Among the many unprecedented issues the world is facing because of COVID-19, one of the most pressing is how to ensure that hundreds of millions of students can continue to learn over the weeks and months ahead amid widespread elementary and secondary school closures.

Khan Academy ‒ an educational nonprofit with free, interactive learning materials for students and free tools for teachers and parents ‒ is uniquely positioned to play an essential role in supporting the continuation of learning at home. However, the organization needs additional resources to manage the expected strain on infrastructure and the cost burden of adding new programs and services to help tens of millions of students, parents and teachers across the country.

Bank of America has been a longtime partner of Khan Academy’s work and is committed to supporting families and communities in this time of uncertainty. Through its extensive presence in local markets around the U.S., Bank of America will be supporting Khan Academy’s crisis response and helping the nonprofit drive awareness and reach more families.

“I am inspired by how quickly Bank of America saw the opportunity to help the country and encouraged us to think big,” said Khan Academy Founder and CEO Sal Khan. “None of us could foresee a situation quite like the one we’re facing, but it is our collective duty to step up. We need to move quickly because thousands of schools are closed and the closures are likely to accelerate in the weeks ahead.”

With Bank of America’s support, Khan Academy is able to scale their new initiatives to help parents, students and teachers during school closures:

·       Detailed daily schedules for students ages 4 to 18 that parents, teachers and district administrators can use to keep students learning at home. (http://khan.co/KA-school-closure-schedule)

·       Webinars for parents and teachers to help them continue student learning at home.

·       Sal Khan personally hosts a livestream and answers questions weekdays at noon EST/9 a.m. PST on Facebook and YouTube.

·       Khan Academy is exploring ways to further support students, parents and teachers with live “office hours” and mechanisms to answer academic and logistical questions.

·       Bank of America will leverage its reach, including its local community partnerships across the nation, to help ensure that all American households know about the free educational resources that are available to them on Khan Academy.

 “The sudden school closures create an immediate need for millions of families who are struggling to navigate this crisis,” said Anne Finucane, vice chairman at Bank of America. “Sal Khan and the team at Khan Academy have a bold vision for how to help close the education gap and keep advancing learning through this period of disruption, and they have the track record to get it done.”

Khan Academy offers free interactive practice exercises and instruction that covers many core academic subjects from pre-K through the early years of college, including math, science, arts, and humanities. More than 18 million learners use Khan Academy exercises, quizzes, and instructional videos every month. Khan Academy has been translated into more than 40 languages, and the entire learning system and all instructional materials are available in Spanish.

Khan noted that running highly personalized interactive software for hundreds of millions of students who are not in school is resource intensive for a small nonprofit. “Our team is ready but we can’t do it alone,” he said. “This crisis will accelerate the number of students we need to support and the types of programs we need to put in place. We’re deeply grateful for Bank of America’s support.”

“In times like these, the private sector has a responsibility to help bring this type of innovation to scale quickly,” Finucane added. “At Bank of America, this is how we operate ‒ serving our clients and communities, taking care of our teammates and making progress on society’s biggest issues. This support is only one of the many ways we are working with nonprofit partners in markets around the world to address issues related to this humanitarian crisis.”