Julie Shields Rutyna: [00:00:00] I am not gonna start the AI companion. Good morning everyone. My name is Julie Shields and I am the director of college planning education and training at MEFA. And I’m so happy to, um, be holding this webinar, really a meeting. Uh, because you’re all able to participate, contribute this morning, um, we, um, the state, Massachusetts has a terrific new tool, um, that Nile Fuentes and Kate Sendell from Desi are going to share with you.

That’s gonna give us so much information about FAFSA completion and, um, we wanted to. Hold this meeting, number one so you could see the tool in detail and be able to ask questions of Nile and Kate, but also, um, on the call, Bob Barwell from sca. Uh, and I and, uh, Jennifer [00:01:00] Bento Pinon from MEFA is here as well.

We wanna have a discussion, um, and, and hear your thoughts about how together we can use this tool to help. FAFSA completion in the state, how can we use it to help your students? And, um, so we won’t that, hopefully we can do a little of that as well. So with that, um, I am gonna turn it over to, uh, Nile and Kate to begin.

Nyal Fuentes: Uh, good morning everyone. Actually, can I turn it over to Bob for a second? For a little quick intro for our partner at, um, masters of School Council Association,

Julie Shields Rutyna: please? Yes, I should have done that.

Nyal Fuentes: That’s all right.

Bob Bardwell: That’s okay. Is this, when I say all great things about you all,

Nyal Fuentes: no. This

Bob Bardwell: is where you is that tomorrow, this is where you beat up on the

Nyal Fuentes: state.

Bob Bardwell: Um, no, I would never do that. Um, I’m a broken record at this point. If you’ve heard me speak before. You know, um, how I’m on the data bandwagon, um, and certainly around the financial aid stuff. So it’s really important that school [00:02:00] counselors have this access, um, because it helps you do your job better. It helps you focus on who needs your help.

Who needs it sooner than later. So, um, just wanna say again, if you are, um, in this space and you’re frustrated that your district or your school is not allowing you to have some access to some of the tools and resources, um, let us know. We’ll hopefully advocate on your behalf because you should have it and you absolutely need it and your students deserve it.

So I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Nyal Fuentes: Thank you. All right, I’ll take over now as soon as I share and, um, just make, I’m sharing the screen. Um, my name’s Nile Ententes. I am from Department of Elementary Secondary Education. I am, uh, in the Office of College, career Technical Education, and I’m here joined by my partner in crime, Kate.

We’ll, I introduce yourself now. Hello.

Kate Sandel: Hi, I’m Kate and I’m in the Department of Educ, uh, elementary and Secondary Education in the Office of Planning and Research.

Nyal Fuentes: So Kate and I partner on, oops, sorry. Kate and I partner on a series of, um, tools and reports that y’all [00:03:00] can use to kind of increase our FAFSA completion.

Um, we know that this is a big part of, um, you know, the work that we do around affordability and also, um, as we move into kind of this graduation requirements milieu, it’s one of the recommended, again, we’re not there yet, um, graduation requirements for students, and we’ll get more into that. After this session, ’cause we’re gonna really focus on the data in this one.

So, real quickly, lots of texts on these slides. I, I put a lot of text here just so you can take it back with you, um, and kind of have a lot of context when your principal ask you, what were you doing this morning? Or, you know, so you can kind of have an idea of kind of what we’re talking about. And again, we know about fafsa.

Um, we know that. Um, FAFSA and SFA are kind of the keys to the kingdom as far as affordability for a lot of our kids and especially, and, and young adult and adults as well. But, um, we’re speaking mostly to college, uh, high school seniors here. Um, we know that, you know, it’s not required, but, um. Applying for fine LJ keeps post-secondary options open for a [00:04:00] lot of students.

So we wanna encourage the increased completion of massive and FAFSA to even to access, uh, tuition and fee free community college. You need to do FAFSA or mafa. So this is important. Um. This tool was really ma made for a public facing tool for you to try and talk a lot about that in a couple seconds. Um, so folks can see kinda where they’re standing, um, and, and that type of thing.

So really important to get this out there. I mean, I’m hoping that we start to do these sessions more in October than in March, but a lot of the students who are yet to apply for community college and particularly for those kids, um, have not done FAFSA yet. Because they haven’t even thought about, um, college yet.

