Free tuition expanding in San Mateo County Community College District

Trustees unanimously approved the board’s tentative budget on Wednesday, June 23, amounting to more than $470.4 million. Of note is the $6.75 million the district dedicated toward expanding its Free Community College Strategic Initiative.

The funding will help expand the Promise Scholars Program, Dual Enrollment at College of San Mateo and Skyline College and the Zero Cost Textbooks program.

Promise Scholars, which saw its first group of enrollees in 2017, provides wraparound educational and financial services to first-time, full-time students. After accounting for federal and state financial aid, the cost in direct aid per student is about $1,800.

Dual Enrollment helps current high school juniors and seniors complete both high school and college level courses. Nearly 2,800 students were enrolled in the program during the 2020-21 school year, accounting for 19% of all 11th and 12th grade students in the county.

With an initial investment of $2.5 million, the district aims to increase its enrollment by 50% in the 2021-22 school year, 31% in 2022-23, and 36% in 2023-24.

The Promise Scholars Program previously received a financial boost from the Board of Supervisors which committed $2 million to the program split between Fiscal Year 2021-22 and Fiscal Year 2022-23. The funding helped increase the number of participants eligible for the program from 2,000 to 2,500. With the district’s investment, up to 4,000 students could be served by the 2023-24 school year.

“I’m really excited to be part of this kind of investment,” Pimentel said. “I would like to see us get to 6,000 Promise Scholars.”

David Canepa, president of the Board of Supervisors and a proponent for expanding Promise Scholars, praised trustees for their investment. While recognizing the immense wealth located in the county, Canepa noted the region is also home to severe poverty and the wage gap is only increasing.

He shared hopes for eventually expanding the program to provide middle-age county residents with opportunities to “reinvent themselves,” potentially retaining younger students and older community members struggling to remain in the county.

“Our middle class in San Mateo County is rapidly dissolving,” Canepa said. “We can’t just stand idle.”

Trustee Maurice Goodman echoed Canepa, noting the county’s “spectrum of haves and have-nots” is only growing. Stressing the importance of providing the communities most underserved access to education, he said education is “the great equalizer.”

Appreciative of the county’s contribution and with the college distinct having put its own “skin in the game,” Goodman said he’d like to see other community organizations recognize the importance of supporting initiatives like Promise Scholars.

“What I hope will happen is our community partners, corporate partners, foundations in our region see this as not only an opportunity to give back to our colleges but their future workforce,” Goodman said.

While one-time funds were used as seed funding for the program, Pimentel said the district would begin to rely on property tax revenue and third-party contributions to keep the program running.

Eventually the board may face trade-offs, Pimentel said, resulting in some initiatives going unfunded as the district focuses on equitable access to secondary education. Still, he highlighted the district’s strong general fund reserve despite the pandemic and noting the importance of investing the region’s “abundance in creating opportunities for all San Mateans.”

“My hope is to continue to push toward free community college,” Pimentel said. “San Mateo County can be a real leader here in making community college free nationwide.”

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

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