Children’s Scholarship Fund CSF was created to give disadvantaged families more choice in their child’s education. PP !  What would you tell other parents? Stay involved with your children. If you can’t be involved in the school and go there, you still need to stay in touch with your children. Find out who their friends are, what they are doing in school, what they have for homework and just really stay on top of them.  Try to guide them into doing what is best.  Parent involve- ment…that is probably the most important thing. I feel that if a parent is not involved then that child is saying to himself, “well no one cares” and he can do whatever he wants to do. But if that parent is involved, that child knows, “hey, this person loves me and cares for me,” and they just try to make themselves better. PP! :  Are the other kids in the private school the same as your kids? To me they are different. I notice that the kids in the private school are more kids, they are more into books and doing things around their age. They are at a child’s level.  In the other school I noticed that, especially with my son, the little girls were a little faster, a little more fast-paced. At this school, you can tell that the parents are involved with their kid’s life.  They have morals or know that they can’t act a certain way.  You can see by the way they act that they have struc- ture. In the public school, with some of the kids you can tell whose parents were involved with them and whose parents weren’t. PP! : What is the best thing that has happened? (The school) sent out progress reports and they always have a comment line.  I wrote this long comment about my kids.  When I wrote it, I was on a natural high because they had worked so hard and gotten such good grades after just getting into the school.  Later, I found out that the teachers were so amazed at my comments that they used them for Morning Prayer.  It made me feel good. MARISONNE LEE, CONT’D PP! What are the biggest obstacles you face? Meeting the demand for scholarships within our areas.  We received almost 10,000 appli- cations for 600 positions last year.  Within the program, a lot of the families could use addi- tional resources beyond the financial; more tutoring and mentoring to help them. A concern is that after the scholarship runs out, are they going to be able to remain in those schools?  We are working hard to provide addi- tional funding for these families.  As they look at schools, we encourage them to make sure it is one they could possibly be planning to pay for themselves in the future.  Principals themselves are writing grants to try to help out in some ways.  We have also talked to some families about setting up an account so they can put money away now to defray some of the cost in the future. PP! What are the benefits the children receive from the choice their families have made? Oh, completely different children!  For the first time the kids feel like someone is concerned or cares about their education and their well being. For many of them it was a new start.  If they had been at a school and doing poorly before, they now have a new opportunity and they have turned around completely socially and academi- cally. The environment they were in before wasn’t a good educational environment, and so it is a struggle for them to come into a new school and to catch up with their classmates. But, they see it as a new opportunity, they are excited about new friends and they feel like they are in more of a family environment. The parents just like seeing their children happy for a change. They like to see them come home with home- work and books and they are sitting down with them.  It is facilitating the family again. PP! Anything you would like to add? We are providing the best gift you can give anyone — the freedom of choice.  I think anytime you limit someone’s choice, you take away one of their rights. It is a lot of work, there is a great demand and we have only touched a small number of individuals, but if we help one student become the next leader in the country, then we have done a great job. CHRISTINA HOLMES, CONT’D According to a Harvard University study, scholarship recipients are 200- 300 times more likely to be satisfied with their school programs, teachers and parental involvement than families in public school who didn’t have a choice. Check this out