Torsella pushes scholarship plan

MARPLE » Pennsylvania Treasurer Joe Torsella visited Delaware County Community College with local legislators and community leaders Thursday to tout a new program aimed at helping families save for higher education.

“If we want future generations to learn here and stay here, we’ve got to invest in them,” said Torsella. “The Keystone Scholars program tells every child born in Delaware County that we know they can achieve great things and we’ll help them get started on the path to a brighter future.”

The program provides a $100 scholarship grant invested in the PA 529 Guaranteed Savings Plan for every child born or adopted in the county in 2018 and 2019. Torsella said 6,609 children are expected to be born in Delco this year.

Families have until their child turns 1 year old to join the program and until they turn 29 to take advantage of the grant, which can be used for any qualified higher education expenses at approved higher educational institutions such as trade schools, vocational programs, community colleges and universities.

The Keystone Scholars program uses no public money and is fully funded by more than $2.25 million in philanthropic donations from partners at the Neubauer Family Foundation, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the Hellman Foundation and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency Foundation, said Torsella.

The grant can be used only for post-secondary education purposes and will return to the program if left unspent, said Torsella. The initial $100 without further investment could grow to more than $400 by the time the child has finished high school. But if parents commit to investing just $25 per month, he said the total could be more than $10,000 by the time the child is ready to pursue some form of higher education.

“The higher education that propelled my family’s American dream and my American dream has become staggeringly expensive and has created a wall between the very wealthiest of us and the vast majority of Pennsylvanians who just want a fair chance to work hard and to get ahead,” Torsella said. “Today, the average price tag of college has gone up by 300 percent and, here in Pennsylvania, it’s gone up so much that we are crippling our graduates with the highest student debt loan in the country.”

Torsella noted that 18 million jobs have been added to the economy since the end of the “Great Recession,” but 95 percent of those have gone to workers with some form of post-secondary education.

The Keystone Scholars program is currently only available to families in Delaware, Elk, Indiana, Luzerne, Mifflin and Westmoreland counties, where approximately 30,000 children are expected to be born or adopted by Dec. 31, 2019, but there is a bipartisan legislative proposal to expand the program to the nearly 140,000 children born or adopted each year.

Joining Torsella in the college’s Jerome S. Parker Advanced Technology Center Thursday were state Reps. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, D-161 of Swarthmore; Chris Quinn, R-168 of Middletown; Alex Charlton, R-165 of Springfield; Maria P. Donatucci, D-185 of Philadelphia; and Jamie Santora, R-163 of Upper Darby, as well as state Sens. Daylin Leach, D-17 of Lower Merion, and Tom Killion, R-9 of Middletown.

“It’s not news to any of you that we live in a very divided political time,” said Torsella. “But the good news is that this idea is a common sense, common ground idea that is not red or blue. It’s just common sense and it has the ability to really move us forward. It builds new ladders of opportunity for our time and it doesn’t play our divides, but it finds ways to bridge them.”

Also speaking was Britney Spinelli, who will be graduating from DCCC this month in Pennsylvania with a certificate in process control technology and an associate’s degree in applied science for advanced technology, which she hopes to parlay into a new career as a process operator in the refining industry.

Spinelli, of Marcus Hook, said she spent a significant amount of time working as an emergency medical technician with an aim to becoming a nurse before deciding to change career paths, but doing so required her to juggle two jobs and a full-time student course load.

“There are many students like me who struggle to make ends meet while doing their best to advance their education,” she said. “The Keystone Scholars program is a good first step in making a down payment that will help ambitious, talented students of the future reach their career and personal goals.”

Those interested in signing up for the program can visit pa529.com/keystone for more information.