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Julie Shields-Rutyna: [00:00:00] Okay, well good morning and welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining. My name is Julie Shields and I’m the director of college planning education and Training at MEFA. And this webinar is Best Practices for Counseling Students in Light of the New Mass Financial. State financial aid programs. So we have, um, a terrific panel here and I have, uh, Jennifer Bento Pinion, who is our director of K through 12 services at MEFA, will be behind the scenes monitoring the the chat.

Q and a. So, um, if you ha have anything you wanna add to the discussion, questions, whatever, put, put that in there. And we have a terrific panel. Um, and I will go very quickly because there’s so much content, but we have Dr. Klan, the McCurdy, who is from. The, uh, department of Higher Education, office of Student Financial Aid, and we have Nile Fuentes [00:01:00] from Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

We have, uh, Robert Days, who is the director of Gear Up Massachusetts, and we will have, um, Bob Barwell, who is, um, executive director of. Masa and, um, also at, um, Framingham High School. So, um, really great panel and, um, lots of good information to share. I’ll just add that this is one of our MEFA Institute webinars and you can receive professional development points for this.

So, um, in the follow-up you’ll see how to, um, how to do that easily for yourself. And if you have to leave, we know how busy your jobs are these days. Um, we will send you the slides and the recording, uh, tomorrow. So thank you. And with that I am gonna turn it over to Kantha.

Clantha McCurdy: Okay. Good morning. Yes, good morning everyone, and it’s my pleasure to be with [00:02:00] you this morning.

I might have spoken to some of you yesterday, so you might hear some things that I shared this morning, uh, from yesterday, but it’s just a reminder, right? Um, I’m sharing this time with, uh, my three other panelists, so I’m gonna be very quick, but give you an overview of some of the important things with state financial aid that’s very relevant to the work that you’ll be doing with your students and getting them ready, uh, for college.

And the first thing that I’d like to tell you, if we change the screen here, the slide.

Am I changing the slides or is, oh, sorry about that.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: It was, that’s okay. That’s

Clantha McCurdy: okay. I’ll give you a prompt. Uh, it’s that for state financial aid, we are truly focusing on access and affordability. So everything that we do these days with our policies, introduction of new programs is [00:03:00] focused around this.

And just to show you what that looks like, next slide. It’s, as we look at affordability, we are looking at, um, providing that through new financial aid offerings. Um, I’m gonna talk a little bit today about free community college and also, um, free tuition and fees at our public. Four year institutions for low income students.

We also are focused on removing barriers, providing access by removing barriers. And you probably heard about this last year when the state passed the tuition equity law that allowed, um, some students who did not have an ability to access state financial aid and instate tuition to benefit from that. So more to come on that.

We also had some workshops on that last year, and we’ll continue that this year as well. In addition to that, we are providing outreach to students [00:04:00] who are outside of our traditional age, outside of the 18 to 22 age, focusing on, uh, students through, um, adult learners, uh, through our mass reconnect program.

But also, I just wanna mention the early college programs that have been really, um. I guess, um, I don’t wanna say important, but popular and more and more schools around the state looking to partner with, uh, our institutions to offer these early college programs, which have been awesome. Having students graduate from high school with, uh, an associate’s degree or very close to that.

So if we move on, uh, I’d like to mention a little bit about the tuition equity law. And this is, uh, one significant way that we’ve moved the needle, providing a pathway for in-state tuition and access to [00:05:00] state financial aid for certain non-US citizens. Students who, you know, in your schools, uh, who are considered, um, undocumented or who have other things to do to receive citizenship status.

And what that requires pretty much is spending at least three years, um, in a Massachusetts, uh, high school and earning. High school diploma or the equivalent, and someone has asked, does it have to be consecutive years? No, it does not have to be. And we’ve even gone as far as to say, if a student completed, let’s say, uh, three quarters of a year, um, we are being flexible and acknowledging that as a year.

So if you have students that you question whether or not they would meet the eligibility criteria, just reach out to our office and we can help with that. Along with that, as we know, undocumented students or students who do not meet [00:06:00] certain citizenship statuses are not able to complete the fafsa. Or at least they can complete it, but it will not result in, um, last year an EFC and this year’s student aid index.

So the Department of Higher Education warped with regent education to develop. A state financial aid application and we call it the mafa, which stands for Massachusetts Application for State Financial Aid. We launched that last, uh, January for the last academic year, 2020 3 24. Your students were able to complete that and gain access to financial aid.

This application was available in March this past year, right about the time that the FAFSA was coming out of all of the challenges. But these students were able to complete that application, um, last year as well, and we expect to be right on target. For 25, 26, um, with the full lunch of the [00:07:00] Mafa, as the FAFSA is launched, I think fully we are here December 1st.

Uh, so early December is what I will say. Last year we had about 500 students to complete the Mafa application and for the 24 25, this current academic year, uh, just under 1600 students. But students can still submit that. If a, um, desire to access financial aid and for some students, um, it may be that they completed, had some incomplete application statuses.

