Meridian Public School District receives GearUp MS grant for students

Students at the Meridian Public School District can now receive $3,500 in scholarship funds to any college they choose after graduation thanks to the GearUp Mississippi grant the district recently applied for.

GearUp is the acronym for gaining early awareness and readiness for undergraduate programs. The district will have access to this grant for the next seven years.

“This grant will actually start with our seventh grade students,” says Director of Secondary Curriculum and Instruction Melody Craft. “Not only does it come with scholarship money for students, it comes with assistance for parents on financial aid. We will be looking at offering the ACT aspire which is like a pretest to the ACT and it gets them familiar with what the ACT looks like.”

The grant allows students to choose from various institutions.

“Every student that graduates from Meridian High School with a high school diploma will leave with $3,500 scholarship. The great thing about the scholarship money is that it can be used at a two-year institution, a four-year institution and a two-year career and technical. It also may stack on top of other scholarships that they may have gained.”

GearUp Mississippi is in partnership with Get2College and offers several services to students and staff to push beyond high school graduation.

“They will set up a huge college and career fair for our students to have the opportunity to experience. There will be a representative from every college, community college in the state of Mississippi there. College recruiters will be there and of course you will have those businesses, those big time businesses across the state.”

To learn more about the grant, visit here.