When they first heard about Say Yes to Education, members of the Syracuse City School District’s class of 2009 didn’t buy it.

“It was one of those things you kind of overlook at first — just another piece of paper you get, just another program you hear about,” said Paola Benevento of the Say Yes pamphlet she received in her senior year English class at Henninger High School. “Coming from the inner city, sometimes they start all of these programs, but they’re never really followed through.”

For David Minney, then a senior at Fowler High School, the deal — full tuition at any listed college for students who lived in the school district for a designated number of years — seemed too good to be true.

“I thought it was a lie, to be honest,” he said. “I was in disbelief for a while.”

Four years later, Benevento, Minney and many more SCSD alumni are preparing for Syracuse University’s commencement as the first class to attend college on Say Yes scholarships. The organization has expanded to offer programming in elementary, middle and high schools, as well as networking opportunities for collegiate Say Yes scholars since it came Syracuse in 2008.

But the program is now in the middle of a transition — the recent loss of a grant to support high school tutoring and SAT preparation programs is forcing Say Yes to re-evaluate and address the community’s needs.

“We’re exploring all of our resources right now,” said Kristi Eck, education program director for Say Yes, noting that grants are continually up for renewal and that the loss of this one is no “great tragedy.”

As Say Yes officials look into other funding possibilities to continue high school tutoring and SAT and Regents exam preparation, Eck said, they are also determining if similar services offered by partner organizations are — or can be — fully utilized.

“We don’t want to duplicate things,” she said. “We would want to bring added value, if that’s appropriate, or identify a grant that would allow us to bring something new to the table that’s going to be helpful.”

During this transitional time, Patrick Douglas is one of more than an estimated 150 SU tutors without a definitive assignment for the fall semester. Douglas, a sophomore accounting and finance major, works at local high schools as an academic success coach, or “unofficial guidance counselor.”

Douglas said a color-coded chart detailing high school students’ academic standings, which he saw his first year with the program, clearly demonstrated the program’s importance. Names of students with relatively high grades were highlighted green, with intermediate students in yellow and struggling students in red.

“Red was very, very dominant,” he said. “It was bad because the kids were freshmen and sophomores, so they’re just going into high school with a bad jump-start.”

Programming and support throughout high school is important, said Minney, now a senior social work major. He will continue his graduate education at SU in the fall.

Say Yes was not active in the district when Minney was in high school, he said, as it only arrived in the district to provide scholarships his senior year. He guessed that those in his class who took advantage of the scholarship were those who would have attended college regardless.

The presence of Say Yes in the district will likely have a stronger effect on younger students who participate in programming at an earlier age, he said.

Already, the number of students taking advantage of Say Yes scholarships has increased in the past four years, Eck said. In addition, the retention rate of Say Yes scholars between freshman and sophomore years is higher than the national average.

In part, this might be attributed to increased programming, a goal that was pursued simultaneously with college scholarship programs when Say Yes first came to Syracuse, Eck said. After-school programming for kindergarten through third grade began on the Southside during the 2008-09 school year, and expanded so that by 2011, students in kindergarten through fifth grade citywide had access to free after-school programming and summer camps.

Developing programming in younger grades was a more pressing initial goal, Eck said, so collegiate services are a more recent expansion. This officially started last January with a networking event for Say Yes scholars and the organization’s corporate sponsors, she said.

Now, networking events are held three times each year, connecting Say Yes scholars to each other and to companies in Syracuse and Say Yes-affiliated cities, Eck said. A LinkedIn page also allows networking among Say Yes alumni. A webinar is also in the works.

Internship opportunities for Say Yes scholars have also developed. Locally owned furniture chain Raymour and Flanigan, for example, will take on four Say Yes scholars as interns for the first time this summer, said Holly Heinze-Coolican, director of people development at the company.

CEO Neil Goldbert attended Henninger High School, she said, so a personal connection to the cause motivated this, as well as a $500,000 donation to the program.

Local internship opportunities also support another aim of Say Yes: to keep scholars in Syracuse.

The organization wants its scholars to find the best jobs possible in or outside of Syracuse, said Susan Dutch, Say Yes director of marketing and communication. Dutch noted that the ideal situation would be to have Say Yes alumni working in Syracuse and giving back to the program.

“We want to cultivate our own talent and keep our people here,” she said. “The future of Say Yes could come full circle.”

Benevento shares this goal. The Say Yes scholar and senior anthropology and writing and rhetoric major said she plans to work in Syracuse after attending graduate school at Columbia University.

As a member of Say Yes’ first graduating class, Benevento said she feels she’s been active in shaping and branding the program in Syracuse by giving feedback through surveys and speaking with corporate sponsors and at Say Yes events.

“We’re the tester group,” she said, which makes the class’ grades and graduation rates important in evaluating the program. “I guess there’s a lot of attention focused on us.”

But Benevento said she didn’t think of this as any additional pressure. Rather, she expressed gratitude for the generous financial aid that enabled her to attend SU, and for her luck in being at the right place at the right time.

This gratitude is just a part of what will bring her back to Syracuse, she said.

“You always have a certain debt you owe to your hometown,” she said. “It’s brought me to where I am. I owe it a lot.”

Published on April 25, 2013 at 12:19 am