Earning money for school

Even as the state cuts funding for financial aid programs and college tuition increases, one Westside Costa Mesa after-school program is giving out more scholarship money than it ever has.

Save Our Youth encourages students in the neighborhoods surrounding Rea Elementary School, where it’s located, to spend more time on school work and extra curricular activities.

This is often a challenge because many of the kids have parents who don’t speak English and don’t make a lot of money, so their kids have to work at an early age. Gangs also compete for kids’ spare time and attention.

Realizing that money (or lack thereof) drives many of the decisions teenagers make, SOY pays students to get good grades. No sugar coating, just straight bribery. And when kids in the program graduate from high school, SOY doubles what the students have earned through their years of participation by matching their combined earnings and putting it in an account for them to use to pay for college.

Two years ago SOY gave out $35,000 in scholarships to graduating seniors. This year, the amount has skyrocketed to $165,000 that will be split among 39 students.

“The reason it’s so much more is we have more students staying in the program longer and doing better in school,” said Executive Director Trevor Murphy.

The money given to the graduating seniors is earmarked for educational expenses — students bring in bills for books and tuition which SOY pays — but the money they earn while they are in junior high and high school is doled out to them monthly for their discretionary use.

Some kids give it to their parents to help with household expenses; others use it to pay for cell-phone bills or buy clothes, said Silvia Rosales, who coordinates the program.

Either way, paying a premium for A’s allows kids to study and make money instead of choosing.

“It gives them a balance because they know school’s important, but sometimes when kids are in that situation they’ll tend to focus more attention on a job,” Rosales said.

This year, SOY gave out double its annual operating budget in scholarships, according to Murphy.

With the governor proposing to do away with some student aid programs such as CalGrant in order to deal with the state’s budget crisis, the director says the scholarships are vital.

“The landscape ahead is pretty bleak so we’re just fortunate we can give these kids something,” Murphy said.