Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Plan To Bring Charter Schools To Stillman College, Tuskegee University—And HBCUs Nationwide

Michael Bloomberg, who donated $600 million in 2024 to support medical schools at four historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), has a new plan to back Black education: Funding K-12 charter schools on HBCU campuses. On Thursday, the billionaire former New York City mayor’s Bloomberg Philanthropies and the education nonprofit City Fund announced a $20 million initiative to fund two public schools in Alabama, one at Stillman College and one at Tuskegee University, that will create direct pipelines into HBCUs and promote career success.

The funds will go toward the D.C. Wolfe Charter School in Shorter, Alabama—which is being converted from D.C. Wolfe Elementary School and expected to open near Tuskegee University in fall 2026—and the I Dream Big Academy on Stillman’s campus, which recently opened as the first HBCU-charter school partnership in Alabama. Students who attend the schools will be able to take dual-enrollment courses at the universities and participate in community internships.

“There are two schools that have been announced, and there are a few more in the pipeline that we’re really excited about,” says Jasmine Jenkins, senior program officer for education and advocacy at Bloomberg Philanthropies. “This is a continuation of the work that Mike Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies has been doing for over a decade—supporting high-quality public charter schools and supporting the work that historically Black colleges and universities have been doing for decades.”

Bloomberg laid the foundation for this partnership, launched in conjunction with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), when he made a $10 million donation to UNCF in 2022 to support K-12 charter school programs benefiting Black students. The hope now is to expand from the two schools to the rest of Alabama, the South and, eventually, nationwide.

The effort comes amid a surge of major billionaire gifts flowing into HBCUs in recent months, totaling more than $800 million. Much of that comes from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who has donated some $700 million to HBCUs over the past three months, including a $19 million unrestricted donation to Dillard University and a $38 million unrestricted gift to Xavier University of Louisiana. Home Depot cofounder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank pledged $50 million to Atlanta’s HBCUs in October. Bloomberg—who Forbes estimates to be the world’s 17th-richest person, worth $109.4 billion—has been a major HBCU supporter for years. He made a $100 million commitment to reduce medical school debt at four HBCUs before making the $600 million commitment to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science, Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College and Morehouse School of Medicine in 2024.

HBCUs have produced 40% of all Black engineers in the country, 50% of Black lawyers, 70% of Black doctors and 80% of Black judges, according to a 2024 White House fact sheet. Bloomberg’s new initiative builds on a long, though not widely known, history of HBCU-affiliated K-12 schools, that includes Howard University’s Howard Middle School, Delaware State University’s Early College School, Florida A&M University’s FAMU Developmental Research School and Southern University’s Lab School.

Starting this project in Alabama, where charter schools are still relatively new, is expected to be high-impact. Until 2015, Alabama was one of eight states without public charter legislation. More than a third of children and teens aged 5 to 17 in the state’s Black Belt region, where Stillman and Tuskegee are located, live below the poverty level, a rate significantly higher than the statewide average of 20%. In many Black Belt counties, residents have been calling for more high-quality school options.

The charter school affiliated with Stillman, I Dream Big Academy, opened this August, and the college’s president Yolanda Page says she already is seeing benefits.

“Middle school students have access to field and faculty experiences on campus, and when they reach ninth grade, they’ll be able to enroll in dual-enrollment courses at Stillman,” Page says. “ This puts them on the path to their degree earlier than they had anticipated.”

Stillman is currently home to 745 students and aims to reach an enrollment of 1,000 students by 2030. According to Page, programs like this are key to not only boosting student retention but also helping alumni find employment.

“One of our 2025 education graduates is now a seventh-grade math teacher at I Dream Big Academy,” she says. “There are so many ways this partnership benefits the academy, Stillman College and the broader community.”