Um, certainly you or the financial aid office can work with the state’s financial aid office to clear those statuses. So good news with that application, and we are very happy that it’s available and continue to tweak it to make that student experience as smooth as possible. So if we move on, um, the exciting news is the amount of money that we have received for state financial aid.[00:08:00]

I’ve been around for many, many years and never would I have ever thought that we’d be where we are right now. We’ve essentially added, uh, $200 million to state financial aid since FY 23, and that is so awesome. It has allowed us to provide the opportunities that we will discuss. But if we were to put up a, a graph that would go back a few years, trust me, it would be very minimal because there were days, uh, or years when we only had maybe $95 million, um, in state financial aid.

And right now we’re hovering just below 400 million. So we’re, um, doing some awesome things in Massachusetts. Um. So what does that mean for students? Um, if we look then at information that you probably need to share with students and be aware of, we switch to the next slide. Free [00:09:00] community college. That’s become the buzz word for this year, and it will be in the future fully implemented free community college.

During this academic year, we through. Two programs, mass Reconnect, which supports students who are aged 25 and older. And that’s where I, when I talked earlier about reaching out to non-traditional age students. Um, but for mass reconnect income is not a factor, and that’s something that you need to keep in mind.

And then this year, mass Educate, which is the broader funded component of Free Community College. This supports students of all ages. Income, of course is not a factor here, but to implement free community college this year, it has just been awesome. Certainly when you, whenever you implement a new program, there are kinks that we work out, and that’s mostly on the delivery side with the financial aid offices.

But as you are working with your [00:10:00] students and if they are selecting institutions and wanna know if they could benefit from this program, I think the important thing is. Income, not a factor completing the FAFSA or the master. Yes. That’s a must do. So if we look at the very next slide here, um, what we are seeing is under Free Community College, the Mass Educate component, uh, it is known as the Commonwealth Free Community College Program designed specifically to provide financial assistance.

For full and part-time students who are enrolled in and pursuing an approved program of study, and that could be a certificate program or an associate’s degree. It’s a last dollar scholarship. Uh, grant. I always say scholarship. It’s a last dollar grant. Which means that in awarding students, uh, the colleges will consider if those students qualify for other non loan aid, such as Pell Grant and a mass grant or [00:11:00] any other federal, state or institutional programs.

And at that point, they’re looking at. How much that student’s tuition and fee costs are, and, uh, minus the non loan eight. And that will equal their, um, mass educator award. So under this program, and if we go to the next slide, um, for mass reconnect. Pretty much the same thing, last dollar. But this program is geared to, um, community college students who are age 25 and over.

Uh, so in calculating the eligibility, the campuses will look at tuition fee costs. Minus the other known non loan aid, and that’s going to equal their award under mass educate. So obviously students who are not qualifying for some of the major need-based programs such as a mass grant or Pell Grant may receive a larger award under this program.

But that’s how it is designed. It’s designed, we can provide this free community [00:12:00] college because we are able to consider. Other aid that a student will get. So those are, um, the two programs that support free community college. Um, does not mean that students are not participated in other programs. It’s just how we make up, uh, the resources to provide that to students.

We take a look at the next slide. I like to do, um, kind of a show and tell when the free community college was announced, uh, this past fall, early in the fall. It was announced by the governor and you see Governor Healy there who’s flanked by her Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of Ed, the commissioner of higher ed, and on the opposite side, key legislators who were involved in creating this program.

Uh, representative Erford and Senator Spilker, along with some student representatives who were able to, on this particular day, talk about what this meant for them. So it’s always good to connect students with these, and I love the fact that [00:13:00] Governor Healy promotes these initiatives to bring about more awareness.

So if we take a look at the next slide, uh, I mentioned last dollar scholarships, that this program provides free tuition and fees full-time and part-time students, which means a minimum of six credits. But the other good news is that there’s also a book and supply allowance up to $1,200 for students who participate in free community college and.

You might consider this a bonus, but for students who meet certain income thresholds, there is an additional allowance for other educational costs that could range up to another $1,200. So we list here for your purpose, um, other income thresholds. And I think rather than focusing on what that income would be, I.

I think broadly, students who are PE eligible will meet this, um, eligibility for that [00:14:00] additional, um, book allowance. So we are making strides with this and, and I think as we look at financial aid policy, hopefully in the future we could move beyond tuition fees, book and supplies to covering a greater part of the student’s cost of attendance here.

So as we look at that and moving on to, um, making college more affordable, if we move beyond the two year institutions into our four year institutions and, uh, and we are focused on the public college sector, there are other opportunities for students who would like to attend a four year state university.

Or State College, and this would be the nine state universities, uh, which includes Mass College of Art, mass College of Liberal Arts, and the four UMass campuses. So what’s available for them? Let’s look at the next slide. That brings us then to [00:15:00] the Mass Grant plus program. I’m sure you’ve been reading in the news lately, the wonderful opportunities that our public four year institutions are announcing, uh, UMass, uh, campuses.

Now the state universities, um, as a matter of fact, UMass Boston mentioned their, I think they call it the Boston Promise or Beacon Promise Program. Everyone has a name for their program, but essentially what they’re doing is partnering with the Department of Higher Ed through the resources that we are offering from the state level.

