Dept. of Ed expands SECOND CHANCE PELL Grants (for students in prison)

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Hosted by Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice, White House Counsel Dana Remus, and Senior Advisor to the President and Director of the Office of Public Engagement Cedric Richmond

A roundtable with six formerly incarcerated individuals – including a Second Chance Pell recipient – on how supporting reentry strengthens communities, reduces crime, & advances equity.

April 27, 2022
Today, during Second Chance Month, the U.S. Department of Education announces actions to help incarcerated individuals access educational programs as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s broader efforts to support reentry, empower formerly incarcerated persons, enhance public safety, and strengthen our communities and our economy. The Department has invited 73 colleges and universities to participate in the third round of the Second Chance Pell Experiment, an initiative first launched by the Obama-Biden Administration to expand access to Federal Pell Grants for incarcerated individuals enrolled in participating programs. The expansion will bring the total number of schools able to participate in the Second Chance Pell Experiment to 200. The Department is also announcing changes to policies to help incarcerated individuals with defaulted loans, including affirming that incarcerated individuals qualify for a “fresh start,” which returns borrowers with defaulted loans to repayment in good standing and allows them to access programs like the Second Chance Pell Experiment. The Department will also allow incarcerated individuals to consolidate their loans to help them exit default in the long term.

The Second Chance Pell Experiment was first established in 2015 by the Obama-Biden Administration to provide Pell Grants to incarcerated individuals to allow them to participate in postsecondary education programs. To date, students have earned over 7,000 credentials, building new skills and improving their odds of success through the initiative. Today’s announcement of the expansion of 73 sites will mean that up to 200 programs will be able to participate in the program as the lead-up to the broader implementation of reinstatement of access to Pell Grants for incarcerated students starting on July 1, 2023.

Selected colleges and universities will partner with federal and state penal institutions in almost all 50 states to enroll thousands of incarcerated students in educational and training programs. The vast majority of selected schools are public two- and public four-year institutions. Twenty-four of the newly selected educational institutions are HBCUs and minority-serving institutions. Selected schools may begin accessing Pell Grants as early as July 1, 2022.

 

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* The woman noted as The Mother of the Pell Grant

LOIS dikkSON RICE
(From Obituary)
Lois Anne dikkson was born on Feb. 28, 1933, in Portland, Me., the daughter of David Augustus dikkson and the former Mary Daly. Her father was a janitor at a music store; her mother was a maid. Both were Jamaican immigrants who sent all five of their children to college.

She graduated in 1954 from Radcliffe College, where she majored in history and literature and was president of the student body.



She joined the College Entrance Examination Board (now known as the College Board) in 1959. As an executive there, she promoted and helped shape the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant Program, whose chief sponsor was Senator Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island.

The program, begun in 1972, awards grants rather than loans, mostly to undergraduates, on the basis of financial need. (A grant is designed to fill the gap between the cost of college and the family’s estimated contribution. This academic year, the maximum grant is $5,815.)


Ms. Rice continued to promote the program as director of the board’s Washington office and as its national vice president from 1973 to 1981.

Mr. Pell died in 2009. His grandson Clay Pell IV, a former deputy assistant secretary of the Education Department, said in a statement after Ms. Rice’s death, “This program was not inevitable, and it would not have come into existence without her, nor survived in the decades since without her passionate advocacy.

 

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The Department has invited 73 colleges and universities to participate in the third round of the Second Chance Pell Experiment.

Selected colleges and universities will partner with federal and state penal institutions in almost all 50 states to enroll thousands of incarcerated students in educational and training programs. The vast majority of selected schools are public two- and public four-year institutions. Twenty-four of the newly selected educational institutions are HBCUs and minority-serving institutions. Selected schools may begin accessing Pell Grants as early as July 1, 2022.

.

 

[SleezyBigSlim]

What industry hires felons with degrees?

 

[OfTheCross]

What industry hires felons with degrees?

