School districts must inform students, families about free money for college

Starting this school year, school districts must provide information about CalKIDS, the California Kids Investment and Development Savings program, which creates college savings accounts and deposits between $500 and $1,500 for eligible students, according to a fiscal report by School Services of California.

The new requirement to inform students and families about the interest-bearing accounts was a provision added for the program in the recently enacted state budget, the fiscal report said.

The requirement should raise much-needed awareness about the program among families.

Even though the money is automatically deposited into savings accounts under students’ names, families must claim the accounts by registering online with students’ Statewide Student Identifier (SSID), a 10-digit number that appears on student transcripts.

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Since the program’s 2022 launch, 12% of all student accounts statewide (475,862 of 3.9 million eligible) have been claimed, as of March 31.

CalKIDS, the largest college savings account program in the country, was created to help students and children from underserved communities gain access to higher education or career training.

Low-income public school students and English learners, identified by the California Department of Education, are automatically awarded $500 if they:

• Were in grades first-12th during the 2021-22 school year
• Were enrolled in first grade during the 2022-23 school year, or 
• Are first graders in subsequent school years

An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth, and another $500 for students classified as homeless.

Children born in California, regardless of their parents’ income, are granted $100 in an account. Those born in the state between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, were awarded $25 before the seed deposit increased to $100. More than 1 million newborns are currently eligible, with nearly 9% of newborn accounts claimed as of March 31.

Account holders can claim the money up to age 26.

Over the years, CalKIDS has sent account notification letters to millions of students and newborns and partnered with hundreds of organizations to promote the program. To expand its reach and create more awareness within the last year, CalKIDS increased its partnerships and targeted outreach, and changed materials to address language access and reading comprehension.

CalKIDS has also developed a toolkit and resources for districts to utilize in outreach, which will be mandated by the new requirement, the fiscal report said. But districts have discretion about how that outreach looks, whether using resources from CalKIDS or developing their own.

CalKIDS and some districts have already been trying to educate families at the school level.

In early 2024, CalKIDS entered into a contract with PeachJar to disseminate program information to families, so parents and guardians began seeing emails and messaging about “free money for college” for their students. Across Fresno Unified, which had created a districtwide campaign to raise awareness about the CalKIDS funds available to most of its students, families started receiving messages in January 2024 from the district and individual schools, including flyers on PeachJar.

“If we all work together — the community-based organizations, the schools, everybody — we can ensure that every child in California knows that college and career training are within reach,” the program’s director, Cassandra DiBenedetto, told EdSource.