Um, assuring that these students will benefit from free tuition and fees at their institution. Also under Mass Grant plus it allows a $1,200 book allowance for students. And the important thing is this program is focused on Pell eligible students. So you might say, well, what if I am not Pell eligible?

Well, we’ll get to that in just a second, [00:16:00] but if we go to the, uh, next slide here. Just continuing on that, this Mass Grant Plus is also offered as a last dollar grant and it is awarded after all other non loan aid is contin is considered full and part-time PE eligible students. And of course, uh, completing the FAFSA or MAFA is very important.

We generally indicate that. For the FAFSA students should be mindful of their institution’s deadline for financial aid for both FAFSA and Masa, and that assures that they will be considered, uh, for the best financial aid package possible. Often though, we advertise a May one deadline. For the mass grant program and sometimes the legislature will come back when they complete their budget for the next year with maybe another deadline and all of these things that, um, you know, we will [00:17:00] continue to push back as.

We did last year when under, uh, well, a couple of years ago under Covid, we moved the deadline for Mass grant from May 1st to, um, July 1st. And then just this past year with all of the complications with completing the fafsa, that deadline was moved initially to July one and then, uh, August one. So mass grant plus for, uh.

Pell eligible students at our four year institutions, um, public institutions. And then if we go to the next slide, what if you’re not Pell eligible? Well, we have an app for that too. And it is called Mass Grant plus expansion. It is also a last dollar grant that awards, um, up to half of resources to meet the student’s tuition and fees.

So unlike Mass Grant, plus, this is a program for students who do not qualify for Pell Grant. But they meet the income [00:18:00] threshold, which basically ranges up around a hundred thousand dollars. Um, but important to note that it’s a student aid index now of about 15,000. That’s as close as we can get to where this.

Threshold cuts off and it is something that, um, you know, you might be mindful of as you are working with your students on this. So, um, the only thing is under mass grant plus expansion for four year institutions. The student must be full-time. But under Mass Grant Plus, as I mentioned, it’s full and part-time and students are encouraged to complete, uh, the Master and FAFSA as quick as they can, making certain that they are first meeting the institution’s deadline.

And I assure you, if you meet the institution’s deadline, then you’ll meet, the student will meet any state deadline that, uh, we publish. So if we move on, um, lastly, I am going to just kind of wrap up very [00:19:00] quickly because I’m not going into detail on these programs, but I want to remind you that I. In addition to the free community college and the mass grant, plus mass grant plus expansion, which helps students to uh, have sufficient resources for tuition fees and books and supplies, the programs that you’ve always known us to offer are continuing.

First is that Mass grant, which is the state’s primary need-based program. This is where you’ll always see that May 1st deadline for students to complete their FAFSA or their Masa, uh, and mass grant is allocated directly by the Office of Student Financial Aid. But there are other programs that we list here that are.

Allocated to the institutions and they award those funds to students. Some of these include the cash grant program, a new in demand scholarship program that was implemented last year. All of the tuition waivers will continue, such [00:20:00] as your Adams, your Catholic Certificate of Mastery, the need-based tuition waivers.

And then there was a high demand scholarship that we’ve had for several years, but because of federal funding, we were able to offer that scholarship to public and private college students this past year and again this year. And of course, that’s focused on our workforce. Um. And, uh, we fund students who are enrolled in, uh, college majors that meet the workforce demand, but other programs.

ECE educator, scholarship, paraprofessional, teacher Grant, and of course the Gilbert Grant, which is totally focused on mass residents who attend our private institutions. I’m gonna end with this because I know that, um, we will have an opportunity to come back to you with future workshops, those that we’re partnering with MEFA on and others throughout the year as we start to ramp up.

Our [00:21:00] information and training on the Masa and, uh, other, um, state initiatives. But I’ll pause and see if we have any time for questions. Um, Jennifer, you’re tracking the time, so let me know or if we need to move on, ’cause I’ve probably taken more than my time on this.

Jennifer Bento: We, we do have a couple questions that came in that are, that are really good, so if we could maybe tackle a couple of them.

Okay. Um, the first one is, um, if a student has a parent living in another state and claim them on their taxes, are they eligible for these programs? Okay. A

Clantha McCurdy: dependent student. Is considered a resident of the state in which they’re supporting. Parent is a resident of. So when students complete the FAFSA or Masa, if they’re listing, and let’s stay with the fafsa, if they’re listing that they’re a resident of Massachusetts, but their parent is a resident of another state.

They’re not going to pass the residency issue. And what you have to think about is our state financial aid is based on resources that we all contribute [00:22:00] to throughout taxes. You know, we pay Massachusetts state tax and if a parent is living in New York and paying New York State taxes. Then as a dependent student, uh, you’re gonna be looking at New York or your resources, so your parents are not contributing.

But our financial aid guidelines require that both the student and the parent be residents of Massachusetts.

Jennifer Bento: Okay, great. Thank you. Um, next one is, uh, do students need to sign up for Mass Educate, or is any student who applies to community co college automatically enrolled?

