Graduating from flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant to working as a clerk at a drugstore meant a bigger paycheck for 18-year-old Mario Rodriguez. But his bills still made paying for college a squeeze.
So the Fillmore teenager was especially grateful for the financial help he received from the Ventura College Foundation, which provides up to a year's worth of enrollment fees and other costs to prospective students.
"I needed extra help, because I had just bought a car," said Rodriguez, who also helps his single mother with the household bills. "If I didn't have it, it would have been harder for me."
Hoping to make a college education available to hundreds of recent high school graduates like Rodriguez, who wants to become a radiology technician, the college launched a program this fall called Ventura Promise to assist eligible students. Only 88 students signed up for the program although more than 500 from families with household income of $50,000 or less were eligible.
So last month the foundation's board voted to remove the income limit and open the program to all 2,700 high school graduates in Ventura College's service area, which includes Ventura, Fillmore, Ojai, Piru, Santa Paula and parts of Camarillo. The program also is open to general equivalency diploma recipients and students who have yet to pass their high school exit exam.
"This is an attempt to keep kids in school," said college President Robin Calote. "It's hard to get back into it after you've gotten out of the routine of thinking of yourself as a student. It's an incentive to stay on track."
Under the income limit, many of the students who qualified for the Ventura Promise program also were eligible for other financial aid, such as existing state fee waivers and scholarships, which left much of the foundation's $250,000 in first-year seed money untouched.
Full-time students take 12 to 15 credit units a semester, which can cost $240 to $300, with other fees running about $60. Because the program covers a year of schooling, which includes a summer semester, foundation grants can run upward of $1,000 or more.
"While it was rewarding to see the number of people who signed up, we also anticipated there would be greater use," said Thomas E. Anthony, vice president of First California Bank in Camarillo and chairman of the college foundation board. "That's why we lifted the ceiling."
