Grant money at risk for Idaho students

BOISE – The state Board of Education has until Tuesday afternoon to come up with $6 million or lose $18 million in federal grant money for a program designed to help more Idaho students go to college.

The state’s Division of Financial Management set the deadline for the board to show how it will come up with the match for federal money over six years.

The Gear Up federal program is designed to help 7,000 Idaho students prepare for and pay for college. Forty-seven states utilize the program, which works mainly in secondary schools with large numbers of low-income students.

In Idaho, nearly eight of 10 high school students graduate, but only four in 10 go to college. Of those, about a third don’t stay longer than one year.

The Gear Up program was meant to improve those numbers and help Idaho students succeed in a competitive job market.

Karen McGee, executive director of the Education Board, has set a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline to find support for Gear Up or she will recommend it be discontinued.

Officials with the board said they were trying to come up with the money and had contacted the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, the Micron Technology Foundation, and others.

If the deadline is not met, the grant “will be discontinued and all unspent federal grant monies will be returned,” Wayne Hammon, Division of Financial Management administrator, told the board in a letter last week.

In 2006, when the state applied for the grant, it designated nearly $18 million in teacher salaries and materials as the state’s part of the matching money.

However, that money doesn’t qualify under federal rules, according to Decker Sanders, who joined the state board office to oversee Gear Up in the spring, and he notified the U.S. Department of Education.

Dwight Johnson, who was board executive director when the Gear Up grant was submitted, said the agency has people to review grants, but this problem “slipped through.”