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Committee advances plan to expand 'Promise' scholarship support statewide
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Summary
The Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee advanced S.B. 380, which would add state funding to expand municipal "Promise" programs and boost the Roberta Willis scholarship by $30 million in its first year to help thousands of additional Connecticut students afford college.
Sen. Derek Slapp (chair of the Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee) urged support for S.B. 380, calling it a bid to address college affordability in Connecticut and to scale successful municipal "Promise" programs statewide. "We are a relatively high cost state ... only 40% of eligible Connecticut students actually receive a state need based grant," Slapp told the committee as he moved the bill to JFS to the floor.
The bill follows recommendations from the Promise Task Force and would both seed and strengthen local Promise programs and expand state scholarship support. Slapp said the state currently provides about $40 million annually for the Roberta Willis scholarship and that the bill would add roughly $30 million in the first year, extending eligibility bands to families earning up to about $110,000. He said the initial increase would help approximately 7,000 additional students in year one and that, when fully built out, about 28,000 students statewide could benefit.
Slapp framed the proposal as complementary to community-run Promise initiatives in Bridgeport, New Haven, Waterbury and Hartford, which he said have delivered strong outcomes through wraparound supports and local accountability. He praised task force chairs Kelvin Rodin and Richard Sugarman and other task force members and staff who contributed to the report.
Members asked technical questions about overlap with the Roberta Willis program and program design. Representative Bracco asked how the statewide scholarships would interact with local Promise programs; Slapp said local programs would continue to set eligibility criteria such as GPA and attendance, while the state investment would increase the overall pool of scholarship dollars.
The committee placed S.B. 380 on the consent calendar for a single, combined vote later in the meeting. Next steps: the bill was referred to the floor (JFS) and its consent-calendar placement means committee members will register final votes before 02:30.
