As the City Council ponders widening eligibility for the Michigan City Promise Scholarship program, it’s also looking to promote it better and ensure its future.

Promise Scholarship program Director Janet Buetner said she met with each of the 48 students who qualified last year, either in person or online, to raise awareness of the Promise Scholarship.

“I sent postcards, because a postcard you don’t even have to open the envelope,” she said.

Buetner wants to start connecting with students in September.

“Sometimes you call the parents, you call the students, you send emails and there is no response. You do everything you can,” she said.

Councilwoman Dalia Zygas, D-at large, suggested a pizza party. “That would bring them in,” she said. “If our problem is giving out money, maybe we need to reach out better.”

Revisions to the Michigan City Promise Scholarship program are on hold until after the city’s 2022 budget is approved. In the meantime, the program’s future expansion is uncertain.

City Council members and the public staked out positions on the Michigan City Promise Scholarship program at a recent workshop as efforts to overhaul the program began.

Council Vice President Angie Deuitch, D-at large, said each community across the country that offers a similar program does it differently, but she plans to put together a matrix to better compare them.

Kalamazoo and Hammond are two that have served as models for Michigan City. Kalamazoo’s program isn’t limited to homeowners, but Michigan City’s is. Hammond’s College Bound program is tied to homeownership but not Hammond’s public schools. Michigan City’s program currently requires students to attend the public high school.

Resident Don Briggs said it was “conspicuously cruel” not to include renters.

The council appears poised to expand the scholarship program to renters. The question is how else the program might be expanded.

Laure Poulin, an English teacher at Michigan City High School, asked the council to continue to encourage enrollment in public schools. She noted many MCHS graduates earn dual credits that allow them to graduate from college in three years. She also supports increasing the scholarship amount, currently capped at $5,000 per year for up to four years.