A lot of them kind of have done the same thing for 13 years. They’ve shown up, they’ve gotten a letter show up at this school. This is your teacher. They’re not gonna get those letters anymore. So I think that’s a really important to think about for a lot of our kids, particularly for historically marginalized populations, and always thinking about these as as tools are reports of equity.

Um, hello Nile. Um, so [00:05:00] the FAFSA dashboard and Kate’s gonna do the actual demonstration gets, she gets the cool part. I’m gonna kind of do, again, the background, you know, the disclaimers and that type of thing. The key takeaways is these are publicly available tools. So my mom, who now lives in Florida can go onto this tool and see what Melrose High Schools, um.

FAFSA completion rates are by a student group. Um, if she cares to, um, it’s not gonna show you individual student, and we’re gonna talk about individual student in, in a second. Um, but it’s not gonna show you individual student data, although that’s available on Edwin. We have lots of charts and visuals that Kate designed.

So folks who like that type of thing to see things moving and, um, visualized. Are there. Um, it’s really for all of you, not just my mom, but, um, it is for school people who might not have access to the Edwin Tools, but also for policymakers. So our bosses are looking at this. Um, for families. Look at it a lot about community partners and your college access partners who can think about your gear up folks, your whatever, your one goal and you aspire whoever your [00:06:00] partners are in kind of increasing college.

Um, the FAFSA completion, and not only the big dogs, but also your local folks. We have people that are working really hard, you know, in community groups, in churches, et cetera, that probably will wanna target particular populations that might be in their neighborhood or whatever. Um. It’s really important.

Um, it’s really for us to allow these faster completion rates so we can do access out to student groups. It is not a blame and shame tool. We know how the media goes, we know what headlines are. It’s not meant to show a list of students and say, and list of student groups and say, Hey, what’s happening in.

Haverhill or Ewen or Worcester, that’s not the intent. It is a let’s do good, um, tool. So important to think about that even though it probably will be maligned and used for other purposes, um, the students are included. This is a little bit different. For those of you familiar in the Edwin tool, we’re using 12th graders who are enrolled as October 1st.

It gives us a steady. Enrollment like you would see in, um, profiles on the department site. Um, the [00:07:00] official reporting that’s used for chapter 70, et cetera. So those are the 12th grade students who are in there. And of course we suppress all the small data. So if it’s a small group, say, you know, native students in, um, Atle, Royalston, you’re not gonna see that group unless it’s six or more kids.

Again, why we wanna increase FASTA completion. We’re working with a couple different state level initiatives. A care, which is the whole idea of, you know, getting more historically marginalized students to attend college and access, uh, higher opportunity at large. It’s meant to provide frequent updates.

We’re talking twice a month, so there’s very few data sources that we produce that are, um, come out more than once. Near real time. Yes. So not real time. So every couple weeks is based on the first and the 15th of the month, you’ll get these data. So right now what Kate’s gonna show you is gonna be March 1st data.

Um, again, working on these pieces and really targeting communications. Um, [00:08:00] the big thing, and a lot of you know, this, is we match data. So we take data from. Our data system called Sims, and we match it with the federal data. I don’t even know what office it’s coming from. I’ll call it Department of Education because that’s what’s, uh, mandated by Congress at this point.

Um, but we had it from somewhere and we match those data. We do not, this is not gonna capture all of your students completed fafsa. There are. So the problem is kids put different names in, but the Feds or with, um, locally in Sims, um, they put a different date of birth and we can’t do the match. So don’t freak out if your numbers look a little lower than you think they are.

This is kind of a guide. This is guidepost data. It’s guiding the way we think and talk about kids completing, um. Fafsa, it also does not capture your Mafa completing students. We will never have that data in there that’s pretty well protected. And those are students usually who are not eligible for fafsa, who tend to be undocumented students, um, who are eligible for state financial aid.

And if, we’ll, you know, if you need more information about that, [00:09:00] MEFA has great resources around, um, kind of that piece as well as, um, a few on the state side as well. I think I did this already, him. I’m really smart. Um, so this is a collaboration between this alphabet soup here of, um, educational agencies, the Department of Higher Education, us and our Executive Office of Education hats off to the people who are doing the kind of background work.

