Hildreth Institute in The Daily Item

STATE INITIATIVE ENCOURAGES EARLY COLLEGE SAVINGS IN LYNN

This article originally appeared in The Daily Item by James Bartlett

LYNN — A new initiative in the city is encouraging parents and guardians to invest in their children’s future early on.

The BabySteps Savings Plan, a program offered by the Massachusetts Office of Economic Empowerment, is a program that jump-starts families into saving for future education, vocational, and apprenticeship costs.

Jessica Keegan, program manager of the BabySteps Savings Plan, said the program provides every child in Massachusetts with a free $50 seed deposit into a Massachusetts Education Financing Authority U.Fund 529 College Savings plan, which is a post-secondary education account, when they enroll within one year of their birth or adoption.

Keegan said that the program will also offer an extra $120 in funding for those who are eligible for SNAP benefits.

Although Lynn has one of the highest birth rates in the state, Keegan said, the city has a very low engagement rate with the savings plan program, which was launched in 2020.

“We really are committed to expanding our reach, especially to communities like Lynn, which have such potential for these accounts,” Keegan said. “It’s a gateway city, so we recognize that there’s a potential for all residents, including those from low to moderate income, to have this opportunity and expand to go into things like college or apprenticeship programs.”

The program is funded by the Economic Empowerment Trust Fund, a public-private partnership developed to fund the seed deposit. The founding sponsor of the program is the Hildreth Stewart Charitable Foundation, with additional funding support from MEFA.

The effort to promote engagement with the program in the city is part of a partnership between the Massachusetts Office of Economic Empowerment and the Hildreth Institute, as well as researchers from Brandeis University and Elm Consulting.

The Hildreth Institute is a policy and research institute that looks into issues in higher education. Managing Director Bahar Akman Imboden said that the program is part of a larger effort to close the racial wealth and educational gaps in communities like Lynn.

“This project is part of that approach,” Akman Imboden said.

“Lots of research on this subject has shown that early savings are correlated with, especially for lower-income students, a college-going identity,” Akman Imboden added. “It increases their college attendance and completion.”

Alexandra Piñeros-Shields, a professor at Brandeis University, is one of the consultants on the effort in Lynn to promote the BabySteps program.

According to Piñeros-Shields, as part of the initiative in the city, she and her colleagues will be distributing grants between $8,000 and $10,000 for community groups and organizations to help increase participation in the BabySteps program.

“People who the program was created for, meaning low-income and middle-income families, are not signing up for the program at the levels that families with upper incomes are registering,” she said. “We are going to facilitate a process in which these organizations that have the grant from the Office of Economic Empowerment come together to figure out some strategies for the city of Lynn.”

Piñeros-Shields noted an important aspect of the approach will be giving the four or five organizations selected the freedom to take their own approaches to promote engagement in the program.

“It’s bottom-up, it’s community-driven,” Piñeros-Shields said. “No one knows Lynn as well as the people who live in Lynn and the people who work in Lynn.”

Piñeros-Shields noted that the grant opportunity is still open for local organizations to apply for.

“We want to encourage as many people to apply as possible,” Piñeros-Shields said.

Keegan said LEO Inc. has been selected to be one of the city’s “enrollment hubs” where people can learn about BabySteps and enroll in the program.

Akman Imboden noted that for parents, even a small amount of savings can impact a child’s future.

“They may not be able to save, but they may start to understand the actual costs and be able to prepare financially,” Akman Imboden said. “Through the lifetime of the child, the parents might deposit later on, maybe not, but at least it’s there.”