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Politics K-12 kept watch on education policy and politics in the nation’s capital and in the states. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: Federal, States.

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Applications Pour in for Promise Neighborhood Program

By Alyson Klein — June 29, 2010 1 min read
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Those American Express commercials on the Harlem Children’s Zone must really be inspiring people.

A whopping 339 communities applied for relatively small one-year planning grants from the U.S. Department of Education, meant to help communities create their own Promise Neighborhoods. The new federal program, financed at just $10 million this year, is meant to help communities replicate the superstar, New York-based program’s success in pairing high-quality academics with a range of support services, such as counseling and prekindergarten, in order to get kids ready for college or a career.

These 339 applicants aren’t even asking for a grant to finance an actual program; those aren’t available yet. The department will pick up to 20 communities to receive planning grants of up to $500,000. The department has asked for $210 million in its fiscal year 2011 budget to finance grants to actually implement the Promise Neighborhood program.