More than 130,000 New York City public school parents are leaving free money on the table for a college fund – and critics say a cumbersome enrollment process could be the cause.
The NYC Kids RISE college savings program launched across the city in 2022 with the goal of making higher education more obtainable for students.
The program makes an automatic initial investment of $100 in scholarship money for all new kindergarten, first and second grade students through a general account managed by the Kids RISE nonprofit.
Parents are then encouraged to set up and connect separate, individual accounts where they save their own money, making them eligible for an additional $175 in rewards once they complete all the steps.
The education department says more than 200,000 students have received a total of $30 million towards college through the initiative.
But very few parents have made it to the finish line in order to collect all the cash rewards available for their kids’ college savings, according to education department data.
As of last June, only 5,279 families out of 143,079 – or 3.7% – have completed the steps and started investing in their accounts, according to a Freedom of Information Law request provided to Gothamist by Andrew Gerst, an attorney at the civil rights advocacy group Mobilization for Justice.
He suspects the low completion rate is due to a clunky multi-step process that involves first activating the general scholarship account managed by Kids Rise, and then creating and connecting an individual college savings account where participants can save their own money. The process involves choosing a savings plan, then submitting an assortment of ID numbers, creating passwords and providing other personal information.
“I think it’s a great idea and that more families need to start saving earlier,” Gerst said. “But I realized it’s very, very cumbersome, so I became concerned that families may not actually be using this.”
He said the education…
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