In our executive office IT folks who are matching data and trying to figure out, again, in near real time, um, kind of similar to what we have in these Edwin reports, C 3 0 7, 6 0 7. I’ll talk very briefly at the end about those reports. Those reports in Edwin are the ones you can see your student level data.

You can see actual John Smith and did he complete fafsa? Um, again, in these visualizations is a little bit different than those reports because, um, in the Edwin reports we capture all your students that are claimed. That means students that you say are yours are in that report. And again, this one is only, I’m repeating this a couple times intentionally.

These kids are only October seniors. Um, again, we do the data [00:10:00] match and there’ll be some mismatch. It is available to everyone. So that’s our general kind of overview of what the report is in a real quick time and we’re happy to take questions in the chat or we can stop afterwards when Kate is done.

’cause Kate did a marvelous job on setting up these visualizations of pulling in these data and cooperation nights. So I’m gonna turn it over to Kate. The screenshot is in here. So again, if you wanna show your boss or your coworkers and say, Hey, this is really cool, we should look at this. And then have ’em grumble with not the state, the state to state, but you can kind of show ’em the kind of cool stuff that we have here that’s available.

So, Catherine, would you like to take over? Sure.

Kate Sandel: So first, let me actually let. Okay. Sorry. So you are now seeing my screen correct?

Nyal Fuentes: Yes, ma’am.

Kate Sandel: Alright, so first I just wanna show you where to find the, uh, the dashboard. And so we have a FAFSA data page on the DSI website, and sometimes navigating our DSI website can be a [00:11:00] little challenging.

So I just wanna show you, if you put in DESI FAFSA data, it is the first response. And you bring up this page and this lays out the two sets of tools that, uh, n mentioned. We have the, at the top, we sort of walk through the reports that are in Edwin. Then if you scroll down, you see the FAFSA dashboard. And, um, there are a couple of different ways that you can link to go to it.

Now this report went live in January and it was just, and it’s updated twice a month. The update that, uh, reflects March 1st went into effect yesterday, and at the same time, if you had viewed it before and if you just saw that screenshot on that and other things you’ll see, we did update the look and feel of the report a little bit.

Mainly just sort of how the headers are and where the sort of top. Button section. And that has to do with some like behind the scenes thing. But all the data and the functionality is the same as before. [00:12:00] Um, it’s just looks a slightly different, um, hopefully we won’t, uh, change it midcourse next year. But, um, as we start, we have a homepage and this has a lot of that information that Nile has walked through, sort of the goal of the dashboard or a little bit about fafsa.

Um, what this dashboard is, uh, sort of the, again, that this is the grade 12 students as of October 1st. Um, and then what we hope, uh, this dashboard can do and then how you can reach out for more information. Um, this can and links to go higher and some additional stuff. And, you know, questions, um, in our dashboard, the next button over, we have some navigation texts.

Um, a lot of our dashboards, if you’re familiar with other tools on dsi, uh, pretty similar. Um, but some folks might be new to these Power BI dashboards or Tableau dashboards. And so, um, wanna just [00:13:00] walk through how you do it? There’ll be some filters that you can select. Um, if you hover over stuff, you get some additional information.

And then there are lots of ways that you can sort of filter the information, um, to, to sort of change the visuals and we’ll walk through that. Next we get to the state overview. Again, we reflect, uh, data as of March 1st. Uh, and we’re almost a half of the 12th graders having completed the fafsa. Um, we have all students and then all the different student groups and a little bit of, and we have submissions and then completions and I’ll say, I don’t know if, um.

This year, of course, we’ve updated the FAFSA Pro or FAFSA’s updated the, uh, submission process. And in years past, we generally saw, you know, two to four percentage point difference between those who submitted a FAFSA and those who completed this year. It’s much smaller. Um, it’s almost, it’s under sort of a half [00:14:00] percentage point, which I think sort of speaks to the, I hope, speaks to the improved FAFSA process.

So more folks are getting in, they’re completing it. Quicker. And the first time they’re completing it, they’re actually completing it, which I think hopefully is a good sign. Um, but here we sort of have the data up to date for all the student groups and a quick little visual where you can see the, the variation in completion rates.

