Rising seniors at James Hillhouse High and Metropolitan Business Academy will get trained this summer on how to help their peers prepare for college thanks to a new pact approved as part of the city’s Promise program.
The agreement between the Board of Education, the city and a not-for-profit called College Summit met unanimous approval from the school board Monday night.
The pact comes on the heels of a deal inked over the weekend that brought into reality a new program called New Haven Promise. Funded by Yale University and the Community Foundation For Greater New Haven, the program will pay up to 100 percent college scholarships to in-state schools for students who live in New Haven and keep up a 3.0 grade point average in high school. Click here to read more about the program.
To supplement to the tuition, the city is hiring College Summit to coordinate a greater effort to get kids interested in and prepared for college. The national organization will train New Haven school officials, rising seniors and community volunteers in how to launch a citywide campaign for college readiness.
The program starts in grades K to 8 with a marketing campaign that will cost $50,000 per year.
It continues in college with a more rigorous program, including lots of training workshops. Co-op High is already in the second year of a partnership with College Summit; that will be expanded to all city high schools over the course of five years. Co-op, Metropolitan Business Academy and Hillhouse High will be the first three schools to try out the program.
College Summit charges between $100 and $120 per student for each high school, depending on the size of the school. Costs in the first year will add up to $290,000, according to the agreement.
Emily Byrne, the acting director of the New Haven Promise, said that her program has committed to raising all the money to pay for the partnership; the New Haven Board of Education won’t pay a dollar, she said.
The one-year contract comes with four one-year extensions. The school district can opt out at any time if it doesn’t have the money to pay for it, according to Byrne.