Last night, the Cumberland County School Board discussed an agenda item concerning the Salaries tied to the GEAR UP grant, which is a pre-college program funded by the United States DOE and overseen by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. At the discussion, a representative of the program named Elton Brown, spoke to the school board.

“We’re putting together 1.7 million dollars to help Cumberland County administer a lot of these activities and services that are understood you will be receiving,” said Elton Brown, a representative with the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. “This is our 20th year of doing GEAR UP grants, and we’ve seen growth in every school that we’ve been in so far. As much as a 10% raise in college boarding rates and we’ve seen in some schools as much as 20%. I think the investment is well worth it in this case. Every time we’re in a situation where people ask me – ‘what’s the main focus of this?’ – it’s trying to help our students. A lot of people think that what this does is that it helps kids that are already dedicated to going to college. Not it doesn’t. This grant is for the ones that are at risk, the ones that are not thinking about it. The grant also goes as far as just helping students in any particular category they want to go to. We give advisement for these kids to try to find a path in the future outside of high school.”

Brown also said GEAR UP helps students when it comes to the workforce and any direction the students wish to go.

“How many counties were awarded this grant?” asked 7th District Jon Matthews.

“Six,” said Brown. “Previously, we’ve had anywhere from 10 – 12 counties, but with this grant, we decided we wanted to serve more students. So, what we’ve done is we’ve adapted a hybrid model, which means that we will start with the 7th graders in January, and we will follow up up until this school year is over with. And next year, once you pick up the 8th graders, we will go back and get the 7th graders and we’ll pick up the seniors which are our priority group. Every year, we’ll move forward for next six and a half years. Overall, we will be serving more students in less counties.”

“Can you help us understand if there’s any specific criteria that made us stand out, any reasons for being selected as one of the six?” asked 5th District Nicholas Davis.

“The criteria for the grant from the federal government regulation is it goes out to anyone who, you have at least 50% of your student population on free or reduced lunch,” said Brown. “And the other criteria is anyone who has a college-going rate that is below the state average, which you guys qualify in that case. There were several counties in that area. We did interviews in probably 14 different counties and we came here and interviewed your staff and we felt like the potential here is greater than some of the other places we visited.”

According to this document by TN.gov, Sixty-five of Tennessee’s 95 counties have a college-going rate below the statewide rate of 56.7% for the class of 2023.