Birmingham Promise

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The Birmingham Promise Initiative is a program created by Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin, and developed through the newly-created Birmingham Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity, to provide business apprenticeships and college scholarships to Birmingham City Schools students. The initiative is currently operated as a public-private partnership in conjunction with United Way of Central Alabama. Rachel Harmon is the program's executive director.

The Birmingham Promise Initiative was developed by Harmon as Birmingham's Deputy Director of Talent Development. It is modeled on largely similar programs in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Buffalo, New York which have shown long-term success in improving graduation rates, closing achievement gaps in public schools, and reducing juvenile crime.

Such programs require large amounts of private investment from partnering businesses and charitable foundations. The initial implementation of Birmingham's program coincided with a reduction in the city's direct annual disbursement to the Birmingham Board of Education, from $3 million to $1 million in the 2020 Birmingham budget. In the program's "pilot" year, 2019, a total of 20 students were placed in paid summer internships. In October 2019 the City Council approved an annual appropriation of $2 million for 5 years to the Birmingham Promise Initiative.

In June 2019 the Birmingham Promise Initiative was awarded a $150,000 grant from the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) to support strategy development and implementation.

In August 2019, Woodfin announced that the Birmingham Promise program would begin offering all graduates from city schools a "last dollar" scholarship to attend public in-state 2- and 4-year colleges to which they have been accepted for enrollment, beginning with the class of 2020. The program, previously referred to as the "Fred Shuttlesworth Promise Scholarship," is funded through an endowment assembled from city appropriations and private donations. A $35 million fund-raising campaign was kicked off in February 2020 with the announcement of pledges of $1 million each from the Alabama Power Foundation, the Altec/Styslinger Foundation and Regions Bank.

In January 2020 UAB announced that it would provide a one-to-one match for Birmingham Promise scholarships for freshmen admitted as full-time students immediately after high school.

References

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