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FA V O R I T E S
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142. CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD:
The historic vibe
of downtown
Charleston,
S.C., is the
perfect backdrop
for amazing
restaurants like
Poogan’s Porch,
Hyman’s Seafood,
Fleet Landing and
High Cotton—and
a brownie sundae
from Kaminsky’s.
And make sure
you tip the kids
selling the flowers
made out of
sweetgrass.
South Carolina
native Lenard
McKelvey, a.k.a.
Charlamagne Tha
God, co-hosts The
Breakfast Club
radio show
143. MIKE VEECK:
The Lorraine
Motel in Memphis,
where Martin
Luther King Jr. was
assassinated, is
my favorite place
to visit in the
U.S. Now more
than ever, it’s
relevant beyond
belief. There’s a
bittersweet joy
underneath the
sadness, given
how far we’ve
come since Dr.
King died but how
much further we
have to go.
Veeck is part
owner of five
minor-league
baseball teams
across the U.S.
144. OLGA VISO:
One of the best
green spaces in
the Minneapolis
park system is
Minnehaha Park,
best enjoyed
by sharing crab
cakes and a
bottle of wine
outside at Sea
Salt, a seasonal
restaurant
nestled near the
park’s trails and
Minnehaha Falls.
Viso is executive
director of the
Walker Art Center
80
Time July 11–18, 2016
145. The city where
high school grads go to
college for free
“P R O M I S E ” C O L L E G E
GRADS FROM THE
CLASS OF 2016
BY JOSH SANBURN
When Doreisha reeD Was
in elementary school, she
thought college was free
for everyone. Her teachers
spoke about it like it was an
extension of high school, as
if she had no other option
but to attend. And when the
teachers talked, they kept
bringing up “the Promise.”
“Until middle school, I
thought everybody had it,”
says Reed, now 18 and a
recent Kalamazoo Central
High School graduate
headed to Western Michigan
University. “But that’s when
it hit me. Other kids have to
pay for college.”
Kalamazoo, Mich., is
different not just because
its name sounds funny. The
city that sells T-shirts that
read, yes, There really
is a kalamazoo! was once
best known as the subject of
Glenn Miller’s “(I’ve Got a
Gal in) Kalamazoo” and later
as the hometown of Yankees
legend Derek Jeter. But in
the past decade, it’s acquired
another renown: incubator of
one of the most generous and
transformative philanthropic
gifts in the country.
Since 2006, more than
5,000 students have been
eligible for the Kalamazoo
Promise, an $80 million
investment from a group
of anonymous local donors
that allows every city
student to attend an in-state
college tuition-free. The
initiative is so striking, it
spurred President Obama
to give his first high school
commencement address at
Kalamazoo Central in 2010.
Visiting the city, it’s easy
to see that the Promise has
been about culture as much
as tuition. Kindergarten
teachers put college pennants
up in their classrooms.
Elementary-school students
talk about the differences
between Michigan and
Michigan State. Real estate
agents hype homes within the
school district. The name of
a local peregrine falcon seen
around the city? Promise.
The notion of making
public universities free has
been revived this election
cycle. But in many U.S.
cities, it’s already happening
from the ground up. More
than 50 communities have
some form of place-based
tuition-free scholarships,
an idea that originated in
Kalamazoo after a decadeslong slide in enrollment
beginning in the 1980s
led to tens of millions of
dollars in budget cuts. Then,
Kalamazoo Public Schools
(KPS) was known as a tough
inner-city district that white
families were abandoning
for nearby suburban schools.
Like many of its Rust Belt
neighbors, the city had once
been a manufacturing hub,
the proud home to Gibson
guitars and Checker cabs, but
jobs left as factories moved
overseas. The biggest hit
came when Pfizer acquired
the Upjohn Co., a longtime
employer that created the
digestible pill, and shrank its
local operations.
In the mid-2000s, a
group of wealthy donors
began talking about “a
big initiative” to turn the
community around, and
the discussion always came
back to education, says
Janice Brown, Promise’s
executive director emeritus
and the only person in direct
contact with the donors. By
2005, they had decided to
fund college tuition for all
Kalamazoo graduates, a gift
they hoped would create
economic ripples across
the region. When Brown
announced the Promise that
November, parents cried.
