the issues that Carnegie considered most important: education, democracy, and peace. (https://www.carnegie.org)
Joe Zappala, SVP of Communications City Year, Inc. 607.339.1098 joseph.zappala@cityyear.org
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