Clantha McCurdy: If a student enrolls at a community college completes that fafsa, they are automatically considered and the college financial aid office will determine if it’s the mass educate component, which our students will be, um, those who are under age 25 or if they’re gonna be funded under mass reconnect.

So the student doesn’t need to go in and say, Hey, I wanna be eligible for this. It’s an [00:23:00] automatic. Process with financial aid staff awarding students for the year.

Jennifer Bento: Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um, and then is mafa only for undocumented students?

Clantha McCurdy: No, there are certain, um, other classifications that are listed there and I tend not to get into that.

I leave that to the legal side. But we do have a tuition equity webpage that lists more information. For now, if you just simply go to www.massmas.edu. Put in the search tuition equity, it’s gonna bring you to that landing page with all of this detailed information. I did not think I could should get into that right now, but we will have future workshops and we’ll have members of our legal team there who can answer all of these related questions.

The other thing is we continue to partner with stakeholders who are working with this population, making sure that they have access to that information. And the other thing I’ll state quickly about the mafa is [00:24:00] that it is available in English and Spanish.

Jennifer Bento: That’s great. Okay, two more quick ones here. And these are in regards to, um, mass Grant plus.

Um, is the $1,200 annual or total? It

Clantha McCurdy: is a total annual award. So, and we look at mass grant plus for, excuse me, fall and spring semester. If a student happens to take summer courses and the institution has available funds, they may extend a book and supply allows for that. But the program is funded around two traditional academic semesters.

So a student full-time would receive $600 for fall, let’s say, and six for spring. And if they’re part-time, uh, it’s half that.

Jennifer Bento: Okay. Great.

Clantha McCurdy: Okay,

Jennifer Bento: we’ll, uh, we’ll move along. We’ll probably good for time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Sure.[00:25:00]

Nyal Fuentes: Julie, I’ll let you decide, uh, how we pivot from here.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: So we’ll have n um, go next. And then, um, yeah, I think those last three. You’re good. Thank you.

Nyal Fuentes: All right. Hi folks. Can you hear me okay?

Uh, department of Voluntary and Secondary Education, and I’m really here to talk about under matching in a way that we’re making sure that all kids are having the opportunity that they want to be successful. I think I, and just so you know, I’m a community college graduate before I fall down. Um, so I feel very highly about community colleges.

Um, one of the things we’re really focusing on in my office, college, career and technical education is focusing on equity and access. And making sure that kids have access to what they want to do. Um, I think a lot of parents, and you might have heard this as well, the, the big headline is free community college, right?

Tuition free fee free community college and that, and that is very attractive to a lot of our families. What I think a lot of families don’t know is [00:26:00] that they, this whole other part that clan was talking about, this mass grant and mass grant expansion, were actually four year. Colleges are very affordable, particularly for low income families and, uh, low middle income families to attend.

Um, so I just, one of the conversations we have, and I’m gonna do the data piece of this, if I start talking about chronic absenteeism, for some reason it’s just yesterday was all chronic absentee data. So I. Just check me on that. But I really wanted to go over kinda some FAFSA data and some college attendance data so we can kind of take a look at where there might be kids that are under matching.

And again, community colleges can have great certificate programs, transfer programs, or you know, particularly for kids in career technical education who just wanna like hone some skills and get the certificate they need to be successful in the workforce. So this is not to say that kids should not go to community college, in fact this kid did.

Um, so I just wanna make sure people put that out there. There’s a lot of different reason kids choose where to go. You know this, most of your school counselors. Um, but we wanna make sure that the, the decision isn’t made because of economics, meaning, oh, college [00:27:00] affordability versus family economics, which can be a whole different thing.

So can we move on to the first slide? We’ll start out about fafsa. Um, and these are FAFSA completion rates that we, that we have here.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Yep. I, sorry about that.

Nyal Fuentes: That’s all I was. There we go. I didn’t know that if it was just me. Um, so this is FASTA completion rate. So I wanted to show this one that con con players, and I’ll show you.

We’re gonna have a future MEFA webinar if you’re a school counselor. How you can see this information for yourself in something called Edwin. Um, we take data from US Department of Education, we match it with SIMS data. And for high school seniors, we create a list of kids who have completed, um, have completed FAFSA this year.

We will not have MAFA data in there at all, um, for a lot of different reasons, including student privacy. And you’ll be able to identify students who are undocumented. So we don’t want that to happen. Um, we don’t want to chill the process or quote out kids on, uh, being undocumented, although many of you know who those students are and hopefully are assisting them to get through this process.

So this is FAFSA only. These are match [00:28:00] students. The numbers will be a little bit higher. Um, in, in actuality, ’cause there’s some students we can’t match for different reasons. I’ll go over that when we do the other webinar with Julie at all. Um, so this is kind of an idea I wanna show you kinda longitudinally.

Again, this is available in our Edwin tool. If you wanna look at the aggregate and, um, sorry, our, our DART tool, if you wanna look at the aggregate and our Edwin tool, if you wanna look at student level type information for your district. And you’ll see we’ve seen a constant kind of decrease in, um, students completing fafsa.

