CABARRUS COUNTY, N.C.,None — Students from Cabarrus County Schools received more than $19.7 million in scholarship funds this year, the system staff said this week.
Executive Director of Student Services Donna Smith presented a report of 2011 student scholarships to the Cabarrus County Board of Education at its meeting Monday. All of the district's high schools keep records of the scholarships awarded to their students, which are collected for the annual report.
This year's scholarship dollar total represented more than a 20 percent increase from the approximately $16 million students received in 2010.
"I think we have some good news," Smith said. "In economic times such as what we're facing, we would never have predicted our scholarship total is $19 million. That is tremendous."
She highlighted that the total is an even bigger increase from the approximately $9.4 million students received in 2009.
"You can see, since 2009, we've made some major changes," Smith said.
She added that she could not say the data was completely accurate because it is recorded before the summer, which is when some organizations award scholarships, so the total of awards could be even bigger.
Among the 882 scholarships recorded that totaled about $19.7 million, 825 of them, or almost $17.7 million were academic scholarships. Fifty-two, or almost $1.8 million, were athletic scholarships, and five, or about $294,000, were military scholarships.
Smith added that the scholarships that were deemed athletic ones were athletic rides to college, and she said a number of athletes received academic scholarships.
Almost 240 of the scholarships were in the $25 to $1,000 range, and more than 200 were between $1,001 and $10,000.
More than 440 of the scholarships awarded were those of greater than $10,000, which board member Blake Kiger said was outstanding.
Kiger also said he was impressed to see the numbers increase among scholarships received by students at Mount Pleasant and Concord high schools.
Mount Pleasant High students received about $4 million in scholarships this year, compared to about $1.4 million in 2010. There were also 165 scholarships received, compared to 96 last year, and the number of students who received scholarships increased by 21.
Concord High students received about $3 million in scholarship funds this year, compared to about $2.9 million in 2010. There were also 54 more scholarships received than last year, and the number of students who received scholarships increased by four.
Northwest Cabarrus and Hickory Ridge high schools also received a greater total of scholarship funds this year, compared to last year.
Smith told board members that some schools may have received the same amount of scholarships this year, but the values of those funds sometimes change each year.
In addition to Concord and Mount Pleasant, the high schools that received a greater number of scholarships were Central Cabarrus, Hickory Ridge and the Performance Learning Center. Cox Mill High School had its first graduating class this year, so there was no data from last year to compare to.
Those that had more students receive scholarships were Central Cabarrus, Hickory Ridge and the Performance Learning Center, in addition to Concord and Mount Pleasant.
Smith said that some private donors do not offer a scholarship every year, and that was a key point in analyzing the data.
This year, all race categories, which consist of African-American, Asian, Hispanic, multi-racial, Native American and white, saw increases in the amount of scholarships awarded to them, compared to last year, she said.
Across the district this year, 22 percent of the seniors received scholarships. That percentage was an increase from 20.6 percent last year and 17 percent in 2009.
"We consider that a pretty huge jump," Smith said. "We're getting more seniors represented."
Board member Carolyn Carpenter said that she has been concerned for years about it being hard for parents to find scholarship information, and she asked that the system staff report how the information gets out to families. Smith said she could bring that report to the board's retreat in October.
Kiger and board Vice Chairperson Tim Furr also asked that the system staff bring information about surrounding school districts and how much in scholarship funds their students received.
Several board members said the report was great news, but there is always room for improvement.
"This is amazing to me we jumped up $3.7 million from last year," said board member Lynn Shue. "I would like to see us having an aggressive scholarship campaign."