Some thought it was a joke.
Britney Schiedel, a
high school junior at the
time, remembers her grandmother approaching her.
“She said, ‘Your school is
paid for,’” Schiedel recalls.
“And I was like, ‘What are
you talking about?’” She
hadn’t really thought about
college until then. “I made
the decision to go to college
the next day,” she says.
Kalamazoo has since
become a de facto laboratory
for testing the communal
benefits of a college
education. After years of
decline, local high school
enrollment has increased
from 10,000 students
before the Promise to
12,500 in 2016. The W.E.
Upjohn Institute, a think
tank started by the founder
of the pharmaceutical firm,
estimates that enrollment
would otherwise be closer to
9,000. Though the Promise
doesn’t require college
grads to return, it helped
stabilize the district, with
the population holding
steady and far fewer white
families leaving for suburban
schools. College enrollment
of Kalamazoo graduates
increased from 60% before
the Promise to 69%, while
those obtaining degrees
within six years after high
school rose from 36% to 48%.
The Promise boosted the
percentage of low-income
students who received a
bachelor’s degree from 10%
to 16%, and local students are
more likely to go to college
than their peers in other
parts of the state. Kalamazoo,
meanwhile, did not lose any
of its population during the
Great Recession, and the
current unemployment rate is
below the Michigan average.
The Promise is not a
panacea, however. While
more grads are going to
college, minorities account
for too many of the Promise
students who do not finish,
with black and Hispanic
students graduating at
half the rate of whites.
“The completion rates are
still horrible,” says Bob
Jorth, Promise’s current
executive director. “But the
donors understand this is a
generational issue.”
Like elsewhere in the state,
poverty rates have actually
increased in the city. About
70% of KPS students are on
free or reduced lunch, one of
the highest rates in Michigan.
And the expectation that
all Kalamazoo high school
graduates will go on to
college has highlighted other
problems in the educational
system, like the lack of earlychildhood literacy programs.
But the Promise has also
spurred surrounding schools
to improve the quality of
their facilities and teachers,
and inspired dozens of
communities across the
U.S.—including Pittsburgh;
Peoria, Ill.; and Syracuse,
N.Y.—to create Promiselike programs, 16 of them in
Michigan alone.
Despite these successes,
the Promise’s donors remain
fiercely protective of their
anonymity—guessing their
identities is a parlor game.
Few with ties to the area
could afford such a gift,
so most residents suspect
the Stryker family, which
owns the medical-device
manufacturer Stryker Corp.,
or its top executives. A
Stryker spokesperson said
the firm is “not affiliated”
with the Promise.
Change, of course, takes
time. Schiedel, who as a
high school junior hadn’t
realized what the Promise
meant, gets it now. When
she was a student, the news
from her high school was
almost always bad—fights,
suspensions, drugs. But after
graduating from Michigan
State, she bought a home in
Kalamazoo and is getting
a master’s degree in social
work at Western Michigan
University, in town. “I
wanted to come back to
my community to pay it
forward,” she says. “With the
added bonus that my kids are
going to get the Promise.” •
F R O M T O P R O W T O B O T T O M , L E F T T O R I G H T: K E L S E Y L I N D E , Z A C H R I C K L I , A L I R U S S O, T Y L E R M C C R A R Y, PAT T Y R O D R I G U E Z , L AT R I C E H . H E N D R I C K S , R A J B R U EG G E M A N N , L A R E B N A D E E M , E L E X I S B U C H A N A N ,
T Y L E R J A C K S O N , C H A N T E L R O M E R O, M A R I A A S C E N C I O D E L A C R U Z , A L E X R U H S , E M I LY O L I VA R E S , C H E L S E A O L I VA R E S , H U N T E R L E E , M O H A M M A D A M I N I , D O M I N I Q U E J A C K S O N , S H A N E D U G G A N , G A B R I E L L E O R B E