This has been a nationwide issue. Um, we thought we were kind of recovering a little bit right after Covid, but now we’re continuing to go down. Um, and you’ll see particularly for low income kids, only a little bit over a third of low income kids are completing fafsa, so they’re locking themselves outta opportunities to go to two, four year and technical colleges when they can’t get their funding.

Can you go to the next one, please? When we’re really looking at equity, you wanna look at racial and um, ethnic equity as well. There was a weird. Drop in Asian FAFSA completion last year. I don’t know why that is or people know why that is. Um, they still are among the [00:29:00] highest, uh, percentage of students who are completing fafsa, but it has dropped quite a bit.

But again, here, if you look at our fastest growing, uh, racial ethnic population, which are Latino students, less than a third of Latino students are completing fafsa. So we have initial, like from jump. An initial kind of college access issue around affordability when you have so few kids are com who are completing fafsa, particularly who are Latino, and particularly because Latino students are concentrated in probably like 15 to 20 districts.

Um, I mean, there are Latino kids are everywhere, but, um, large populations, majority minority if you would in, you know, kind of a, a, you know, a hand relative, handful and maybe foot full of districts. Next, please. Um, and I wanted to break it down a little bit. Again, I could have cross tabbed everything in the world, but we also know that there’s a problem with boys completing FAFSA and going to college and probably along the whole, um, educational continuum where we need to figure out how we’re gonna serve our boys and young men better.

Um, but you’ll really see here, I think this is very [00:30:00] powerful when we start to look at these numbers and who is actually completing fafsa. So again, these are people that are, these are kids that are locking themselves outta opportunity for higher education. Um, you’ll kinda see some things that might be like, wow, I didn’t really know that.

Black women were completing, you know, FAFSA at about the same rate as white men are, which you wouldn’t have thought of, you know, 10 years ago or so. Um, which is great for black girls, not so much for white boys. Um, so you’ll see here, um, kind of really looking at this and really thinking about what populations do we need to focus on so we can build equitable outcomes for all of our kids.

And again. I put up a little footnote here. If you have access to Edwin and you’re in a school district, you can look at this information for yourself. Of course, the new information for the new, um, fiscal year will not be available until we actually have kids who have completed the fafsa. So probably mid, excuse me, mid-December, we’ll start to having, um, new data around what this looks like.

Next, please. So switching over to college attendance and immediate [00:31:00] enrollment. This is 2003, which is the last year we have data four. So this is, you know, LA not this year’s graduating class before. This is to give you an idea of the kids who actually, um, graduate and go to college. So these are college goers.

The real reason I would look at this, and again, if you see the green, that’s public four year, um, the orangey type is, um, public two year. There are very, very small number of students go to private. Two year. It’s, it’s less than 0.2%. So I didn’t include it. I think it got subsumed in a different category. Um, but you’ll kind of see here kind of.

Trying to think about this and look where kids are going, who actually are going to college. And you’ll see, you know, for English learners, obviously those kids that are gonna college and for the Latino kids over a third, and in case of English learners, almost a half of those students are going to community college again.

Great opportunity if that’s what they want. But when we’re thinking about my cap and other kind of plans for kids, we wanna make sure that we are giving them a list of all of our opportunities. And if it happens to be an economic opportunity, meaning affordability, um, we need to have conversation with us about all the [00:32:00] different financial aid programs they have, including four years.

And I’m gonna get into a little bit detail in a while. Next, please. This is an idea of all graduates. So you, this kind of gives you an idea of including those kids who didn’t go to college. So that light orangey, um, is that Mandarin? I don’t know if that is, um, color. Peach color is, um, kids who did not go to college.

So again, you’ll see some, this is, um, uh, we’re gonna look at another slide here. This, these are historically, traditionally, historically marginalized groups that these are not, um, race ethnicity. This is other groups of kids. But you can kinda see this, you know, over half of our low income kids are not going to college.

Um, and, and that’s kind of terrifying to me. Um, and even if those, you know, have additional, you know, the ones that are going to four years, if that’s a measure in districts, only about a third of our low income kids are going, graduates are going on to four year colleges, which is much lower than other populations.

Next, please. Similarly for this is the same thing, but for race ethnicity, again, for Latino students. Um, only about two out of two [00:33:00] out of five Latino students are going to, um, college at all. And you’ll see again, a large portion of those are going to two year. And really thinking about this and really looking at this for your district, thinking about like what does it mean for students who are going to two year versus four year and I, are they taking advantage of the opportunities that we need them to have or are they under matching?

Um. I think some of our, you know, school counselors say, yeah, you could do this. It’s like, you know, miss, my family lives here, I da da da. And there’s a lot of different reasons that kids, um, you know, don’t go to school. But I wanna make sure, again, I’m gonna keep hitting this on the head. Is it affordability?

That’s issue. Next, please.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Oh, did I go to,

Nyal Fuentes: did you go to, is there one? Yeah. Math exceeding expectations. All right, so I wanted to kind of pull the MCA in here because a lot of people say, well, those kids aren’t, you know, doing very well in school. Um, so I took, um, exceeding expectations. So these are kids that are pretty high performing at math by the 10th grade, right?

