College Access Fairfax

Educate and guide parents and students through the financial aid process, including completing federal forms, searching for scholarships, interpreting student aid reports and other services. Services are provided through parent workshops and by caf's financial aid champions at selected local high schools, all free of charge. Each champion saw approximately 250 students. Workshops were attended by over 2,000 parents and students. Group presentations were made to parents and one-on-one assistance was provided to students and parents. We reinstituted our in-person fafsa completion events, holding 19 this year, even though the fafsa opened last again this year. However, due to the numberous issues with the fafsa, completion numbers where down, both in farifax county and across the nation. Financial aid champions: we continued with four financial aid champions this year. There was a great deal of frustration of the continuing platform issues caused many families to not be able to complete the form. Many were completed on paper, and were not processed even at the end of the summer. We continued to work remotely with parents, as well as re-starting the in person events. Because of the addition of virtual meetings, parents and students from any school in fairfax county can request a meeting. However, we continue to assign champions to individual school.we were able to offer assistance to students at all high schools because of the virtual nature of our services. We are now in west potomac, mt. Vernon, justice, edison, hayfield, mountain view, lewis, chantilly, south lakes, westfield, west springfield, annandale, centreville, robinson and herndon. Champions worked in both their respective schools and at our fafsa completion events. "paying for college": college access fairfax maintained the "paying for college" programs, including the, scholarship 101 and fafsa line by line programs. All programs were provided virtually. This year we continued our "new" program of speaking to students in both cpp, avid and personal finance classes. Over 1,000 students attended our student presentations and over 1,500 parents attended presentations. Over 15 different types of seminars were held, with over 4,000 parents and/or students attended. Outlook: these are signature programs for college access fairfax, and we anticipate running the program at as many schools as possible. "super saturday": this program provides an early opportunity for parents and students to begin work on completing their free application for federal student aid (fafsa) online, and is now conducted beginning in october of a student's senior year. However, because of the late opening of the fafsa, these programs did not begin until january. The program conducted in partnership with fcps career center specialists in each school. "middle school programs": because of the late opening of the these programs were not held this year. In years when the fafsa opens late, it will probably not be able to find time to schedule these.

In partnership with the va529 plan, each year 15-30 10th grade students at edison high school are selected to participate in the soar program. This program works with students who qualify for free and reduced price meals to ensure they have information to prepare them to apply for college. For successful completion of the program in both 10th and 11th grade, the students are awarded $500 each year in scholarship money and an additional $1000 for their senior year.