On Thursday, June 1, 210 students received emails letting them know that their college education is going to be more affordable thanks to the Pueblo County Scholarship. Each of the 210 graduating high school seniors that applied for the scholarship are each receiving a $2,000 scholarship. The 210 students are the first students to receive a full-year of scholarship funding from the world’s first cannabis-funded scholarship program.
Pueblo County is awarding nearly $420,000 in total scholarship dollars for the 2017-2018 academic year. The Pueblo County Scholarship Fund is just one of the many ways that Pueblo County is leading the nation and the world in cannabis policy. The Pueblo Hispanic Education Foundation has managed the scholarship program on behalf of Pueblo County.
“The full roll-out of our cannabis-funded scholarship program is groundbreaking. We are the first community in the world to provide a cannabis-funded scholarship to every graduating high school senior that applied. It is so critically important to make college affordable for our youth if we want to provide long-term economic opportunity to our community. Too many kids can’t afford to go to college, with this program we are taking cannabis-tax revenue and using it to provide for a brighter future in Pueblo,” Pueblo County Commissioner Sal Pace said.
The Pueblo County Scholarship Fund is funded by $369,000 in cannabis-excise-tax revenue and $51,000 in grant-matching funding provided by the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative (COSI), a State of Colorado Department of Higher Education program. Those state funds would not have been available without the local-matching dollars, provided by cannabis tax revenue.
“This collaborative partnership has allowed PHEF to administer the largest number of scholarship awards in any given year since our inception in 1988,” said Beverly Duran, the Executive Director of PHEF.
PHEF is a non-profit agency that was appointed to administer the scholarship by the Pueblo Board of County Commissioners.
Pueblo County and PHEF will be handing out scholarship certificates to scholarship winners on Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 12:30 p.m. on the Grand Staircase of the Historic Pueblo County Courthouse.
In 2016, Pueblo County and COSI awarded $50,000 in scholarship funding. As a result of the unanticipated funding, 23 scholarships were given for the 2016-2017 academic year.
Last year’s scholars continuing their education at PCC and CSU-Pueblo are also being funded.
All of the 210 students who applied for the scholarship on PHEF.net were automatically awarded the cannabis-funded scholarship as long as they met the following criteria:
• The applicant had to be a graduating high school senior in 2017 and;
• Reside in Pueblo County and;
• Attend either Pueblo Community College or Colorado State University-Pueblo beginning in the Fall of 2018.
The Pueblo County Scholarship Fund was created by a ballot initiative in the 2015 Coordinated Election. A minimum of 50 percent of all of the marijuana excise tax collected in Pueblo County is allocated to the Pueblo County Scholarship Fund. The remaining marijuana excise tax revenue is allocated to a list of community enhancement projects.
Pueblo County’s marijuana excise tax is a tax on all marijuana grown in Pueblo County. The tax is charged to the marijuana cultivator only once, when the marijuana is first sold or transferred to a retail store or manufacturer. Pueblo County has been collecting excise tax, by voter approval, since January 1, 2016. The excise tax rate is currently at two percent and will increase by one percent annually until a five percent excise tax rate is achieved.