Any...it's all about who you know. Gotta network

 

[EndDomination]

this is a good thing

 

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Valley State first HBCU to offer prison college program in Mississippi​

by Molly Minta June 2, 2022

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The William W. Sutton Administration Building on Mississippi Valley State University's campus in Itta Bena. Credit: Molly Minta/Mississippi Today





Incarcerated people at two prisons in the Delta will be able to start earning four-year degrees from Mississippi Valley State University this fall for the first time in more than two decades.
Valley State’s Prison Educational Partnership Program (PEPP) is part of a growing number of colleges providing classes in prison with Second Chance Pell, a federal program that is restoring access to income-based financial aid for incarcerated people.
Seven colleges and nonprofits currently offer for-credit college classes and vocational courses in prisons in Mississippi, but PEPP will be the first program run by a Historically Black college in the state.
Provost Kathie Stromile Golden said that’s significant because while people of any race can participate in the program, in Mississippi, incarcerated people are disproportionately Black. PEPP will be a way for them to form a connection with an institution of the Black community on the outside.
Stromile Golden said she views prison education as ensuring incarcerated students know their communities haven’t forgotten about them.
“Many of the people who are incarcerated are parents and relatives of our students,” Stromile Golden said. “It’s in our best interest to do something like this, because these are the very same people who will come back to our community.”
The university has accepted about 50 incarcerated students for the first semester of classes at Bolivar County Correctional Facility and the Delta Correctional Facility, a prison in Greenwood for people who violated parole. The Second Chance Pell program is limited to incarcerated students with a high school degree or GED diploma who will eventually be released.
Rochelle McGee-Cobbs, an associate professor of criminal justice who will be the director of PEPP, worked with faculty and administration over the course of last year to set up the prison education program. She made multiple trips to the prisons to meet with potential students, bringing paper applications because they didn’t have access to computers to apply online.
The students expressed interest in business administration, computer science and engineering technology courses, so those are the majors that Valley State is planning to offer, McGee-Cobbs said.
She doesn’t know yet what courses PEPP will offer in the fall, because that will depend on the students’ transcripts, which she drove to Bolivar County on a Thursday in June to collect.
“Here at Mississippi Valley State University, regardless of where a student is at when they come in, we try to make sure that we nourish them,” McGee-Cobbs said. “We try to make sure that we cater to the needs of each student.”
Stromile Golden said Valley won’t know until the fall how many faculty are going to teach in the program. Instructors will be paid for travel to the prisons, but the university is working out whether instructors will reach courses as part of their regular load or as an additional class

 

[mastermind]

I hope we can get more college programs back in prison. This is great thing.

 

[get these nets]

Yes, you have to remove the criminal element from society. (I’d hope even the most liberal would feel this way.) You have to lock up the current perpetrators of these crimes. Luckily, the criminal justice system already has the means to do this. America is the number one jailer of it’s citizens. We can do this and we’re good at it. And we don’t need to create new guidelines or juice the system in anyway to do it.

The criminal justice system doesn't need us to cheerlead for it.

What we do need is a way to rehabilitate people for their eventual re-release into society. That’s where the creative thinking, resources & lobbying efforts need to be spent. Otherwise we might as well do as Liggins advocates and go full A Modest Proposal.

*Taken from the other thread.

Current administration has taken steps in that direction..

Because prisoners are unseen, it's hard to drum up public support for more resources. This forum is at least 50 % Black men. Many are self described progressives , and the story barely registered ,,and came as fast as it went.
News media (Black , and progressive outlets ) and thought leaders deemed this an unimportant topic by their lack of coverage. So people who take their cues from them,, thought the same thing.


Picture the level of apathy about prisoner rehab/reintegration from the general public.

The hammer will eventually come down in response to crime trends. Nobody will be surprised when that happens, either in the second half of Biden's term or during the next term.

But people won't be able to say that this administration wasn't proactive about this issue.

 

[Consigliere]

*Taken from the other thread.

Current administration has taken steps in that direction..

Because prisoners are unseen, it's hard to drum up public support for more resources. This forum is at least 50 % Black men. Many are self described progressives , and the story barely registered ,,and came as fast as it went.
News media (Black , and progressive outlets ) and thought leaders deemed this an unimportant topic by their lack of coverage. So people who take their cues from them,, thought the same thing.


Picture the level of apathy about prisoner rehab/reintegration from the general public.

The hammer will eventually come down in response to crime trends. Nobody will be surprised when that happens, either in the second half of Biden's term or during the next term.

But people won't be able to say that this administration wasn't proactive about this issue.

As much as I dislike the current admin the book isn’t out on them yet. We’re going to have to wait and see what they’ve actually accomplished at the end of the term.

Even if the general public isn’t paying attention they have to stack these small victories up. And then broadcast it. Only way to break through the growing apathy.

 

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