Two decades have flown by. In that time, more than 8,700 Kalamazoo public school students have received more than 230 million dollars in scholarships for Michigan higher education institutions. Commemorating the first two decades of the Kalamazoo Promise is a book by Jennifer Clark – Seeding Hope: Two Decades of Promise Stories. Von Washington Jr. is the chief executive officer of the Promise, and Melissa Nesbitt, now a pathway coach for the Promise, has been a recipient.
Washington Jr. recalls first hearing about the Promise in 2005, when he was leading Kalamazoo’s alternative high school. “The superintendent at that time, Dr. Janice Brown, invited me to a meeting. At that meeting, she announced the Kalamazoo Promise. It came about as Dr. Brown worked with anonymous donors who remain anonymous today. They wanted to know what they could do to help the city of Kalamazoo as well as students attending the Kalamazoo Public Schools. It was an amazing announcement, kind of a shot heard around the world.”
Twenty years later, Washington Jr. says, there are hundreds of similar programs across the country offering students scholarships so that they might access higher education institutions.
Melissa Nesbitt was one of the Kalamazoo students who received the scholarship. Today, she works as a pathway coach at the Promise, helping other students prepare for higher education.
“All my life, I wanted to go into the military so that my college would be covered,” Nesbitt recalls her own high school years. “Back in 2005, when the Promise was announced, I really didn’t understand it, but by the time I graduated high school in 2009, I got into Michigan State, and I understood that the Promise would cover my tuition. As a first-generation college student, I went out to Michigan State on my own. I was a kid with a lot of free time. I didn’t have any study skills, I didn’t have any time management skills, and I didn’t really have a community at Michigan State.”
Nesbitt failed at her first attempt. Her grades bottomed out, but the dream of college did not. After working at different jobs, she returned better prepared, earned much better grades, and graduated. Various career moves eventually brought her full circle to the Kalamazoo Promise offices, where she now helps other youth be better prepared than she was.
To be eligible for The Kalamazoo Promise, students need to live in the Kalamazoo Public School district and attend KPS schools for all four years of high school and graduate from a KPS school. The Promise covers tuition and mandatory fees at more than 60 eligible Michigan institutions, from colleges and universities, to trade schools and vocational programs.
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