Philly Group Again Offering Scholarships To Low-Income Schoolkids

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- An organization that distributes scholarships to low-income students in grades K through 8, giving them the opportunity to attend Catholic or other private schools their parents could not otherwise afford, has announced the start of another application season.

Right now there are 3,000 children receiving an average of $1,390 in assistance from Children's Scholarship Fund Philadelphia.  And because of corporate and private support, fund officials say they can offer 750 new, four-year scholarships for the 2011-2012 school year.

"There are currently over 10,000 empty seats in Philadelphia," says CSFP executive director Ina Lipman (right), "so we will just keep redoubling our efforts until we can fill with scholarship support all of those seats and have more families have access to quality education."

Gwen Hinton Freeman, principal of Timothy Academy in North Philadelphia, has many students who receive this grant money and describes one of the school's many success stories.

"My (current) third grade teacher attended Timothy Academy," she recalls, "graduated, went on to high school, graduated from college, then called me and said, 'Miss Freeman, I would like to teach at Timothy Academy.' "

Only the first 7,000 applications received by the March 1, 2011 deadline will be processed for the lottery.

For more information go to www.csfphiladelphia.org.

Reported by Michelle Durham, KYW Newsradio 1060.