Early college payments are late
Published 9:47 pm Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Selma City Schools must come up with an estimated $350,000 to pay Wallace Community College Selma or lose the high school early college program.
The school board received the news Tuesday during a scheduled work session.
The owed money is for tuition, books and transportation, among other items, Selma schools superintendent Donald Jefferson said.
“We owe for last year and this year,” he said.
If the Selma School System can’t raise the money by March, the incoming ninth graders will not be allowed to pre-register for the program and 10th and 11th graders will be phased out, Jefferson said.
Collins Pettaway, a local attorney and chair of the early college’s board, confirmed the news and said he put his board to work seeking money to continue the program.
Initial funding from SECME Inc. through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation started the program. That grant money is nearly gone, Pettaway said.
In prior years, state Sen. Hank Sanders has secured money for at-risk students to help the school system with costs.
The school system spent the last $150,000 for at-risk students on the salary of the program director, Concetta Burton, and to place some computers in the program, after Wallace didn’t request the money, Jefferson said.
“Sen. Sanders said he could assist us this year,” Jefferson said. “But he doesn’t know if it will be that much because the political winds changed.”
The Alabama Legislature changed leadership during the election last fall when more Republicans than Democrats were elected to the House and Senate. This found Sanders, a Democrat, without his powerful position on the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee.
Pettaway said his committee would want to have pledges of $500,000 from businesses, foundations and other groups no later than the third week in April.