On Tuesday night of this week four Pittsburgh television stations simulcast a story on a relatively new program in the City of Pittsburgh called “The Pittsburgh Promise”. In short, the Pittsburgh Promise guarantees any student in the Pittsburgh Public School System tuition dollars to go to any approved college or technical school in the state of Pennsylvania if they maintain a certain minimum grade point level both in High School and in college.We are not talking about small change here. Beginning in 2012 each student could earn as much as $10,000 per year for 4 years. That’s $40,000 for the mathematically challenged! For any family with children deciding on where to buy a house, this eliminates completely all reasons not to live in the city that involve finances like higher taxes.
This opportunity is real and it is right now. We all have the ability to donate money into this fund. A very large portion of the funding for this program comes from a challenge grant from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. $85 million dollars in contributions over the next 10 years are dependent on raising an additional $15 million dollars by June 30th, 2009. At this writing there is $3 million dollars to go.
We feel this is an amazing opportunity to help revitalize the city. As quoted often during last Tuesday’s broadcast, “The vitality of a region depends on the prosperity of the city at its core”. This program will revitalize the city by bringing families back thereby increasing population and property values while helping to improve the quality of education offered to all students in the public school system. Improving educational oppportunities will guarantee a better workforce in the future making our area even more attractive to companies with jobs.
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