So this is on as, as far as an MCAS score goes. And again, this is exceeding. [00:34:00] Um, and you’ll see here for. Latino students. And this is, um, again, you know, we see that for Latino students, uh, you know, 17% of the students who are exceeding expectations, so these are kids that are probably really good students.

Exceeding expectations is a pretty high bar for kids to go to and look at the numbers, you know, again, who are not going to, um, a four year school compared to other groups. And so it’s just something else to look at. ’cause people will say, well, they’re not getting the grades or whatever. Um, next slide, please.

Similarly, these are meeting and exceeding. So these are kids that are on grade level and I just wanted to kinda look at this too. Still a gap here. These are kids that are on grade level. Um, probably have a strong, um, numeracy and literacy. I. And they’re still not going to college, particularly Latino kids and low income kids at the rates that other students are.

So just things to look at in your school to see if there’s an equity issue in, um, students attending college and what that might be. And again, there’s lots of different reasons. Um, but really dig in and see what it looks like in the cycle, cycle of inquiry. [00:35:00] Next, please. This one I found really powerful ’cause two or AP two or more AP courses.

That’s a pretty strong student, right? So I wanted to think, think about this and look at the number. Of black and Latino students who are taking two AP classes and not going to college at all, and low income over a quarter of students who take two AP classes. Are not going to college. So like what’s going on with that?

Um, again, um, a number of go to two years, usually small. Some of those kids are going to technical programs, et cetera. Some of these kids are coming out of our career technical education schools just want to go get the, that two year degree to get. Some advanced certifications and whatever, and that’s great, but really digging into this data on the student level to see like, do we have equity issues in kids going to school?

I find this one to be the most powerful because that’s a really, you’re talking almost about a third of Latino students who take two of my, my P Care courses that are not going to college. Why is that? So I, I encourage people to really look at their own data and answer those questions and, um, see what’s going on.

Um, is [00:36:00] that my last slide? Sorry, how you do it yourself. Um, again, if you’re in Edwin, I really strongly encourage you. Um, we’re gonna share these slides, I assume. Um, the, the CR 3 0 1 really gives you an idea of where your kids went to school. Um, the beauty of that, um, is you can kind of, if you have the right level of access, you can click on a little blue link and it’ll take you to this bottom report that says CR 3 0 8.

And that gives you a kind of list of all those kids. So, Johnny Murphy told you that he went to Dartmouth and you really went to UMass Dartmouth. You can see that student, you can, you can follow those students for several years throughout their academic career to see if they graduated, you know, and that type of thing.

It is a really great tool for folks to access. It’s up to your district to give you the level of access you need. So really dig into that. And then there’s a CR 3 0 3 report. This one includes kind of the, the stuff I was talking about, mass core completion, AP course completion, and 10th grade MAS. Again, I like to look at this because kids who are completing Mass Corps, taking lots of EEP courses and doing well in 10th grade, MAS, they should have an opportunity to go to college.

[00:37:00] So we’re gonna make sure that that opportunity is coming to fruition and that they’re making choices based on, um, what they want to do and not what the world is telling them to do. Last slide, I think is next, I think. Um, and the other one is really using Edwin to look at your, um, FAFSA data, which I mentioned in a sec a second ago.

Um, and we’ll have a webinar that I think in mid-December, Julie, uh, and we’ll get word out to that. And this gives you an idea of looking at, I don’t know why put CR 3 0 1 in here. Again, the CR 6 0 7 report will give you a list of students in your school and whether they completed FAFSA or not. So come mid-December, late December.

You’ll have that initial rush of kids who are running, you know, my, my daughter’s a senior and we’re gonna do FAFSA even though we’re probably not gonna be eligible for anything, you know, as soon as possible. Um, but you’re really gonna be able to keep track over the rest of the school year to see if kids are completing FAFSA or not.

Um, so that’s my quick presentation on this. Um, I appreciate the time and I will move on unless there’s any questions.

Jennifer Bento: No outstanding questions. Nile, thank [00:38:00] you.

Nyal Fuentes: I was so outstanding.

Jennifer Bento: Yes.

Nyal Fuentes: Okay. Oh, one more second. Um, I saw Ms. Shula was here from Melrose High School, and anytime I see Ms. Shula on my list, I have to say, uh, give, acknowledge her and give her credit for saving one of my daughters and helping my other daughter to get through.

And she really exemplifies the work that all, all you school counselors do. And I just like to embarrass her in public whenever I possibly can.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Well, thank you. And Robert, I’m wondering if you wanna just. Take us, lead us into this discussion, and we hope it really will be a discussion about, um, absolutely.

Robert Dais: I, and I’m gonna tell you, man, every time you present on data. You do it in such a, it, it just resonates deeply with me. Uh, that matching, adding that data with regard to the, the 10th grade MCAS scores really, really drove it home. So thank you for that. Um, I’m Robert Ds. I’m director of Garrett, Massachusetts, and, um, I resent gear up.[00:39:00]

College of your readiness, very similar to and your town churches. Some of you might even have programs, um, like one goal ring for Promise. So I represented college access, uh, to things and we usually sit aside, uh, alongside of you. Work with you, school counselors, really just make sure all of this are getting access to a lot of the opportunities such as college visits out, uh, with SAT and some other things.

