Black Children Deserve Better. We're Building It.Public schools are failing Black children, not just academically, but in how they see and treat them. Black children, and Black boys in particular, are suspended, labeled, and pushed out of learning environments at rates that have nothing to do with their potential and everything to do with systems that were never designed to serve them.
The consequences follow them for life.
The Black Montessori Education Fund was built in direct response to that reality. We believe that Montessori education, when it is high-fidelity, culturally affirming, and community-rooted, offers something the traditional system too rarely does: an environment where Black children are seen as capable, treated with dignity, and supported to direct their own learning and growth.
We use Montessori as a tool, not a doctrine. And we invest directly in the people, programs, and networks that make it genuinely accessible and cultivate true belonging across the United States and throughout the Black diaspora. Because access alone is not enough if the practice doesn't honor who our children are.
Our Mission
The Black Montessori Education Fund exists to ensure that Black children, families, and educators have access to learning environments that see them fully, treat them with dignity, and support their growth. Working across the United States and the Black diaspora, we advance culturally responsive, high-fidelity Montessori education as a pathway to liberation, self-determination, and collective thriving.
Our Work
Black children deserve classrooms that trust them to lead their own learning, that honor their culture, and treat them with dignity. That is what high-fidelity, culturally responsive Montessori offers, and it is what we invest in every day.
Through scholarships, we put Montessori within reach for Black educators and children who would otherwise be priced out. Through convenings, like our annual Conference and Retreat, we build the community and support network that sustains this work year after year. Through professional development and community centered initiatives, we create a durable pipeline of well trained, well supported Black Montessori educators, school leaders, and advocates.
We do not just support schools. We support communities. Our work reaches across the United States and the Black diaspora, and it is led by practitioners who live in the communities they serve. The people closest to the problem are the ones best positioned to build the solution.
Our Reach Since 2020
$230,000+ invested in Black educator training, children, and community programs since 2020
48 programs strengthened across the U.S. and the Black diaspora
72 educators supported in pursuing Montessori training and certification
63 families supported with Montessori tuition scholarships
Black Montessori ecosystems strengthened across 12 countries
Our Story
The Black Montessori Education Fund was born in 2020, not as a response to a trend but as an answer to a reality that has persisted for generations. Black children, families, and educators have been systematically underserved by educational systems that were never designed with them in mind. Dr. Ayize Sabater I founded the BMEF to do something about that.
The founding came out of the momentum of the 2020 Washington, D.C. protests, carrying a conviction that education is not neutral. It either liberates or it limits. We chose liberation.
Dr. Maria Montessori developed her method working with children the system had forgotten, in the slums of Rome. She believed education was the pathway to peace, and that peace required justice. We carry that belief forward alongside the legacy of Black educational pioneers like Mary McLeod Bethune, who understood that claiming the right to educate our own children with dignity, intention, and care is an act of freedom.
The BMEF continues that long tradition. Not as a program, but as a practice, as a community, an as a promise.
Our Team
We are a lean, community-rooted organization, and that is by design. Our work is driven by practitioners and advocates who are deeply embedded in the communities we serve, not removed from them. Every initiative we undertake reflects lived expertise, genuine care, and an unwavering belief in education as a tool for liberation.
Dr. Ayize has spent more than two decades at the intersection of community organizing, education, and Black liberation. A Magna Cum Laude graduate of Morehouse College with a doctorate in Urban Educational Leadership from Morgan State University and an AMI 12-18 Diploma, Dr. Sabater brings both scholarly rigor and deep roots in community-based practice to his work at the BMEF. He is the co-founder of multiple community institutions — including an independent Black school and a Montessori public charter school in Washington, D.C. — and a published researcher who lectures widely on Black empowerment, educational transformation, and systems change.
Dr. Ayize Sabater I, Ed. D
Co-Founder
Meisha is an AMS- and AMI-trained Montessori educator, consultant, and program leader who has spent her career ensuring that Montessori education lives up to its fullest promise — not just in well-resourced settings, but in communities around the world that have historically been left out of the conversation. From Thailand to Indonesia to the Cayman Islands, her work has centered on one core question: how do you make Montessori both high-fidelity and genuinely aligned with the cultural values of the community it serves?
That question led her to found Montessori Meisha, an online store dedicated to culturally affirming Montessori materials, and is the foundation of her work as Executive Director of the BMEF. Her background in Journalism gave her an early, firsthand lens on the educational and economic disparities shaping Black and other marginalised communities — a lens that has informed her practice ever since. She holds a Master's of Education in Montessori Teaching from William Howard Taft University.
Meisha Perrin, M.Ed
Executive DirectorFiscal SponsorThe BMEF is a fiscally-sponsored project of Mentors of Minorities in Education (M.O.M.I.Es), Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) dedicated to transformative educational equity for children of color.