In March 2023, Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf went before the Minnesota Senate Taxes Committee with a critical plea.

Not enough parents could take advantage of a state tax credit for low-income families for tutoring services from companies like his, Success Tutoring.

“What we have here is not an achievement gap, we have an opportunity gap. We have students who are not able to get the help that they need because the parents cannot afford it,” .

Sheik-Yusuf, wearing a plum-colored suit and Louis Vuitton scarf, said Success Tutoring had helped hundreds of students overcome the “literacy curve.” And they could help even more disadvantaged students if lawmakers would support a bill to raise the income ceiling and increase the amount of the credit.

“There’s a saying that we used to use in the classroom: Today’s reader is tomorrow’s leader. If we invest in education, it’s an investment in the child’s future,” Sheik-Yusuf said.

Sheik-Yusuf’s testimony was well received by both parties, who’ve long supported the K-12 Education Credit. The bill was folded into a larger tax package and passed with little attention. In fact, it was one of the few noncontroversial items of the 2023 session, when the Democratic trifecta passed a sweeping progressive agenda.

What lawmakers were unaware of at the time were the many disgruntled parents who say Success Tutoring and a related company called Achievers Tutoring outsource instruction to foreign teachers online whom their kids couldn’t understand.

Nor did lawmakers anticipate the outrage those parents would feel when they would later find thousands of dollars missing from their tax refunds to pay debts to Success Tutoring and Achievers Tutoring for services they say their kids barely used and didn’t benefit from.

The allegations surrounding the K-12 Education Credit come amid a larger crisis of fraud in state government, with hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly siphoned away from programs supposed to fund child nutrition, autism services, transportation and interpretation assistance.

The bill to increase spending on the tax credit was authored by Rep. Matt Norris, DFL-Blaine, who prior to his election to the Legislature, founded Minnesota Afterschool Advance to help more people use the credit. The organization, a collaboration between Venn Foundation and Youthprise, gives families zero-interest loans to pay for tutoring, music lessons or driver’s ed and collects the money from their tax refund. Norris helped grow the program to $1.8 million in funding for educational programs in 2022, according to .

Norris had lobbied lawmakers for years to raise the income threshold and, after being elected in 2022, it was one of the first bills he authored. The bill () expanded the tax credit from $1,000 to $1,500 per child and more than doubled the income threshold to $70,000, with higher earners eligible for a smaller credit. The bill also tied the income threshold to inflation, so it may increase every year.

After the law passed, state spending on the credit more than doubled, from $5.3 million in 2022 to $13.7 million in 2023.

Norris, who left Minnesota Afterschool Advance when he entered the Legislature, says he was unaware until recently of the mothers’ complaints — and debt.

Lul Mohamud’s story

Lul Mohamud learned about free tutoring help for her four children at the mosque she attended, Dar Al-Farooq, in Bloomington one day in summer 2022.

After prayer time, three men told the congregation that they could get their children back on track after the pandemic caused so many to fall behind in reading and math. The tutoring was completely free for low-income parents, she recalled them saying.

Mohamud said a mosque leader who previously ran the youth program encouraged families to sign up. So did members of a group that she respected called the Muslim Coalition.

“They were introduced at the mosque as good people so I trusted them,” Mohamud said in an interview in Somali through an interpreter. “(They) said if you don’t help your kids, your kids will fall behind.”

As she was leaving the mosque, the men were standing outside the exit signing people up, and she gave one of the men her phone number. The man called her later that day. She gave him her Social Security number, and he gave her an address in Bloomington.

Mohamud says she didn’t bring her kids to begin tutoring until some months later, as school was getting back into session. She went to the address of a nondescript, three-story office building. It wasn’t at all like she pictured. It was a small office space without any clues that children learned there — no chalkboard or textbooks.

A representative for Achievers Tutoring said she would need to buy $50 laptops for each of her kids, ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade, to do the tutoring online. Mohamud didn’t have $200 for four computers — the man only accepted cash — but she was able to get two. Her two other kids could use the laptops they had from school.

Mohamud said he directed them to go to another address in Bloomington the following week for online tutoring sessions.

But that turned out to be no more promising. Instead of teachers, there were half a dozen or so young men there, scrolling on TikTok. One directed her to set up the laptops for the kids to use and told her she could leave and come back later to pick them up.

“When I saw the place, I determined it wasn’t a place I could leave my children alone,” Mohamud said.

She stayed, and watched her kids log into a virtual class with an instructor whom she believes was in another country. Mohamud speaks Somali and only a little English, but her kids are native English speakers and said they couldn’t understand the teacher. After about 40 minutes, the lesson was over.

It seemed like a joke, but Mohamud said she tried bringing them back one more time. After that, she decided to pull her kids out. She went back the next week to return the laptops, both of which had already stopped working.

Months later came a horrible surprise — thousands of dollars were taken out of her tax refund to pay for the two subpar tutoring sessions. Her refund wasn’t enough to cover the entire expense, so she went into debt.

