Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced today that Boston Saves, the city of Boston’s children’s savings account program, has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the Boston Foundation to help fund the next two years of its three-year pilot.
The funding will help support a financial incentives program to encourage families to save for their children’s future, an online platform where families can track their savings, and school programming around financial education and family engagement.
Boston Saves was launched last fall, providing each participating kindergartner with an account that is automatically seeded with $50.
In the first year of its pilot, Boston Saves has so far provided seeded accounts to 246 kindergartners at five participating Boston Public Schools:
- George H. Conley Elementary School in Roslindale
- Harvard-Kent Elementary School in Charlestown
- Donald McKay K-8 School in East Boston
- James Otis Elementary School in East Boston
- Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park
The next two years of the pilot are projected to add another 1,100 children to the program. By Fall 2019, the initiative is slated to begin roll-out to all Boston’s public school K2 kindergarten classes.
Research suggests that children’s savings account programs can encourage college attendance and completion, according to a statement from Walsh’s office. Low-income children with $500 or less in a savings account dedicated to higher education have been shown to be three times more likely to enroll in college and four times more likely to graduate from college, the statement said. By 2020, 77 percent of jobs in Boston are projected to require some form of post-secondary education or training.