And then at the bottom we have, uh, the year to date. And this I think is, is really nice. Um, and we’re saving the data for this year so that next year we can do year to year comparisons. You can sort of see the process and again, as you hover over, you get the data point as you see the percentage go up, so it’s easier to understand.

Um, and then when you’re up here, if you click and you say, well, what’s the year to date progress for students with disabilities? You click on that. The chart below has updated, so now it’s showing students with disabilities. I’ll note it’s really [00:15:00] important to pay attention to this. Um. Access on the side since, uh, the scale switches, right?

Sometimes the line looks the same and you’re like, oh, that’s the, it’s the same and it’s not. It’s sort of the scale has, has switched. But again, you can do that. And then if you click on it again, it goes back to all students. And we note below, uh. That suppressed data for the state level. We won’t hit the suppression issues.

And then we talk about the, uh, clicking on the student group. Now we can go over.

Nyal Fuentes: Hey Kate. Kate, can I just jump in for a second on that slide? Yep. I, I think this is really important, again, as an equity tool, and we’re looking at this as a state, I just wanna, um, we decided to put in low income and non low income, both as groups.

Um, ’cause we think this is hugely important. People who benefit most from completing FAFSA are low income students, and we know that low income, you know, this roughly correlates with the number of low income students [00:16:00] and non low income students attending college. But really this gap of 25 percentage points, roughly 24 or 0.1, I guess.

Um mm-hmm. And historically it’s been around 25 between non low, low-income and low-income students is really troubling. To us here particularly. ’cause the ends are so high there, we have a lot of, you know, 40% of our students are low income. Um, so really thinking about how we focus on this, we intentionally left both these groups in here.

So you can kind of mind that gap as we move along in your own schools and districts. And this is something we are really trying to work hard on because those students really will benefit both from the Mass Grant program for four years and of course the, um, tuition and fee free community college programs for post-secondary education.

Sorry, Kate, go ahead. No,

Kate Sandel: great point. I think also we were trying to be intentional with sort of the, the order. Um, I think typically we do sort of raise as the first subgroup and we switched it up and put the low income, um, as sort of the first one at the top. Um, and we try to mirror this grouping across the other, other [00:17:00] pages.

So then we can go over to district and school overview. Here you have the dropdown. Um, it defaults of course, to the, the first one on the list. You can either scroll to find your district, okay. You can either scroll to find your district or use the type, like let’s say if I’m Worcester, I don’t wanna go all the way to the bottom and select it.

And then you get to see the district level at the top, and then the individual school breakdowns, and then the student group comparison. And by default it will be. Sort of the district level view for the student group overview with all schools. But if you want, you can change it to, um, a different school.

And now this updates to that. And here we start to see, uh, what suppression looks like in the tables. Non-binary if there’s only one student. And so that is suppressed. The zeros are shown and we, we have that, that data suppressed out too. Um. [00:18:00] And yeah, you, you get to see the track and then if you go over to year to, but then let me just do quickly.

So let’s say I changed to this. You’ll notice the school is still tied to North High School, so I just have to go back and I either go to all schools to get, um, that, so you just sort of have to play around with some of the filters. Get that to work. I’m gonna keep it at Worcester. If I go to year to date comparison, this year to date comparison is sort of tied to this district and school overview tab.

And so now I bring up Worcester and I get to see the year to date, um, for the state is gonna be that black line here. Uh, at where, that’s the second sort of dot there, that’s the state. And then you have the district and then all the individual high schools and you can compare it, um, over time. Student groups.

I wanna see low income. You can get to see that. And then again, I said these are linked. If I go back here now, this is [00:19:00] tied to Worcester again. Um, I guess I hadn’t changed that. So that sort of, uh, lets you dig into individual districts and schools and see their progress throughout the, the FAFSA cycle.

And then we have high flyers and this says, well, what, who, what district has the highest overall? ’cause we do sort of wanna celebrate those, um, schools and districts. Um, and I guess the student subgroup is tied throughout. I’m gonna have to switch that. Um, so. Uh, I’m sorry. So, uh, here we have it, it defaults to the latest period, which of course is March 1st.

