Accounting Grad Tallies Promise’s Benefits

Rigoberto Escalera first heard about New Haven Promise as an eighth-grader, during a rally in East Rock School’s cafeteria. At first he worried he might not qualify for its help with college tuition because he’d transferred in from Catholic school just a few years before.

Almost a decade later, Escalera used the Promise scholarship to graduate, debt-free, from Southern Connecticut State University. He plans to stay in New Haven, working as an accountant.

Staff at New Haven Promise want to see more students like Escalera sign up for the program: kids who go to college, complete it and then come back.

During a Thursday night celebration at SCSU’s Lyman Center for this year’s high-school graduates who are about to head off to college themselves, Promise’s staff gave Escalera the Legacy Award for his commitment to his studies, his fellow scholars and his city.

Since 2011, with funding from The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, the New Haven Promise program has paid at least part of the tuition to in-state public colleges for public-school students who earn a B average on their report card, show up for school, stay out of trouble and complete 40 hours of community service throughout their time in city schools.

Altogether, Promise says that it’s disbursed $12.7 million to over 1,500 students. Now that it’s fully phased in, the program is working on making sure at least three-quarters of its scholars finish their degree.

“The opportunity to attend college is one that most people still do not have,” Joe Bertolino, SCSU’s president, said at Thursday’s ceremony. ​“Don’t take this opportunity for granted.”

As a student at Metropolitan Business Academy, Escalera had volunteered as an educator for Solar Youth, a nonprofit that runs environmental programs for kids throughout New Haven, where he designed a curriculum. He kept up his GPA.

Escalera became the first person in his family to go to college. Without having any guide to what higher education was supposed to be like, Escalera said he sometimes ​“just winged it.”

He commuted to SCSU’s campus every day from his family home, initially in Fair Haven and now in the Annex. He said the college, which has made a special effort to recruit Promise scholars, made it easier to find friends by assigning his freshman-year schedule, including two seminars that all had the same group of students. 

Beyond his classes, Escalera said that Promise also connected him to what he called a ​“strong professional network.”

By senior year, that meant he was driving across the state every day. He went from part-time jobs as a dishwasher to internships at the Yale University Controller’s Office and Connecticut Auditors of Public Accounts. Escalera said that made him very good at time management.

Even while working those paid jobs, Escalera said money was tight, with little left after the cost of books and transportation. Without Promise, Escalera said, he would have had to take out loans — or as his mom, Sofia Tecocoatzi, said, he might not have been able to go at all.

Standing by him after he won the Legacy Award, Tecocoatzi said, in Spanish, that she was very proud and very happy for her son.

This summer, Escalera was hired as a staff accountant at a firm in Shelton.

But he hasn’t stopped paying attention to what’s going on throughout the city, especially in its schools. When he first learned that budget cuts threatened to eliminate Metro’s accounting classes, he said it ​“basically broke my heart.” He showed up at a Board of Education meeting to ask them to stop the teacher transfers, saying other students shouldn’t be denied the elective classes that had left him feeling so inspired.

Patricia Melton, New Haven Promise’s executive director, said keeping college graduates like Escalara is the program’s ultimate goal.

“These people on this stage, they care about you. They’ve invested in you, and they will continue to invest in you. They will be proud of you when they see you graduate in four years, because many of you — just about all of you — will do that,” she said. ​“What does it look like when a city embraces its young people? That’s where we are. We don’t want you to go to New York and Boston and San Francisco. We want to keep you here, where you’re going to take this city to new heights.”

On Thursday night, speaking to the 355 recipients of Promise scholarships who are about to start on the journey through college he just completed, Escalera said he remembered how ​“nervous and excited” he felt when he was in the audience. He left them with one piece of advice: ​“Surround yourself with people you want to become one day,” he said.