We live in Jefferson County, West Virginia where life is harmonious (though sometimes contentious), vibrant (though becoming sprawling), and rich (relative to the rest of the state). We the residents are more and more not native to the county; fewer and fewer of us were actually born here and we newcomers have to learn the ways of the county and the state. We may enjoy all the good things mentioned above, but we also face problems–all the points in parentheses above. To help with those problems and to keep the good life good, we depend on the efforts of motivated citizens to help us, newcomers and natives alike.
We do this by being good people who care about our communities and care for our neighbors. We volunteer a lot and utilize the resources we have control over. Those resources include local taxes, local government, local businesses and community organizations. But we also supplement those resources with what state and federal programs make available. But now, in this era of small government, the resources of our state and federal agencies are being pulled back and even eliminated. We’re belt tightening.
The Spirit of Jefferson and other media across the state have been reporting regularly about the consequences of our state and federal governments addressing “waste, fraud, and abuse” across the spectrum. The taskforce to identify such misspending has concentrated its energies largely on programs that provide social, health, educational, and informational services to people across the spectrum. These are deemed not to be as vital as national defense, keeping people out, and making us, the richest country in the world, stingy toward our needy citizens.
The latest programs to face the grim reaper are the so-called TRIO programs in the nation’s universities. TRIO is a constellation of funding programs administered through the U.S. Department of Education. The funds are dispersed to higher education institutions through a discretionary granting process. That means colleges and universities have to submit detailed proposals on what their needs are and how they will spend funds.
Shepherd University has a decade long history of successfully applying for and receiving two types of TRIO grants. One supports the Upward Bound (UB) program to identify and guide high school students toward higher education. The other, Student Support Services (SSS), helps low income and first-in-family college goers to succeed in their studies and to graduate.
According to Evora Baker, the Director of TRIO at Shepherd, the program there has been consistently effective. In the 2023-24 school year, for example, the UB program, which primarily operates in the Berkeley County Public Schools, had a 100% success rate in graduating students, 77% of whom went on to enroll in colleges. For that same year, 90% of participating students at Shepherd persisted in their college education, and 54% graduated on time. The national average for the last statistic is more than 20 points lower.
The current grant Shepherd submitted (if TRIO survives and the grants are awarded) would continue the SSS program for the next five years. TRIO UB is currently in its third year of funding and during any subsequent grant competition, Ms. Baker would like to see the services expanded to serve students in Jefferson and Morgan Counties.
The TRIO program has been implemented at other locations around the state and our own Senator Capito has long been an advocate for it. As recently as 2023 she and three other senators (including two Democrats) introduced a bill to extend it for an additional six years with an increase in annual funding. It’s not far-fetched to believe that she advocates for the program because she sees its benefits. It’s step-by-step improving the high poverty and low education statistics of our state. And it has worked as planned, as the data show.
So what’s to be gained from the current Congress’s budget proposal to eliminate the program? It’s hard for me to justify how saving whatever they believe they are saving is reason enough to eliminate all the good the TRIO program delivers. It’s worse too when you understand that we’re not told exactly how much money they’re saving. They just say they are. No numbers. Shouldn’t they be more careful in their cost-benefit analysis? That’s the baby and the bath water argument.
In speaking with Ms. Baker I wondered about whether TRIO is some kind of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) program, which our recent legislative session passed a bill to outlaw. Governor Morrissey signed this bill and it is now law. But she explained that TRIO does not have the goal of ending or transforming society to be more accepting and supporting of the diverse people we Americans actually are. It’s a program to nurture and guide individual human beings to succeed. We help billionaires get even richer, we give financial incentives for businesses to invest in our communities. Businesses give training to new employees to do their jobs better. The military trains its soldiers to defend their country. What’s so different about supporting teens and young adults to find their own path to success? It’s not DEI; it’s strengthening a community.
I asked Ms. Baker what would be the consequences of losing the TRIO program. Would the university be able to maintain the program without federal funding? No, not likely. No money. Evidently, state institutions don’t have the endowments of the Ivy League. Well, then what about the community itself taking up the responsibility to keep the program going? Possibly, at least in concept. The community is already involved in providing tutoring when university resources can’t be found. Maybe the community could grow that small volunteer force to “adopt” students and serve as their tutors, mentors, guides. But is a logistical nightmare situation developing in your mind? Isn’t getting your kids to the school bus hard enough?
But the larger question here is why take something that’s working well, break it, and then try to reconstruct it thereby making it more complicated? A recipe for failure? I’d say so, yes.
Write and phone our Congressional representatives and tell them to back the good thing we have in TRIO.