But if you wanted to see what, uh, sort of the, we’ll say scoreboard. What, what, what sort of the, the list looks like as of January 1st. You can go back in time if you want. Um, it, of course, it’s all students, but you can sort of change it to low [00:20:00] income if you want. Um. And yeah. And then this, there are, I think this lists the top 25, so you will have to sort of scroll down.

And then we also have big movers where we wanna celebrate.

Nyal Fuentes: Okay. Can I stop one second again, sorry. Um, the one thing we need to do here and uh, is to mind your ends, um, because looking at the number of students and percentage is both important. So if you’re looking at low income kids, I think it was in.

Cohasset, it’s a, you know, they have a pretty high percentage of low income students completing, but they have a very low number of low income Rockport, similarly. Um, so looking at the ends is also really important because you can see a place like, you know, Kennedy, um, EMK in Boston has a very high percentage rate for low income kids.

Also a lot of low income kids in that school. And both of those are important to look at. Numbers and percentages are both important to look at. Thank you.

Kate Sandel: Yeah, no, great point. Um, [00:21:00] and then big movers is, is showing, uh, sort of the districts with the largest percentage point increases in path of completion over a time period and a default to sort of the most recent two weeks.

So between February 15th and March 1st, who saw a big bump? And this again, we knew the ends would be small. Um, this is sort of a, a, a concept where we’re seeing how it works. We knew the hands would be small, but, um, the thing, just wanted to see what it would be like. Uh, you could go, but this is also one with the filters where you, you need to be careful ’cause you can set, set the filters to be, um, going from the past to the fu or from the future to the past.

And then you might get negative numbers or zeros. Um. But yeah, so that just lets you show progress over time. And then we also have about the data, which just provides a little more information, um, and [00:22:00] context. And again, I think for a lot of our tools, if you have questions, do try to look around. ’cause we do try to, um.

Put what we think are the answers to frequently asked questions. So this, um, we have in about the data. So if you wanted to know again, what the number of 12th grade 12 students are, this gives you that information, the difference between sub submitted and completed a little bit about the information. Um, and then just again, it’s updated twice a month and there is the possibility for slight variation in historical data when we update.

That just has to do with data. Um, but we. Anticipate those to be sort of minor changes, would that likely reflect in the number? Not percentage, but we wanted to allow for that and again, for more help, um, links to, uh, mass financial aid to MEFA, um, and then go higher. Um, and I think go higher just also has a lot of that [00:23:00] for that FAFSA and um, non FAFSA financial aid option.

Nyal Fuentes: Right. So we’re happy to take questions. I do have one more slide ’cause I wanna talk a little bit about Edwin, if I can. Oh, but we, we can jump back in for any Kate questions as well. So let me, uh, once again, it’s always like my first day, sometimes electronically. Um, so a little bit about the FAFSA tool, and these are very, you know, similar data rolling.

These tools, um, except the FAFSA tool in Edwin is updated probably several times a week as opposed to what we have here, um, which is again, public and, uh. Updated twice a month. Um, the real intent of this FAFSA report, and I think some of you are very familiar with this, we’ve done some trainings on this, but happy to talk about it with folks, is this really allows school and district staff, so again, non-public, um, in, in the security portal in Edwin, um, to see FAFSA completion data at the aggregate and student level.

So this is the whole idea that you can [00:24:00] look at John Smith or Juan Soto or whoever and kind of see if they’ve. Been reported in, matched as completed FAFs completing fafsa. Again, there is a lot of noise in here because we are not gonna capture students who are not eligible for FAFSA or complete Masa.

And sometimes, again, with that name matching convention, particularly higher for our Latino students who might use, um, um, Latino naming conventions, which is the e uh, Fuentes type thing. Um, both names, they might have reported a different name. In Sims than in the feds. And I’m gonna keep saying that and keep saying that because people always will call and say, I’m not capturing these kids.

The beauty of that is if they do report completing FAFSA to the feds, um, have fill file, there’s also an unmatched file in there. That you should always look at. ’cause a lot of times you’ll see, oh, there was one. He wasn’t in the matched file, but he’s in the unmatched file. In the unmatched file. You’ll also see some kids that you might not have that just said they went to your high school.

