When Carlos Granda’s mother heard the news, she called her mother all the way in Puerto Rico to promise her boy’s grandmother that he was going to college.

Granda, who is a freshman at Common Ground High School, had told her about the New Haven Promise—a scholarship program announced Tues., Nov. 9 by Super Intendent Reginald Mayo, Yale’s President Richard Levin, the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven (CFGNH) President and CEO William Ginsberg, Mayor John DeStefano Jr., and Governor-elect Dan Malloy to pay for New Haven’s public school students to go to college.

Levin explained the promise to the audience of students from every high school in New Haven at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School. “We will ensure college is accessible and affordable for every high school student who attends regularly and works hard.”

The “we” is inclusive: Yale will pay the tuition of every graduate of the New Haven public school system, who, starting now, earns a GPA of over 3.0, attends class at least 90 percent of the time, has a good disciplinary record, and does 40 hours of community service.

This fund will be managed by CFGNH, and is expected to cost Yale 4.5 million dollars once Promise pays for four classes of college students. The money will cover tuition for any public university in Connecticut. Students must be residents of New Haven, and will receive different percentages of tuition, depending on how long they have been in New Haven’s public school system. Students who attend New Haven schools but do not live in the city will not be eligible.

Promise’s goals reach beyond education. The community service and New Haven-residency requirements are meant to fulfill the projects other two goals: fostering community engagement in the school system and encouraging people to move to and stay in New Haven. In an interview, Ginsberg said, “We will look not only at the core facts about high school—staying in school, graduating, going to college, succeeding in college—but also some of the broader indicators, in terms of enrollment and in terms of economic development.”

In the press conference following the announcement, Levin and DeStefano were visibly elated. A press release from the City of New Haven released the day before to promote the announcement called it “the most significant announcement ever made in New Haven.” Another factor that contributed to the hype was Dan Malloy, who, in his first official appearance as governor-elect, was the last speaker. Malloy said that New Haven Promise would be a “reinvention of urban education that will seek to guarantee results.”

New Haven Promise will be funded almost entirely by Yale, though Levin said that the university would try to find donors to support its commitment, especially because of Yale’s budgetary troubles. Because Promise will expand with each new graduating class and will start by covering only 25 percent tuition, Yale will have to progressively pay more each of the next seven years, Levin said. The students in this year’s freshman class will be the first to be eligible for full scholarships. The fund would be administered by CFGNH, and the cost of overseeing the program, which Ginsberg said is capped at $500,000 a year, will be paid out of that organization’s endowment.

There are currently about 1,000 students in each graduating class of New Haven’s high schools, and Levin and DeStefano said that currently about 200 to 250 of those would qualify for Promise. Levin said that he expected this number would expand—meaning Promise would hopefully affect more students each year—by about 10 percent a year.

Promise also aims to change how New Haven students perform in college. Students receiving Promise money will have to maintain a 2.5 GPA at their college in order remain on the scholarship and have to complete a four-year college within five years.

Further, by helping meet students’ financial concerns, Promise will try to keep students in college. DeStefano said that currently only 30 percent of New Haven school system graduates who go onto college remain in school for a third year. This is almost entirely attributed to students’ financial concerns.

Joel Tolman, a teacher and the director of development and community engagement at Common Ground as well as one of these reporters’ fellowship supervisor, said that Common Ground has interviewed its graduates who attend college and that for them “the number one barrier to stay in college is financial. They can get into really good schools, but they’re not in a position to stay in those schools a lot of the time because they’re not getting a good enough financial aid package. I think this will change those odds dramatically.”

New Haven Promise will be reevaluated every year to push for continued improvement in the school district, especially from teachers. DeStefano, who Levin said had first suggested a program like New Haven Promise, said that he wanted this sort of college funding reform to be tied with reform in New Haven’s schools like the renegotiation of teachers’ contracts last year that, among other changes, instituted teacher performance evaluations.

Ginsberg said that Promise “is part of school change. The promise of resources for college doesn’t have nearly the power in the absence of raising the level of achievement on the academic side, and it’s when the two go together that one can really put a different set of aspirations in place for the future of the community.” DeStefano said that Promise will be “tied with ongoing accomplishment and direction in school reform.”

Ginsberg expanded on this, saying that despite the poor timing from an economic perspective, the announcement was meant to fall into the context of serious public school reform across the United States. We’re very hopeful that Connecticut is going to tackle these school reform issues aggressively, the same way that New Haven is at the local level, and the Obama administration is at the

national level.”

New Haven Promise is based on similar programs in Pittsburgh, Penn., and Kalamazoo, Mich., also called “Promise.” Levin said that the Kalamazoo program increased attendance in the public schools and seemed to be effective at keeping families from moving outside of the city.

Both Levin and Malloy emphasized the broader economic gains from getting a college degree. During his broadcasted speech, Levin returned many times to the fact that the unemployment rate for Americans with a bachelor’s degree or higher is significantly lower than the overall unemployment rate—4.7 compared to 9.6 percent. Levin also pointed out that each year of college education—even without a degree—raises an American’s average income by about 10,000 dollars a year.

DeStefano, Levin, and Ginsberg see the economic effects as more than just a way to benefit graduates: They are meant to help New Haven become a post-industrial city based on white-collar jobs. Ginsberg said that New Haven “which has relied, historically, on manufacturing businesses and utilities, has come to see over the last generation that its present and its future are inextricably tied to Yale” and other such businesses that require college degrees.

Promise has already generated a great deal of excitement. Granda told a story of a classmate with whom he went to the announcement. After the announcement, he said that she ran around all her friends, screaming, “Oh my God! We’re going to college.” And talking about himself, Granda said, “No one in my family’s gone to college—I’m going to be the first one.” Tom Gandioso, Coordinator of Afterschool Programs at Common Ground, said that when he heard about Promise, he immediately thought of specific students who he thinks will benefit. Promise “will really encourage students to step it up.” Tolman agreed, saying that Promise “will change the odds of going to college dramatically,” allowing students to look at better and more expensive schools they would not have been able to consider before.

Both students and teachers mentioned Promise’s power to act as a draw to get people to move into New Haven. Nevertheless, the residency restriction seemed to frustrate some students.

Common Ground now has a purple banner reading “New Haven Promise” prominently displayed on the front of its main school building. Tolman said that the day after the announcement, “students were talking about it in my first period class and I was talking to kids about it before school. And they’re excited. I think genuinely: They realize that this is a big deal.”

Kane certainly believes that Promise will have a large impact. At the assembly where the announcement was broadcasted, her principal spoke about the program. “I didn’t think it was real at first, I thought it was a joke at the beginning, but after the whole formal announcement I started to believe it and I got really excited.”

After the announcement, Kane said “I was probably the most excited—I was really excited. My friends and I were running all over the place until they found out they weren’t eligible because they don’t live in New Haven and they got really mad.”