So we’re really gonna build discussion. Engage you around, how can we best help our students with regards to all these incredible financial opportunities to come along in a very short period of time? A lot of the discussions I’ve had with, um, counselors in many of the districts, Springfield, we, Bedford, Worcester Law, um, we’ve just been talking about what does this mean with regards to how we counsel families and students about making [00:40:00] decisions.

Now talk about matching and we wanna make sure that students are seeing the the, the incredible opportunity they have.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Oops.

Nyal Fuentes: Lose Robert.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: We lost Robert. Oh, here he comes. That’s good.

Robert Dais: I am back. My apologies. Uh, my internet was doing great until I had to talk, so hopefully that little, that little commercial break didn’t last too long. But basically, and what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna shut off my camera just in case, uh, maybe I’ll cut down on the bandwidth.

You all know what I look like now, so, um, but. I really wanna talk about the pros and, uh, pros of all these opportunities. Mass educate, tuition, equity law, mass grant, and how do we help? So, increasing access, we know that’s one of the benefits. Um, first open that were previously not available. And positive impact on [00:41:00] workforce development and economic growth.

We know these are all the pros of these new policies that have come along and all the funding. Uh, we can go to the next one, please.

Yeah, here we go. Uh, and some of the column may more information to keep track of and we know that one of the things that, uh, we’ve been focused with MEFA on and Desi and DG is making sure we understand the distinction. I. Between the mass educate, uh, mass reconnect and making sure we’re well versed with all the nuances, uh, uh, that come along with that.

The good news is there’s so much new opportunity. The challenge is we’ve gotta stay up and really get familiar with it quickly. Uh, the likelihood of student acting, we’re gonna have a scenario shortly, um, which is one that, uh, my team has really been using as a way for us to, to engage in conversation around how do we ensure that.

With these great opportunities around, uh, [00:42:00] financial, um, you know, access to just make sure we’re still not shortcutting or allowing students to shortcut, um, uh, an institution that might be the best fit for them. Um, confusion and misinformation. We make sure that we’re accurate and the students are getting accurate information and not relying on unreliable sources.

And then, uh, limited course offering or closed enrollments. We know that can be a challenge also. So we’ll keep on going. Next slide. This is our scenario, and Julie, after I read it, and many of you can read it, but I think I’ll, I’ll read it out loud, but after, we might even wanna stop the screen share and maybe be able to see each other because I really want to just popcorn it and have a little discussion and get your input.

So here’s what we’re talking about when we talk about, uh, post’s. Bit as, so she’s a high achieving high school senior. With a strong academic and she’s struggling to make a decision, not unlike, I’m sure many students that are coming into your [00:43:00] office and you’re working with. Now she’s been accepted to a prestigious private university with a significant scholarship offer, but she’s also eligible for Mass Educate at the local community college, Harvard tuition fees.

Um, plus you get that extra $1,200 for extra expenses. And then CLA mentioned she would be eligible for the additional $1,200. So. This is her dilemma. Um, she’s trying to make a decision. She’s in front of you. Her, uh, are probably around helping her guide her on this conversation. But then the next slide, Julie, before we uh, go to the conversation is I think we have two guiding questions.

Number one, what questions would you ask her to clarify her decision? We know this is a scenario. You don’t have all the information made a, a clear decision, so we want to guide you or have a guided conversation around. What questions would you ask her to clarify her decision and that what other information might help, uh, in, in helping her.[00:44:00]

Come to some conclusions and get clarity. So what questions would you ask her and what information, what additional information would you want? At this point I’d love to stop screen share and, and see if there are folks wanna popcorn in or have think representative of the conversation. Probably having with students now as they get more and more familiar with Mass Educate.

That’s great. And Jennifer, you can

Julie Shields-Rutyna: see if any questions come in and we can start a discussion around them. Yeah.

Jennifer Bento: And you are muted. Sorry. Uh, here we go. Uh, yes, we do have a couple. Um, this one is in regards to, um, the Adams and Copeland scholarship. So in light of the changes, um,

Julie Shields-Rutyna: oh, oh, Jennifer, could I, do you mind if I interrupt for one sec? Oh, sure. Oh, yep. Do you, do you wanna maybe just pick the ones, maybe about. The questions, you know, the, the, the [00:45:00] Josefina questions.

The Josefina questions, and then we’ll go back at the end and, and do the others. Do you know what I mean? Uh,

Jennifer Bento: yeah. Let’s see. Um, which are those? Let’s,

Julie Shields-Rutyna: well, so I see someone said, um, I’d wanna know the total debt. Oh, she would have after the, the private four year college.

Robert Dais: You got it. I’ll just chime in and then add the other panelists and other folks say, that’s a great question because we left it.

It’s, it’s relatively vague, and again, just like as you’re counseling your students, oftentimes you don’t have all the information when they’re sitting in front of you. But that’s a great question. She had a significant scholarship at that private institution. But it, we didn’t have any specific dollars.