So they would get, they were getting information reported by [00:25:00] students, um, to the federal government. So you’ll find those students in there. And again, the most important part of any of these reports and tools is that we’re getting more kids to access higher education. And mitigate the kind of affordability issues.

So that is the real intent of all this. It is not just meant to be a scoreboard on how, you know, how fast we’re doing paperwork. Also in NIST it’s a little bit different. The percentages will be different ’cause it includes, um. 12th grades and what we call SP students. So those are, you know, probably 1500 students across the Commonwealth who are enrolled mostly until they’re 22.

So they’re not in a grade, they’re, they’re kind of coded as sp a lot of those students, um, are in special education schools in chapter 76 schools. Um. 7, 7 66 schools, excuse me. Um, and so they’re out of district placements, but we put ’em in there because they belong to our districts and they’re all of our kids.

And we really feel that it’s important to look at all the students in these kind of school facing reports, um, to really serve all of our kids. Again, we are. Seriously and, [00:26:00] um, focused on the equity of this and particularly of closing our college, going gaps. Um, the way to go, if you have access to Edwin, it’s in the security portal.

Um, you go in, you sign in, your role is given by your district. So Kate and I can’t say, Hey. Yeah, Bob. Here’s, here’s your access. So really go into and talk to your districts and get the right role so you can access the student level data. When you’re looking at this. Again, totally different than the dashboard, but I like a lot of things.

I look at the dashboard kind of as the gateway drug, if you would, into kind of these student level reports so you can really serve the kids that you need to serve. And sometimes you just don’t know, you know if a kid has done it or not, because you have. 250, 300, 400 kids that you’re working with, and you just can’t keep track of every one of them.

Um, so it’s, I think these tools provide at least one method in which we can kind of chase down kids and have them have access to the American dream and the higher education. So that is what we have for today. Um, I don’t know [00:27:00] if Kate has any questions. Um, Bob or Julie, happy to take questions or anyone in this, um, illustrious group.

Always happy to, um, take your questions now or you can email us at EWIS at. Is it mass.gov? Does that work? I’m gonna do MAs do edu.

Kate Sandel: Does work,

Nyal Fuentes: does work. Um, yes. Anything, any other questions for us? Happy to take as much time as you need to get this

Julie Shields Rutyna: done. Well, I guess I will just say yes please. Um. If you would, um, share how, how do you, what do you think isn’t, what do you think of this tool?

Um, and do you have any ideas of how, um, the organizations that Nile mentioned, how Masco, how MEFA. Could help you in your schools, your districts, uh, with FAFSA completion, you know, with the addition of this tool and seeing all of the data that, that are in here. So if you would share, we really would [00:28:00] love, uh, your thoughts and opinions on it, and you can go right off mute and, um, that’s why we wanted to have this as a meeting instead of a traditional webinar.

Uh, come right off mute and, and share.

Jacklyn Brodeur: I’ll share. Um, one, one, uh, thought is that, um. Making FAFSA data, um, work with our information systems, um, eventually is something that would be really huge. Having to look in multiple different places, um, is really hard as counselor. So we, we can’t really keep up with our students when we’re looking in so many places.

So, um, the dream would be like that this information would communicate with our school level, um, information systems.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Thank you. That’s, that’s great. Thank you.

[00:29:00] What else?

Bob Bardwell: I think they’re all being shy. Um, I, I just have a question because I’m not in school anymore, but is anyone. Or whoever’s in the room. This idea, Nile mentioned it earlier, that it might be required as part of graduation requirement that every student fills out a FAFSA or a FAFSA That’s proposed. It’s not happening yet.

I just was curious if there was any feedback from you all in the field, how you felt about that, or had any worries or concerns or celebrations.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Um, I would personally be, I’m a technical high school, uh, counselor, and so for me, thinking about that as a graduation requirement, um, having students who are not pursuing higher ed, I don’t know if that would be. Like I, I don’t know if that would be the best use of their time as they’re getting ready for their next steps, whether that be the [00:30:00] union or the military, or just going into their technical career.

Um, a lot of this stuff doesn’t apply to them, and they already sit through all of our presentations and learn about the information and then kind of making them do it again. When they aren’t applying to college, I, I just don’t know if that would be the best use of their time. So I, I foresee that maybe, possibly being something, if that does come down the line as a requirement, an issue with, with some of my technical kids.

