One of the candidates for Baltimore mayor wants the city to help students afford a college education. Activist and educator DeRay Mckesson is proposing the city create college savings accounts for every child in its school system.
Mckesson said the accounts would be a partnership between the city, banks and non-profits. In an appearance on WYPR’s Maryland Morning, Mckesson said San Francisco already has a program like this up and running.
But it’d not just the city, he said. The mayor has to “put forth the vision” and “put the right people in place to execute that vision.”
“And that also means to lead,” McKesson said. “To bring people to the table and say here’s what people in this city deserve. This is what life should be like. And to plan around that.”
On his web site, https://www.derayformayor.com, Mckesson cites research that shows a child with a small college savings account with only a few hundred dollars is more than twice as likely to enroll in, and graduate from, college as those without those savings.
The San Francisco program gives each kindergartner $50 in seed money for a college account.
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