Federal grant money to help seventh-graders in Cedar Rapids prepare for college

Seventh-graders were seventh-graders Thursday at McKinley Middle School in Cedar Rapids.

In the school's bright, basement-level cafeteria, they chatted excitedly over tray lunches, giggled at one another, and complained about stolen juice boxes.

But after watching a documentary in the morning about first-generation college students, they were thinking - to some extent, at least - about their futures.

'I've wanted to go since I started school,” Nathan Thompson, a McKinley seventh-grader, said about college. Nathan wants to attend the University of Iowa and major in game and art design, he said. His parents didn't go to college, but his sister did.

'I'm not worried because my sister set a really high example,” he said. 'I think I could probably reach that.”

Thanks to grant money from a federal program called Gear Up, Nathan and every other seventh-grader this year at McKinley - as well as those at Wilson and Roosevelt Middle Schools - will get some help.

The program, administered by the Iowa College Student Aid Commission, targets low-income students who are less likely to go to college and provides funding that follows them from seventh grade through high school and college.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District kicked off the program Thursday by screening the documentary. The district, one of 12 in Iowa selected for the program, on Jan. 1 received a $66,000 grant to cover the 506 seventh-graders this year in the three middle schools selected by the student aid commission.

Schools were selected because at least 50 percent of their students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches - a common measure of poverty in schools. But all of this year's seventh-graders at the three schools will be eligible for Gear Up dollars regardless of their family's income.

That money can be used for anything from buying graphing calculators to paying for ACT and Advanced Placement tests. Schools also can use the funds to provide tutoring, set up college visits, and give students public bus passes to get to and from school.

Students also will receive a college scholarship if they go on to higher education. The amount has not yet been determined, but the last time Cedar Rapids schools were awarded a Gear Up grant, students attending college received $2,600 a year.

Tara Brokovich, a Gear Up program coordinator and special education teacher at Wilson Middle School, said she is planning a visit to Kirkwood Community College this year for Wilson seventh-graders. She said exposing students to a college campus early - and in some cases for the first time - is important in the long run.

'Kids who come from high poverty are very limited in their life experiences, usually,” Brokovich said. 'Because you can't afford to go out and see the world. So you've never been in an airplane, or even been to Iowa City, maybe.”

The Gear Up program did not track how many students actually attended college the first time Cedar Rapids was awarded the grant, said Tara Troester, a curriculum facilitator with the district, who oversees the program. That was in 2007, and students who started the program that year graduated from high school last year. The program will track students this time around, Troester said.

Brokovich said she saw the impact the program had on students the first time.

'There were kids who had never seen a college campus before,” Brokovich said. 'Kids who could not afford to take an ACT prep class, so we provided that to them.”