MICHIGAN CITY — The Michigan City Promise Scholarship program has more money than recipients. The City Council wants to fix that by broadening eligibility to include renters.
In addition to including renters, the council is also looking at whether to include graduates of Marquette High School, a private school, as well as college freshmen who were home-schooled.
Michigan City High School graduates who lived outside the city might even become eligible, although for a lesser amount, as the council retools eligibility.
“We haven’t had the number of students anticipated or the amount of money spent,” Promise Scholarship Director Janet Buetner told the council, which discussed the program at length Monday and Tuesday nights.
“This year I think I did everything I possibly could to reach every student possible, and we had 21 applications,” she said. All 21 received scholarships.
The city spent $224,580.78 on Promise Scholarships for the 2020-2021 academic year, covering college freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. The scholarship fund has more than $3.6 million left. The scholarship program was initially set up to boost homeownership and encourage enrollment in Michigan City Area Schools.
At one time, the city was pumping $750,000 a year into the program, Councilman Bryant Dabney, D-1st, said. He had urged the council to stop that practice because so much money was piling up. “We were funded 19 times over.”
Now the City Council is looking to expand eligibility to improve LaPorte County’s college attainment level. The state average is 48.3% of Hoosiers receiving at least a certificate from a post-secondary institution. LaPorte County, however, is at 28.3%.
“LaPorte County is one of the lowest in the state in college attainment. That means not just a degree but a certificate,” council Vice President Angie Deuitch, D-At-Large, said.
Getting started
Michigan City’s Promise Scholarship program is modeled after Hammond’s College Bound program, which was inspired by the Kalamazoo Promise.
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. is well aware of Michigan City’s program; he testified in favor of it at the Michigan City council meeting when it was approved. The College Bound director spent about a week in Michigan City to help get that program off the ground, McDermott said.
“Michigan City and Hammond are very similar cities,” McDermott said.
Hammond’s program offers $10,500 a year to students, based on the cost of a year’s tuition at Indiana University. Michigan City’s program offers $5,000 a year.
College Bound applies to the city’s students regardless of where they attend school. “We have some kids in Hammond that go to Whiting, Munster, Chicago,” McDermott said.
For both programs, students must maintain a respectable GPA and perform 40 hours of community service annually.
Unfortunately, some of the students miss that last requirement and lose their scholarship. “It’s only happened a couple of times,” McDermott said. He gets College Bound recipients helping in the mayor’s office every summer. Others work at festivals, engineer’s office, police, fire, beautification projects and elsewhere in the city.
McDermott is adamant about not including renters in the College Bound program. Ever since he was elected mayor, McDermott has been a strong proponent of increasing the city’s homeownership rate. The Home Bound program helps renters get $5,000 toward a down payment on a home.
The College Bound program, unlike its Michigan City counterpart, spends close to $4 million a year, McDermott said. “If we would open it up to renters, it would be at least a couple of million dollars more.”
Current eligibility
Buetner drilled down the Promise Scholarship statistics to show how narrow the current eligibility is.
Michigan City High School had about 325 graduates this spring. Of those, 188 had a GPA of at least 2.5, one of the requirements. Then subtract 66 students who live outside the city limits. Another 56 students live in rental properties and are thus ineligible.
Six students plan to get a certificate and not a diploma after high school, another disqualifying factor. Three are already in an apprenticeship program, and four aren’t going to college. Five plan to attend out-of-state schools.
That leaves 48 students who would possibly qualify for the Promise Scholarship.
Of those, 21 students received the scholarships of up to $5,000 a year.
Michigan City’s poverty rate is high, with about one-fourth of the residents below the federal poverty line. That means good students have two other options for college scholarships that take precedence — the 21st Century Scholars Program and the Frank O'Bannon Grant Program. 21st Century Scholars can get all their tuition and some fees paid by the state. Students are on their own for books, room and board, parking fees and other costs.
Expansion plans
Councilman Paul Przybylinski, D-2nd, said opening the program to renters “will help out a lot of single mothers.” Councilwoman Tracie Tillman, D-5th, asked to be added as a co-sponsor but urged that the language be changed to say all single-parent households would benefit, not just single mothers. Deuitch said home-schooled students should be included as well. Buetner said the homeless should be factored in as well.
Tillman recommended including students who have emancipated themselves from their parents, too. Some students are on their own when they turn 18. “That’s something that hasn’t happened yet, but it quite possibly could,” Buetner said. The Promise Scholarship program includes an exceptions committee that could address this situation, too, she added.
Dabney noted that residents of Trail Creek, Pottawattamie Park and Coolspring Township attend Michigan City High School. Because they’re not in the city limits, perhaps they could be given a reduced amount, he said.
“Annex into the city. We’d love to have you,” Dabney said. Pottawattamie Park began merger talks with the city in 2018.
Dabney and Councilman Don Przybylinski, D-at large, were on the council when the Promise Scholarship program was established. “This is four years later,” Przybylinski said, and time to look at the results to see how to fine-tune the program, something the council had originally planned. The council had no idea back then how much money would be doled out.
“It’s now time to move on, expand it, and let more people take advantage of possibly getting $20,000 to go to college,” Don Przybylinski said.
Public vs. private
The program's original goals included promoting homeownership and to encourage enrollment in Michigan City Area Schools rather than its private competitors, Dabney said. Those two goals would be set aside if the program is broadened to include renters and graduates of Marquette High School, a private school.
Businesses coming into the city want to know how the public school system is doing. They never ask about the private schools, Dabney said.
Councilwoman Dalia Zygas, D-at large, favors adding renters but is concerned about including Marquette graduates. “I just really worry about the fact that it would no longer be required to attend Michigan City Area Schools,” she said. Last year, the city’s public schools lost almost $2 million in state aid to competing schools, she noted.
“Every student that attends a parochial school takes money away from Michigan City Area Schools,” Zygas said. “It would be lovely in my mind if parochial school students would send their kids to the public schools.”
Councilman Sean Fitzpatrick, D-4th, noted the city has subsidized the public school system with riverboat money. “I think we should expand it to all,” he said.
Don Przybylinski said Michigan City Area Schools is getting about $25 million from the American Rescue Plan, which also should help the district.
He thought parochial schools should have been included when the scholarship program was set up, but a couple of people accused him of political grandstanding, he said.
“This is going to take a lot longer, I think, than three readings,” Dabney said. “We really have our work cut out for us.”
Deuitch asked to be added as a co-sponsor but said the council might need to call a second special council workshop on the Promise Scholarship program to hash out the details.
Other views
Resident Rodney McCormick was around four years ago when the program was established. “I thought it was terrible that they left out renters,” he said. “This is progress, much needed.”
“There’s a portion of us that have been left out because of the situation with renters,” resident Andrew White said. “I’m a lifelong renter and have unfortunately never been able to purchase a home.”
The primary goal of this program should be to break multi-generational poverty among families and move first generations into college, resident Michael Gresham said.
“I appreciate everything the people in the audience have said about opening up the program and making it better,” Paul Przybylinski said. He hopes renters will save enough money through the Promise Scholarship program that they’ll be able to save enough for a down payment on a home.
Paul Przybylinski suggested the scholarships help pay for certificates and not just degrees. “There’s a lot of people where I work that fail the maintenance class because they can’t weld,” he said.
Buetner favors expanding the program for certificates. “I really feel those students will stay in Michigan City,” she said. “There’s so many areas where a certificate will give you a good paying job.”
Councilman Gene Simmons, D-6th, joined the council three years ago.
“Bottom line, we’re looking to make it more inclusive as far as renters go,” he said. “There weren’t enough students participating, so why not include renters? And they’re taxpayers.”