By Sydney Goitia-Doran, The Seattle Medium
King County has awarded Bellevue College a $1.2 million grant to launch a pilot program supporting underserved student veterans. Funded through the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy, the program is designed to help veterans who are low-income, living with disabilities, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, homeless, or previously incarcerated.
Josh Kienlen, director of Veteran Services at Bellevue College, said the program fills a critical gap for veterans and their families who often face barriers to education.
“The grant allows us to help students who generally we have a hard time helping, at least with specific veteran benefits…” Kienlen said. “We have a decent number that have come across over the years that just had no other options, so this actually helps focus in on those people.”
According to Kienlen, many veterans lose eligibility for educational benefits when they expire, or they may not qualify because of their discharge status. This grant ensures that students in those situations can still receive financial support.
“The county is agreeing to pay up to $15,000 per year for tuition, which is well above what Bellevue College charges for tuition, so we’re good there. They also are offering up to $10,000 for every 12-month period in wraparound services,” Kienlen said. “It could be food, housing, transportation, childcare, books and supplies, things like that, primarily, just to make sure they have all the other things kind of covered, or at least to the extent we can, so they can focus more on school.”
In addition to covering tuition, the funding will address essential costs that often prevent students from completing their education. Bellevue College plans to use part of the funding for additional resources, including a laptop loaner program and bookstore accounts for veterans to purchase school supplies.
“It’s all those wraparound things, so they’re having trouble with rent, or they’re having trouble with food or utilities, or their car broke down, or something like that,” Kienlen said. “We have a small veteran safety net on campus, but it’s very limited, so that only helps so much, but this is going to really be able to help make sure all those other pieces are covered. And I think that’s going to be the biggest benefit out of this.”
The new program fits into King County’s larger goals of providing more support to veterans. As part of that effort, Kienlen said the colleges receiving the grant will play a key role in developing practical solutions.
“I think the idea is they’re trying to find new ways to help get some of these veterans back to school, employed things like that,” Kienlen said. “And they’re giving us, and the other college that received some of the money a little bit of leeway to try and figure out what’s going to work best.”
Shoreline Community College is also participating in the program, as part of the county’s efforts to support veterans, military service members and their families through the levy. Kienlen said Bellevue Community College plans to regularly meet with them and collaborate on getting the word out about the grant.
“We are going to be working on doing some collaborative or just combining the advertising, because they’re a little bit further north, we’re a little further south, so we have different populations,” Kienlen said. “We want to make sure if we see someone, or we have someone come in, that would make more sense to go to Shoreline, we’re going to pass them along the Shoreline so that they can help them out for that.”
Kienlen said this grant is for almost anybody, and one of their top priorities is to spread the word so people not knowing what they qualify for doesn’t prevent them from going back to school.
“We’re hosting veterans resource fairs, we’re doing monthly lunch sessions where we’re bringing people into the campus to talk to veterans. These are things that are open to anybody, so it’s not just students,” Kienlen said. “I think that’s the biggest thing, is we want to make sure the community as a whole knows that we’re here and that we are trying our best to get them any resources that they need, and this is going to be one of the bigger ways for us to reach those people.”
