All LAUSD 1st graders getting savings accounts with $50 deposits

All first graders within the Los Angeles Unified Faculty District are getting financial savings accounts with $50 seed deposits.

It’s a part of a program meant to assist households begin planning for his or her kids to go to varsity.

This system, Alternative L.A., will robotically present Citibank accounts with the cash to each first-grade scholar in any respect 519 elementary faculties on the nation’s second-largest college district.

Officers stated this system in 2021 started offering financial savings accounts with $50 deposits to kids in choose high-need faculties. It was expanded this 12 months to incorporate all first graders within the district.

With this system having opened 44,363 accounts on behalf of youngsters, it’s the biggest kids’s financial savings account program within the nation, L.A. metropolis officers stated.

“Too many kids merely can’t afford greater training,” L.A. Metropolis Council President Nury Martinez stated in an announcement. “Due to the work we’ve carried out right here and the funds we’ve invested, 44,363 kids can now plan for a future that features greater training.”

Officers say financial savings accounts for youngsters may help with decreasing instructional and financial inequality, and cite analysis that discovered that kids with financial savings accounts are as much as seven occasions extra more likely to attend faculty than these with out accounts.

“This historic program does greater than give youngsters and households a monetary increase towards making faculty extra reasonably priced and accessible—it additionally instills a college-going mindset in our college students from an early age,” LAUSD Faculty Board Member Nick Melvoin stated in an announcement.

Along with the automated $50 deposit for college kids, households will even be capable of obtain a dollar-for-dollar Tax Time Financial savings match, as much as $25, when their dad and mom or guardians file their taxes with Free Tax Prep Los Angeles and make a deposit of no less than $5 throughout tax season into their scholar’s OLA account.

This system will even present an extra financial savings reward for unhoused first-grade college students in this system.

The financial savings accounts can be found to college students no matter their households’ earnings stage or immigration standing, authorities stated.

Households will get a welcome packet with program info and their scholar’s account quantity to instantly begin making contributions.

Extra info on Alternative L.A. might be discovered at opportunityla.com.