Freedom Side School

Every kid deserves a supportive environment to learn and grow, but funding cuts, mass incarceration, and attacks on education deprive many young people of that opportunity. Children with incarcerated loved ones navigate childhood in the shadow of carceral systems. Freedom Side School (FSS) was founded to provide a tuition-free elementary abolitionist education to children directly impacted by mass incarceration. Freedom Side is a place where we teach love, learn freedom, and practice healing justice. 

• At Freedom Side School we provide a free education rooted in abolitionist values to children impacted by incarceration. We nurture our students as visionaries, organizers, and architects of a more free world.
• At Freedom Side Commons families, educators and organizers work across prison walls to build a home where we learn together, care for each other, and grow our movement toward abolitionist futures.

This is a unique project with tremendous potential to positively impact children and families now, while building toward broad, generational impacts for our city, our movement, and beyond. 

We will open our doors to our first class of Kindergarten and 1st grade students in September 2026. We will add a new class of students each year until we reach our full K-5 capacity. Every dollar we fundraise will go toward making each child’s tuition at Freedom Side School totally free to families, but the true cost of each child’s tuition is $25,000 per year. We are calling on people who share our vision to commit boldly toward bringing this vision into being.

Join us on the Freedom Side!