Parternership for Los Angeles Schools

Mendez High counselors help students complete financial aid applications in the school's higher center.

Parternership for Los Angeles Schools

Mendez High counselors assistance students complete financial aid applications in the school's college center.

With applications for federal and state educatee aid lagging amid California high school seniors, one school is optimistic that information technology tin can build on previous success and encourage its students to apply.

Only challenges remain.

Last year and for the tertiary consecutive time, Los Angeles' Mendez Loftier became one of the tiptop high schools in the state to have its senior form submit a Free Awarding for Federal Pupil Assistance, or FAFSA, for financial assist for college despite the pandemic. But like much of the state, applications this year are dramatically low.

Mendez High was one of a few loftier schools last year to win the commission's Race to Submit program, which encourages schools, counselors and students to complete the FAFSA. Last yr, the schoolhouse had 236 seniors, of which 84% completed a FAFSA or Dream Human action application.

College and high schoolhouse students employ the FAFSA to apply for federal financial assistance and grants. The California Dream Human action application allows students who are undocumented or who participate in the Deferred Activeness for Childhood Arrivals program to qualify for state financial aid. Although students may apply for aid at any time, the state'south priority deadline is March 2.

California'due south FAFSA completion rate among 12th graders is downwardly this year compared with previous years. Compared with Jan. 14 concluding yr, California is downward 5% in high school seniors completing a FAFSA awarding. According to the national FAFSA tracker, of the approximately 512,000 twelfth graders in the state, just 139,138 had completed the awarding as of Jan. xiv.

Nationally, every bit of Jan. xiv, 31.iv% of the Grade of 2022 has completed a FAFSA, a 0.three% increase compared to the aforementioned fourth dimension concluding yr, according to the National College Attainment Network, or NCAN. Only final twelvemonth's awarding numbers were lower than previous years due to the pandemic. The graduating form of 2022 completed iv.eight% fewer FAFSA than the grade of 2020.

Patrick Perry, the director of policy, inquiry and information at the California Pupil Aid Commission, described the decrease in applications this twelvemonth equally "concerning," especially in one case one examines the population that is not completing applications. He said the pandemic has fabricated it more difficult for loftier schoolhouse counselors to be able to work with students to complete the forms.

"We're hearing from educators at the K-12 level that a lot of them are simply trying to function and continue their schools open and deal with Covid," said Michael Lemus, program outreach and marketing manager at the commission. "They want to talk to them most financial aid, simply they merely don't take the bandwidth or the fourth dimension to fifty-fifty get to that conversation."

Fewer depression-income students are completing the awarding, he said. "Information technology'southward needier and poor students where the majority of it is downwardly." The maximum federal Pell Grant accolade for low-income students for the 2022-23 academic twelvemonth is $eight,370.

Amidst students under age xix with no prior higher experience and from families with less than $40,000 in almanac income, only 100,211 had completed a FAFSA as of Jan. 18. Last year, almost 23,000 more students from the same background had the application completed, according to the commission.

Still, nationally three.3% more low-income students have completed a FAFSA, equally of Jan. fourteen, compared to concluding twelvemonth, co-ordinate to NCAN. But since the start of the pandemic, far fewer low-income students take been completing applications. For example, the Class of 2022 had 190,000 fewer FAFSA completions compared to 2019.

Applications are also downwardly for students who submit a Dream Human action application. These students can't receive the Pell Grant but qualify for state aid like the Cal Grant.

Equally of January. 18, ii,703 Dream Act applications were completed, most 330 fewer than 2022 and more than ii,600 fewer than in 2022 before the get-go of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Our high schools are having a real problem getting information technology done this twelvemonth," Perry said, adding that the tendency is so much lower than in previous years that it'southward hundred-to-one the number of applications will take hold of upwardly past the March deadline.

At Mendez High, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood, near students are from low-income families, and the school needs resources to help them.  The school has a high free- and reduced-dejeuner population at 94.6%, co-ordinate to Ed Data. The school is also part of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit organization that helps to manage and support traditionally nether-resourced public schools in LA Unified. They currently manage 19 schools in Boyle Heights, South LA and Watts.

Before the pandemic, Mendez High would apply its college middle to provide students with individual support on completing college applications and fiscal aid forms, said Lissett Gomez, who works through the partnership to be a college counselor at the school.

But now, even when students mainly were virtual, counselors would bulletin students on social media, reach out to their parents or visit them in person at their homes to encourage them or help them complete an application, Gomez said.

"The other affair that helps u.s.a. is that nosotros have an early deadline for our students," she said, adding that the school doesn't advertise the March 2 state deadline to students only requires they consummate the applications by the end of Jan. "Nosotros know how information technology is with students waiting until the last minute. Nosotros give ourselves and the students that cushion and then that we're able to capture everyone."

The high school doesn't just counsel students through the FAFSA procedure, simply also their parents.

Ailene Rodriguez, a Mendez graduate studying engineering at California Land Academy Maritime University, said once she began filling out the awarding, her "department was pretty easy," she said. "Information technology asked me what colleges I would like to apply for, my name and accost, just pretty uncomplicated stuff. The hard office was the role that my dad had."

Rodriguez's father, Jesus, said he never went to college, and so he was unfamiliar with the FAFSA before his daughter brought it to his attention.

"What made it a fiddling easier was a meeting 1 24-hour interval when the school merely opened up their library and had a bunch of volunteers of teachers and faculty that helped us through the process," he said.

But this yr, applications are lagging. Of the 236 seniors enrolled in the loftier school this twelvemonth, and with a little more than a month to go, only xl or 16% have completed an application, according to the commission'southward Race to Submit dashboard.

"It is a lilliputian bit of a struggle right now," said Marisol Maldonado, a college success adviser at the loftier school through the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. "This past calendar week, attendance was not neat at the schoolhouse, as with many other schools, because of Covid."

Gomez said the high schoolhouse is besides down a full-fourth dimension college advisor, from a team of four to 3. The advisor who left for some other school had an excellent runway record with students.

"We were very lucky," she said. "I don't think had we had just 2 people working in the college center during the pandemic that we would've been able to reach the numbers that we did before. … It was really that we had four people working on fiscal aid that we were able to maintain our numbers then."

Concluding year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a new requirement for high schools to show they pushed hard for students to consummate the FAFSA. They have to encourage all their loftier school seniors to complete a financial assistance form or declare they want to opt out of completing the application.

Although the law isn't a "hard mandate" like a graduation requirement, Perry said, "schools demand to certify that they did their best to go every student to fill out a FAFSA."

Other states have seen their FAFSA number increment significantly when they've made it a graduation requirement. For example, Louisiana became the first country to make the application a graduation requirement and within iii years saw their completion numbers increase past more than 24%. Tennessee was one of the first states to guarantee gratis community college if students completed the FAFSA. In 2021, both states led the land with a 71% completion charge per unit in Tennessee and 68% in Louisiana, according to the National Higher Attainment Network, a nonprofit organization.

Perry said there is some feet almost whether California's new requirement volition improve FAFSA completion numbers.

"But information technology is our expectation that information technology will bump upward our rates," he said. "In the by, California's had merely beneath 60% of its students fill up out a FAFSA, and that'due south up over the last ten or fifteen years from xxx% or and then. So nosotros've already washed a lot of work on this."

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