So for you to say, Hey, I, I really wanna know what, what’s the, show me the money, so to speak, of that, that, that prestigious university that makes perfect sense before making a final decision. So thank you.[00:46:00]

Jennifer Bento: Alright. We didn’t have any others in regards to Josephine. That is

Robert Dais: perfectly fine with us. We hope that helped a little bit and we look forward to having. Further conversation around, again, all these tremendous opportunities financially, uh, and, and again, how we can work collectively to make sure we’re continuing to make sure our students get the best match for higher education for themselves.

Thank you.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Great. And I did just see, um, someone did mention just now, um, asking you what her career plan is and whether it requires a four year degree. Then, you know, thinking about the transfer piece.

Robert Dais: Well, love it. Great feedback. Thank you.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: And someone, yeah, someone else mentioned, um, if her career plan is gonna include graduate school, maybe even being more sensitive to the, the debt.[00:47:00]

Nyal Fuentes: Absolutely.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Alright, so, but you’re right Jennifer, there are still some great overarching questions, um, for the webinar. So maybe we’ll just open it up to everything and, uh, ask a few questions of the panel. Yeah.

Jennifer Bento: Okay. All right. We’ll start from the top here. All right. Um, one came in. Do you anticipate any changes to the Atoms and cope criteria in light of the MCAS question?

Kantha?

Clantha McCurdy: So at this point we have not engaged, um, Desi in the conversation. Um, I think we will follow their lead to see, um, as I understand it, the MCAS will still be available. Um, and so if it’s available and it makes sense that we can still continue the um. Tuition waiver that’s offered under that. It’s just that it’s not a graduation requirement, right?[00:48:00]

So there may be a decision made later, but right now I think it’s business as usual. Okay.

Nyal Fuentes: Yeah. Cla, if I may, MC A isn’t going anywhere. I mean, there might be an MA three or revisions to MCAS, but it is still required engaged grades three through eight as well as in grade 10 for our state and our federal accountability systems.

So it’ll still exist. So, and, um, we’re not gonna give too much about, there’s still, um, the law goes into effect December 5th around the competency determination, and there’ll be further guidance around that from, uh, both the department, executive office, governor’s office, and probably the legislature.

Eventually, after all as well, all said and done. But the MAS will still be there, 10th graders will still take it.

Jennifer Bento: Okay, great. Thanks Nile. Um, let’s see. So a couple around the Mafa. Um, I think you covered this, but do you need to complete the FAFSA in Mafa in order to receive money for state financial aid? [00:49:00]

Clantha McCurdy: Yes, a student will need to complete one or the other. In fact, as you look at state financial aid, I can’t think of any program that does not require, uh, a FAFSA or maa, right?

Um, even some of the tuition waiver programs like public service. Or the DCF programs and Adams lic, they all require that. So it’s very consistent and it makes it easier for our campuses to, uh, assist students to not having to look at two different systems, things like that. So it, it’s, uh, it’s very helpful and we can use the data from that we receive from both of those applications for future policy initiatives.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: And, and if I can chime in here mm-hmm. Um, because I’ve heard this now from a lot of. Counselors and families actually. Yeah. Even, you know, when I’m out at the supermarket or something. Um, so I think this is something we can all be aware of that we wanna communicate. Well, I think sometimes people, now that they’re seeing this new mafa form, they’re [00:50:00] asking, do people have to fill out both?

So I just wanna make sure that, um, we, we, it’s, it’s one or the other. Um, and. Either one will, will get you to those state aid programs. But, um, I, I, I know yesterday we got that question too, clan, the people thinking maybe they had to do both. So you don’t do both. Yeah, no.

Clantha McCurdy: Yeah. Great. Although we have had some students to do both.

And what happens is then the financial aid, um, office has to determine which one is appropriate. So, you know. And if the student reads the questions, uh, appropriately on the mafa, uh, we do ask questions upfront and depending on how they answer them, we’ll say, you, you should complete the FAFSA and not the masa.

So if they’re reading carefully, they’ll get to the right one. But you know, I think with so many issues last year, people just wanted to have an application there. [00:51:00] So I know.

Jennifer Bento: And then just, I, I think one final question, um, and it’s more, um, the process of filling out the Mafa clan. What would be the best, um, direction that you could give?

Um, someone just like finding a web, the, the webpage, or is there something we could share? Just outlining the process.

Clantha McCurdy: Yes. Um, students are needing to go into a, a web portal, student web portal, and they can get to that from our website. Um, I [email protected] website, they can put in the search mafa and it will take them to that page.

But like yesterday, I promised to provide the exact link and I’ll send that over to you guys so that when you share this, um. PowerPoint, uh, those websites are there, or the, the links are there, but it does go directly into our mass for portal for students. So they set up an account and then move on to [00:52:00] complete the application.

Jennifer Bento: Great. Thank you. And it doesn’t look like we have any open questions. Okay.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Well, I wanna thank you all for sharing this, this great information and thank you to everyone participating. And yeah, hopefully it will be a, a, a good, a good year getting, getting students to, um, take advantage of all of these programs.

So thank you,

Nyal Fuentes: Julie.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Great. Everyone have

Nyal Fuentes: great.