At Bernard Black Elementary School in Arizona, students and parents attended what they thought was a standard assembly, but then the School District superintendent broke the news that all of the students in third grade at the school would get a free ride to college.
Parents cried and children — all of eight-years-old — looked bewildered. At a school where 90% qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, parents said they had no idea how they would be able to save enough money for college.
But for some children, they realized the magnitude of the gift instantly; one youngster proudly told his parents “I want to become a doctor,” he said.
A gift from a local family who founded The Rosztoczy Foundation, it’s called the College Promise program which works to send groups of local students in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas to college.
“We wanted to start young enough so that the kids and the parents would change how they thought about education,” Rosztoczy said.
The Rosztoczy family.
The scholarship covers about $120,000 per student, which is roughly the cost of what it would be to attend a state school for four years. If a child chooses to attend a more expensive program — say they’re accepted at an Ivy League college — the fund would pay the difference.