Principal’s View: Nearly All Our Seniors Complete the FAFSA & Get into High-Quality, 4-Year Colleges. Here’s How We Do It

By Bennett Lieberman, principal of Central Park East High School (a CBI partner school)
Published on The 74 on February 2, 2022

Around the country, 1 in 5 college students do not complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — the FAFSA — the form high school and college students must complete to apply for and receive financial aid. This means millions of students, mainly from low-income families, are deprived of financial aid they would otherwise be entitled to. As a result, many take on unnecessary debt to complete their education — or don’t go to college at all.

The New York City school I lead, Central Park East High School in East Harlem, is a citywide program located in an area where approximately 80 percent of our 505 students are low-income, minority and first-generation in going to college. Central Park East has helped these students beat the odds year after year, and even though New York City schools were shut down for most of the 2020-21 school year, 98 percent of our class of 2021 still completed the FAFSA, which allowed 99 percent to successfully enroll in college. To help other schools to do the same, Central Park East, in partnership with the Heckscher Foundation for Children, has created an in-depth guide detailing how we achieved this outstanding outcome — and how it can be replicated.