Who’s Promise Is It?

October 6, 2015October 6, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

When a Promise program begins, there are all kinds of questions. Two of the most important ones are: “What are you trying to accomplish?” and “How can you ensure the money lasts?”

And while Promise scholarship dollars obviously benefit those who receive them, they can also be used to fortify a school system. Places like Kalamazoo, Mich., and New Haven, Conn., are quick to point out that enrollment in public schools have made a dramatic turn once a Promise is in place.

So last night in Richmond, Calif., the City Council was confronted with residents urging them to make Richmond Promise benefits available to charter and private school students. Those who were against a strict traditional public school element held signs and made pleas late into the evening.

Here’s one response — a single Promise program can’t do everything. What it can do is develop a culture and leave room for additional programs to be established by motivated individuals who feel the need to address a gap. The nation’s first Promise program — the Bernard Daly Scholarship Fund in Lake County, Ore. — began in 1922 and 18 years later others started a similar program focused on funding out-of-state students that the Daly Fund wouldn’t cover. Both programs still exist.

The issue hanging out there for the City Council, which has vowed to submit a final Richmond Promise Strategic Action Plan at its next meeting, is whether its Promise will be used as an incentive to bolster its public schools.

It’s a question that many places have faced, including down in Greensboro, N.C., where Say Yes To Education recently set up shop. Should a component of a Promise program’s mission be to uplift a city’s school system by investing in those who’ve invested in it?

The answer is not an easy one.

Higher Learning

October 3, 2015October 3, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

In November voters in the Mile High City will decide on a ballot measure to place a small addition to the city’s sales tax. If passed, the city will have $10 million annually specifically designed to help city students pay for college.

Two hours to the south, in Pueblo County, there is another tax on the ballot which would be for the benefit of young college students — a marijuana excise tax that would be levied in the transaction between the cultivation entity and the store.

When county commissioners met a month ago to determine whether to put the measure to voters, local retail marijuana growers showed up… to voice support!

“Contrary to popular belief we definitely do want to see a positive impact from our industry in the community,” said Richard Quessel of the Southern Colorado Growers Association, “and we feel this is a great responsible way to write that up.”

Under the plan detailed by Commissioner Sal Pace, a successful vote would create $3.5 million a year by 2010 and half of that would go toward a scholarship fund that would help defray college expenses for county graduates who attended either Colorado State University-Pueblo or Pueblo Community College.

Pace has said that the proposal is intended to “give Pueblo kids a boost.”

We can think of a few snarky names — be it the Pot Promise, the Ganga Guarantee, Pact 420 or the Cannabis Commitment — but we are more interested in seeing if this passes and what it will mean for other places.

A New Step — The Prep Pact?

September 30, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

Dr. Mike Richards, the President of the College of Southern Nevada, recently called the Promise movement “the most exciting thing happening in American higher education right now.”

Well, we happen to agree, but it is also the most innovative way to incentivize students to see a different path. And while the Promise movement has seen an array of funding options — from business, foundations, universities and even tax programs — there is a new one that is already here.

Take a look at the Phoenix Pact, which makes it possible for graduates of North Lawndale College Prep — a free, open-enrollment, public charter school located on Chicago’s Westside — to go to colleges where they are most likely to succeed, rather than colleges they can afford.

Starting with the class that graduated in the spring of 2015, the Phoenix Pact is, as President Barack Obama is fond of saying, “available for those who work for it.” Recipients must have at least a 3.0 grade-point average at NLCP, enroll full-time at an approved “Success College,” qualify for full Pell grant funding and meet satisfactory academic progress in college.

Officials at North Lawndale have been very committed to identify those “Success Colleges,” where students like the ones who graduate from NLCP have stronger chances of completion.

When the Phoenix Pact was announced this summer, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who helped open the school nearly two decades ago, came back and told the audience:

“If you guys can start to prove there’s not just one amazing young person or one amazing teacher but systemically dozens of dozens of young people every single year (who) can graduate, and cannot just go to college but graduate from college on the back end, you start to let the nation know what’s possible. If you can create a model, the national implications are pretty big.”

Pretty big indeed.

No Waiting Necessary. Promise.

September 28, 2015September 28, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

We get inquiries. They come from everywhere — Utah, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Texas and many more. And there is a recurring theme from those in cities, big, mid-sized and small. “How can we get started when we don’t have a major funder?”

It goes against what some believe what Promise programs are, but I like to tell them that they don’t need money in hand to start a program. Folks in Ontario, Calif., are proof. In fact, that photo above is proof.

That’s one of the crowded FAFSA Workshops hosted by the Ontario-Montclair School District last year when the school system helped 611 families fill out the federal aid form. Given that 86 percent of the students in the district come from low-income households, that initiative probably generated about $2.5 million in scholar dollars.

But that’s not all that happens in the district. The Ontario-Montclair Promise Scholars program was founded as a three-school pilot program in 1999 with the goal of helping students be successful in a global society by increasing high school completion and college going rates.

The city — located just East of the Los Angeles County line — has been plagued by hopelessness, but the pilot program forged ahead, working with students and families in fifth grade and up to ensure awareness, aspiration and success.

For 10 years the program tracked those students, who had benefitted from existing and modified programs already in place. When James Q. Hammond came to OMSD as the new superintendent in 2010, he looked at the data and, in the name of social and educational justice, expanded the program to every district school.

There had always been a focus on PELL Grants for those eligible and children meeting the prerequisites of the program were guaranteed admission to nearby Chaffey Community College upon graduation, but the Class of 2016 will be the first to have additional need-based tuition assistance and options at other local colleges and universities. Executive Director Leslie Sorensen expects about 700 students to enroll.

The district’s partnership includes the Inland Empire United Way, the City of Ontario, its Chamber of Commerce and an array of businesses, non-profits and citizens. And all 2,200 fifth graders — the Class of 2023 — have a guaranteed place in college (Chaffey Community College, California State University-Bakersfield, California State University-San Bernardino, Cal Poly Pomona or University of La Verne) and years of preparation ahead to fulfill the dream.

You want to guess who’s been watching? The White House, that’s who. Just a few weeks ago, in honor of the celebration of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics’ 25th anniversary, the Ontario-Montclair Promise Scholars — who are about 90 percent Hispanic — were recognized as one of the nation’s “Bright Spots in Hispanic Education.”

And that was well-earned.