“An exchange of erroneous information” led to unnecessary panic over the future of East Mississippi Community College’s tuition assistance program for area high school graduates, president Scott Alsobrooks said.
EMCC offers tuition assistance for high school graduates from Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay, Noxubee, Kemper and Lauderdale counties enrolling at EMCC immediately after high school. The program covers funds not awarded by other grants or scholarships.
The program is remaining intact, Alsobrooks said, with funding coming from private donors, as has been the case since the initiative began more than a decade ago.
But Gypsy Gray, an administrator in EMCC’s financial aid office, emailed at least one Lowndes County high school counselor last week claiming the program was being discontinued because the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors was refusing to fund it. In the email, she encouraged citizens to reach out to supervisors and ask them to reconsider.
This sparked fear among high school administrators and parents, outrage on social media and confusion among supervisors.
Alsobrooks told The Dispatch on Tuesday the misunderstanding has now been corrected.
“It’s always been (funded) through the EMCC Foundation and always will be,” Alsobrooks said. “… (The board of supervisors) never funded it. It was just a miscommunication between a counselor and some people. It was an exchange of erroneous information of how that was funded.”
During a Tuesday meeting, board of supervisors president Harry Sanders spoke to the funding issue at EMCC, reminding the board it is not responsible for the funding.
“The problem here is there is some erroneous information,” Sanders said. “The county is not allowed to fund scholarships. We can’t give money to EMCC for them to fund scholarships. … I just wanted to make it clear to the board here that we’re not legally required, or legally can we give money to EMCC, for scholarships.”
Each year, Alsobrooks said, EMCC awards approximately $200,000 in tuition assistance, which is tasked with completing the finances for students in those counties for the tuition costs of $1,600 a semester for full-time students.
The single donor who established the fund passed away earlier this year, causing EMCC to retool its fundraising efforts to bring in multiple donors, Alsobrooks said. This is where he believes the miscommunication came into play.
“There was a philanthropist who put a large sum of money together to fund that program, and for whatever reason (that fund) wasn’t kept up,” Alsobrooks said. “I didn’t realize this until I was on scene here a couple of months ago (he was hired as president in December). We have rebranded (the tuition assistance program) and there’s going to be a huge fundraising effort from our foundation. Our foundation is taking that on as one of its initiatives.”
He is confident the initiative will raise the needed funds.
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