The catch: Youths will need to earn high school diplomas

Oakland Tribune
By Katy Murphy, STAFF WRITER
Article Created: 03/22/2008 02:37:25 AM PDT

OAKLAND — They are 10 and 11 years old, more than six years shy of the college application crunch. But if they earn good grades and graduate from high school, the fifth-graders at Think College Now Elementary School in East Oakland will have $1,000 to spend on a higher education. For the second year in a row, the East Bay College Fund has pledged scholarship money to Think College Now’s fifth-grade class. More than 90 percent of the roughly 250 students who attend the Fruitvale-area school come from low-income families, and more than two-thirds are learning English, according to data posted on the school’s Web site.

The idea behind the pledge, said Principal David Silver, is to say to them, “If you do your part, we’re going to do our part to get you there.”

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For Immediate Release

March 19, 2008

On Thursday, March 20, fifth graders at a trailblazing Oakland public school
will get a jump-start on their college education.

The East Bay College Fund, a nonprofit scholarship organization, is pledging
$1,000 college scholarships to each member of the 2008 graduating class at Think
College Now (TCN), a college preparatory school in Oakland’s ethnically diverse
Fruitvale district. The scholarships will be announced at TCN’s first-ever
Alumni Night. Thursday’s event features returning sixth graders describing their
middle school experiences and two scholars from the East Bay College Fund
talking about becoming the first in their families to get a higher education.

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