San Francisco International High School Supports Financial Aid Process for Span Scholars

By Guest Blogger Amanda Chui, Fellows Program Manager, San Francisco International High School

With Span in its third year, our program has grown supporting our graduates both near and far. Participant numbers aren’t very obvious on a day-to-day basis until our larger events roll around.

This year due to the growing number of SFIHS alumni attending San Francisco State University, the SFIHS Span program planned three separate financial aid opportunities for all participants to attend. The first event took place at San Francisco State University on October 16, 2016. Students attended drop-in hours between their classes with their Span coordinator at SFSU. Between 8a.m.-1p.m., the Span coordinator met with approximately 18 students, completing and submitting their financial aid applications. FAFSA and California Dream Act applications must be completed and resubmitted each year a student is in school.

For many of our Span Scholars, this process involves collecting information from their own employment and their parents’ employment, which often means making sense of tax documents from countries outside of the United States. This is a daunting prospect and helping students through it, thank to our ACE Learning Center, is always greatly appreciated.

This opportunity allowed our SPAN students to not only practice scheduling their time wisely, but doing so in a manner that allowed them to be just a tad step ahead with their 2017-2018 school year!