Bob Bardwell: Thank you, Krisa. And I don’t wanna speak for anyone, but I believe there would be a waiver option for students who are in that very situation that it would not make sense. But again, nothing’s been decided, but a great point. Thank you.

Jacklyn Brodeur: I, I think even at the comprehensive school level, we have the same concerns. Um, there are students who simply do not need it. There are families who do not wish to share the information. Um, even if, you know, even if they are going to college, there are families who simply say, no, we are not completing the fafsa.

[00:31:00] Um, no matter how much education we give them about the benefits of completing it, um, I think it would be a really cumbersome, um. Process and just an extra hurdle that’s not necessary for our students or ultimately for us.

Bob Bardwell: Thank you.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Can I ask a question? Um, MEFA, uh, you know, used to participate and actually, uh, Jennifer Bento pinon, um, really also, um, I’m gonna say ran, um, a lot of the mafa, um. Fafsa, um, I, I, it’s not the festival. What’s the former name? Um, FAFSA days, um, over the years. And then this year MEFA transitioned to doing FAFSA festivals, um, kind of a, you know, a fun title, um, to maybe talk about such a not fun process, um, which are online.

And, uh, families can join a Zoom meeting and then [00:32:00] join breakout groups with an expert, usually from either MEFA or a college or an organization that that’s, um, an expert at doing this. And. It’s worked very well, but you know, we end up getting 30 families, or 50 families, or 10 families over, over the time that we have these FAFSA festivals, and that’s great and we’re super happy to have them available and have that.

Um, but just wondering, um, does that sound like a, a good option that you would refer your students to? Can you think of other options? Do you do things at your schools? Um, I know fortunately the FAFSA has gotten easier and that is a. Good thing, but, um, we think that probably certain groups of students still need some help.

And do you have any ideas about what would work in your school and how we could help with that?

Jennifer Bento: And also, I’ll add onto that, Julie, I, that we don’t have another FAFSA [00:33:00] festival lined up for our, for the season. So would that be beneficial to have another, um, you know, have one in, you know, another one in March or April?

So we put that

Julie Shields Rutyna: Good question. Yeah.

Hmm. All right.

Jacklyn Brodeur: I, I feel like I keep jumping in, but, um, you appreciate it. Ask questions, so I’ll answer. Um, I think that, uh, what I experienced here personally, I’m at, um, high school in Worcester. Um, it really needs to be in our school, I think for our families to be taking advantage of it. Um, not necessarily that online is the problem, but if it’s not.

I find that if it’s not geared specifically to our school, it’s not usually well attended, um, well attended and, um, in-person always is [00:34:00] more well attended than virtual events for us. Um, and so I think anytime people can come here to our building, um, it’s like that’s, that’s the best option for us.

Julie Shields Rutyna: That’s great.

And you know, along with that, I guess I’ll, I’ll add that MEFA, uh, our ambassador program where we have a financial aid expert, you know, who can in person go out to high schools is, is, is happening. Um, you know, we took the little break around COVID, so that is happening. Um, that’s usually a presentation.

You know, about what is financial aid, grants, loans, uh, work study kinds of things. But I guess I would also put out there, it, you know, would tacking on a FAFSA completion event to something like that be a helpful, um, you know, a helpful event? So I, I put the, all of those things in all of your heads, um, so that you can [00:35:00] think about what, what might be most useful for you.

Yeah. And we have heard that for years that, you know, families like to come, students like to come to the community and, uh, and be together in doing such a thing, so that’s good. I.

Anything else that we should

talk about? Otherwise you, we can all have a half hour back.

Well, thank you, Nile, Kate, Bob, and all of you.

Alright, and I hope everyone has a, has a great day. I think. I think it’s gonna be like spring today, so,

Bob Bardwell: woo,

Julie Shields Rutyna: that’s hopeful [00:36:00]

Bob Bardwell: and thank you to MEFA and Desi for being such a great partner in this work.

Nyal Fuentes: All right,

Julie Shields Rutyna: thank you Bob. Alright, have a great day everyone.

Nyal Fuentes: Take care. Bye

bye.