CLEVELAND, Ohio – College will be free for virtually all Cleveland school district graduates starting with this year’s senior class, after the much-anticipated launch today of the Say Yes to Education college scholarship and student support program in the city.

A team of city, county, philanthropic and Say Yes leaders announced the scholarships at a rally at John Marshall High School to cheering students this morning, pledging that the ever-increasing cost of tuition will no longer block Cleveland school district graduates from attending college. Officials have already raised more than 70 percent of the $125 million they need to pay for scholarships for the next 25 years.

Though students and families will still have to pay living expenses, the new Say Yes scholarships will cover all remaining tuition costs once federal and state aid is used.

Related coverage: Say Yes to Education announces Cleveland will be the nonprofit organization’s next site for its community efforts.

“Today, we are guaranteeing that your dreams can come true,” school district CEO Eric Gordon told students.

Say Yes founder George Weiss, a New York businessman, told students that he wants the scholarships to give students hope.

“It’s about raising expectations for the young people," he said.

Students were ecstatic about not having to worry about paying for college.

“It will make a big difference," said John Marshall senior James Woolfolk Jr. "Now I don’t have to work two jobs to make it through. I can just start and I don’t have to worry about being in debt and owing anybody money.”

And Yasmin Adam, an immigrant from Sudan, said the announcement will let her drop plans to work for a few years to save money before going to nursing school.

“I was scared to go to college, because I’m the first generation (in her family to go),” she said. "When I came here I lost all hope that I would go to college and chase my dream.”

And senior Lynae Howard called the new scholarships “amazing.”

“Nobody wants to be paying loans for the rest of their life,” she said. “This given to us can stop that. I am very grateful that this is given to us.”

Others said the scholarships will help more than just the students. By offering free college, they said, more students will be better educated and can improve the region’s economy as adults.

“This will provide access for low and middle-incomes students in a way they haven’t seen before,” said Helen Williams of the Cleveland Foundation, a major partner in bringing Say Yes here.

Cleveland has long had lower rates of adults with college degrees than other cities. And while the district has been trying to push more students towards college or other training after graduation, it hasn’t worked. The percentage of Cleveland school district graduates attending college has declined from 54 percent in 2011 to 40 percent in 2017.

“That’s unacceptable,” Gordon said. So he and others wanted to find a way to ease the financial barriers to students attending and eliminating the loans that cripple them later.

After two and half years of planning, Cleveland becomes the fourth city to partner with New York-based Say Yes to Education will be a spark to change that trend. Say Yes is one of more than 200 so-called “College Promise” programs in the country, where all students of a district are promised free tuition at certain colleges if they graduate from high school and are accepted and eligible colleges.

Say Yes is already in place in Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y., and Guilford County, N.C.

Say Yes goes a step further than a typical promise program by helping communities add social support services to schools so students have a better chance of succeeding in school and reaching college.

The Say Yes national organization contributes $15 million to each city’s efforts for organizational and administrative costs, while offering financial and planning expertise. But each community must raise its own scholarship money and arrange for services inside schools.

Donations from 40 Northeast Ohio companies, foundations and individuals have already covered $88.4 million of the program’s $125 million scholarship fundraising goal – more than 70 percent of the total – putting it far ahead of other promise programs around the country that started with lower amounts raised and then struggled to pull in the final dollars.

“We are very confident that we will do what we need to do,” said Paul Clark, the regional president of PNC bank in Cleveland.

Cleveland Foundation CEO Ronn Richard told students today these donations should send them a clear message: “Cleveland believes in you.”

The amount from each donor has not been released, though the Cleveland Foundation is the dominant donor. Other well-known donors include the George Gund Foundation, Key Bank Foundation and Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam’s Haslam 3 Foundation. Haslam’s brother Bill, the governor of Tennessee, started a statewide, but more limited, college promise program in that state.

Here are key details about the program. Information is also available at www.sayyescleveland.org.

Click here for video of the full announcement rally.

Who’s eligible:

All Cleveland school district residents who attend a district high school for all four high school years, as well as charter high schools that formally partner with the district. That includes just two charter schools now, Horizon Science Academy and Northeast Ohio College Preparatory School.

It does not include residents of other districts attending a district school through open enrollment, but does include students living in the portions of Bratenahl, Brook Park, Linndale, Newburgh Heights, and Garfield Heights that are part of the district.

The program is also allowing all current district residents who attend district high schools to be eligible for the first round of scholarships, even if they have not been at a district school all four years. But after today, students must attend eligible schools for all four high school years.

“We felt it was really unfair (to exclude more recent enrollees) and we’re trying to get results quickly,” Williams said.

Gordon said parents of 8th graders can still pick high schools so that their child can receive the scholarships.

“You can enroll yet this spring for next year’s ninth grade class and be eligible,” Gordon said.

There are no income rules for eligibility.

What do they get?

If family income is below $75,000 – the majority of Cleveland families – the Say Yes scholarship will cover all tuition costs at eligible two-year and four-year schools or recognized job certificate programs.

If family income is over $75,000, the scholarship is capped at $5,000.

Families must complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and all state and federal aid is used first, before Say Yes money fills the gap.

For many low-income students, there will not be any gap to fill, or just a small one, but the scholarship makes sure families will not have tuition costs to pay.

Officials said there are about 125 Cleveland graduates a year that are accepted to school, but don’t go because they can’t afford it. Many more start, but decide after freshman year they cannot keep up with the bills, said Lee Friedman, CEO of College Now Greater Cleveland, the non-profit that handles college advising for the district.

That’s often because of an inability to pay the last few thousand in tuition that the scholarships will now cover.

“This isn’t a little thing,” Friedman said. “It’s a huge, huge thing.”

What colleges are eligible?

All state colleges and universities and a list of 116 private schools that have joined the Say Yes Compact. These include Ivy League universities and several Ohio schools, including Ashland, Baldwin-Wallace, Case-Western, Denison, Dayton, John Carroll, Kenyon, Notre Dame College, Oberlin, Ohio Northern, and Ohio Wesleyan, and Wooster.

Wraparound services:

The Cleveland schools already provides “wraparound” social services at about one fourth of its schools after launching them for several schools targeted for major improvements a few years ago. Under Say Yes, more schools will receive them – and more services too.

There is little new money budgeted for these added services and officials have yet to announce a detailed plan. Say Yes doesn’t pay for these services, nor does the scholarship fund. The program instead aims to have existing agencies and non-profits in the city better organize to target services to help students.

The lone immediate new expense and the key to providing these services will be hiring social services coordinators known as “family support specialists” for every school in the district, much like the “site coordinators” in place at wraparound schools now. They will organize summer school, after school, tutoring and family programs for the schools.

These coordinators will be paid by Cuyahoga County using federal child welfare grants, said Matt Carroll, the county’s interim director of health and human services.

This first step will be adding directors and basic services to schools over four years - 15% of schools in the fall, 25% the year after, then 30% in years three and four.

Once those are in place at a school, officials will look at where to add much larger services like the health and dental clinics in place at many of the schools in Buffalo and Syracuse.

Central Say Yes office:

Though the school district is a major player in organizing Say Yes, the program will be independent, so it can continue even if school leadership changes.

It has already hired Diane Downing as the local executive director. She will start work Feb. 12 and will be based out of. Say Yes office to be created out of the main Cleveland Public Library downtown.

Downing, who worked with former Cleveland mayors George Voinovich and Michael White, was most recently CEO of the Republican National Convention host committee for the 2016 convention in Cleveland.

She will be paid by the Say Yes national organization, but Say Yes CEO Gene Chasin said he did not know what she will be paid.