SAN FRANCISCO – Should cities help families save for their kids’ college education? San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom thinks so.
Newsom wants to create college savings accounts for all of San Francisco’s kindergartners and make small initial deposits to get them started – even as the city grapples with a massive budget shortfall.
“From the moment they enter kindergarten, we want kids to believe they will one day go to college and we want to help their parents get a start on saving for that education,” Newsom said. “The benefits to the students, their families and ultimately our economy vastly outweigh the modest initial investment.”
But skeptics say San Francisco can’t afford the program when the city is preparing to cut services and lay off hundreds of employees to close a $483 million deficit in its $2.9 billion general fund budget.
“It’s a real nice idea if we’re swimming in money, but we’re drowning in debt,” said Supervisor Sean Elsbernd. “This is not the time to create new entitlement programs when we’re drastically cutting the ones we already have.”
The mayor, who is campaigning to be California’s next lieutenant governor, plans to include funding for the program in his proposed city budget, which is scheduled to be released Tuesday.
Backers say the program would help boost college attendance rates among San Francisco public school students, pointing to studies showing that kids with even a small amount of money set aside for college are much more likely to attend.
