VIRGINIA SCHOLARSHIP PLAN

1. The purpose of this program is to break the generational cycle of poverty.

2. Unspent TANF funds will finance a four-year pilot test to educate eligible TANF students at the Richard Bland College or at select Virginia Community Colleges.  Two hundred students from families eligible to receive TANF assistance will be awarded scholarships for tuition, fees and books. Average award is estimated at $4,000 per year for two years.

3. By 2020, 65 percent of all jobs will require postsecondary education and training beyond high school, with 35 percent requiring a bachelor's degree and 30 percent requiring some college or an associate's degree.

4. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that education or vocational training beyond high school can yield substantial earnings gains. Over their lifetimes, young adults with higher education or vocational credentials will pay more taxes and need less government assistance to meet their basic needs.

5. In states like Florida and Arkansas, successful scholarship programs funded by TANF federal grant funds have educated thousands of impoverished students and liberated them from a life of poverty. .

6. Take Stock In Children currently operates in every Florida county. Its mere existemce breaks the cycle of poverty for low-income, academically qualified students by providing opportunities for a post-secondary education. The program currently serves 23,000 children throughout 67 Florida counties.

7. In three other states, Massachusetts, Wyoming and Montana, TANF Funds have been put to use funding scholarships for students who were children of eligible TANF recipients. The effect of these students successfully completing higher education or workforce credentials in their community colleges is to release them from the cycle of poverty and change them from dependents to tax paying citizens in the new economy.

8. The proposed program, to be funded entirely with unused federal TANF funds, can break the cycle of poverty. It can provide higher education for hundreds of academically qualified students. And it will create taxpayers out of previously likely lifetime dependents on public assistance and financial support. The program will provide college financial aid to qualified students who do not have access to other means of financial aid to pursue higher education.