Mohamud had signed up with a company called Achievers Tutoring, a company created in 2021 by Osman Sheik-Yusuf, who shares a last name with Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf, the Success Tutoring founder, according to records from the Minnesota Secretary of State. (The men did not answer a question from the Reformer on how they’re related).

Both companies were registered with the same business address in Bloomington. Both companies have nearly offering online courses in math, English, coding and public speaking. Both boast “975+ satisfied students, 150+ teachers and 27+ years in experience.” And both websites have identical testimonials from four satisfied individuals all named “Griffin Wooldridge” with different stock images.

When sent a list of questions by the Reformer, both companies sent nearly identical statements with the same lawyer copied on the email.

The statements say Osman Sheik-Yusuf and Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf launched their respective companies to help students of color overcome the achievement gap.

“For those who have not received the credit, we encourage them to Adhere to the guidelines set by the Minnesota Department of Revenue and Minnesota Afterschool Advance,” the statement from Osman Sheik-Yusuf said.

Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf, when asked again about the list of questions sent by the Reformer, wrote “We compliance (sic) with all guidelines.”

Mohamud says dozens of Somali mothers who signed up for tutoring services with the two companies have formed a WhatsApp group to try to help one another. Eighteen moms shared their stories with , which first reported complaints about Success Tutoring.

The companies promote their services on social media, mostly in Somali. In one TikTok video for Success Tutoring, Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf sports a large gold watch and tells viewers from a black SUV that the only thing parents need to make their children successful is to sign up for Success Tutoring. In another video for Achievers Tutoring, Osman Sheik-Yusuf flashes the peace sign from a Tesla Cybertruck.

The two men also posted videos with grinning parents and children holding certificates, saying they’ve caught up to grade level in math and reading.

In a June 2023 letter, the Minnesota Department of Revenue told Mohamud she was being audited because of the $3,000 she claimed for the K-12 Education Credit.

The agency requested a dizzying number of documents showing what programs her children were enrolled in, the dates her children met with a qualified instructor and the type of tutoring they received.

They wanted to see that she had paid for 25% of the tutoring services, as required by state law, and the contract she supposedly entered into with Minnesota Afterschool Advance. They also wanted her children’s birth certificates and school records or medical bills showing she is their guardian.

Mohamud was overwhelmed. The letter was in English, not Somali. They were also asking for things she never had: She didn’t sign a contract; she said she gave her information over the phone. She didn’t have a receipt for what she paid; she was told it was free. She didn’t have verification that the instructor was qualified; she didn’t know the teacher’s full name.

With her tax credit claim denied, in September, she received a letter from the Department of Revenue saying the entirety of her state tax refund — $2,418.43 — was used to pay for her debt to Minnesota Afterschool Advance, which had advanced the money to Achievers Tutoring.

Like most low-income parents, Mohamud was counting on her tax refund — bolstered by the child tax credit — to pay for necessities and a trip to Texas with her family.

It didn’t just happen once. The next year, in 2024, more of her tax refund disappeared.

The Reformer interviewed two other women who enrolled their kids in Success Tutoring and whose stories are strikingly similar to Mohamud’s experience with Achievers Tutoring: They gave their Social Security numbers over the phone for supposedly free tutoring that would help their children recover from pandemic learning loss. Then, they got cheap laptops for the online sessions.

Raho Hussein said her 10th grader, a native English speaker, was put in a tutoring session where the instructor was teaching “ABCs” and “1-2-3’s.” Sometimes the instructor didn’t show up at all. She had thousands of dollars taken from her tax return.

So did another mom, Sawda Ali, for her four kids. She said she only intended to sign up her two oldest children but she was also charged for tutoring for her 3-year-old and 4-year-old even though they are too young and never attended tutoring.

The women also said their kids, who are native English speakers, couldn’t understand their instructors because of their heavy accents. They looked Asian, and the mothers believed they were in a foreign country.

Tutoring from the Philippines

Julieross Elveña, an Achievers Tutoring instructor based in the Philippines, said she was recruited through a Facebook page for Filipino freelancers about four years ago.

She spoke to a Reformer reporter who logged into her virtual classroom one evening this month through a publicly available link on the Achievers Tutoring website. The Reformer also entered two other virtual classrooms, both led by instructors based in the Philippines.

The instructors aren’t licensed to teach in Minnesota, although at least two do have baccalaureate degrees according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Elveña spoke with clear English, which is one of the official languages of the Philippines, although the other two instructors the Reformer spoke to had thicker accents.

She said she has 17 students with Achievers, who are divided into two groups she meets with twice a week. She said she’s mostly there to answer questions as the kids work through online modules in reading and math.

Elveña has been able to help students catch up to grade-level in reading and math, some more quickly than others, she said.

“I do love teaching,” she said.

She said she gets paid $4.50 per hour.

“It’s not that much I guess compared to if I work in Minnesota,” Elveña said, laughing.

Achievers Tutoring charges parents $166 per month per child for two subjects, according to the company’s website. Contracts posted to Success Tutoring’s website start at $150 per month, with a three-month minimum and no refunds.

Parents are also charged for tutoring regardless of whether children actually attend, according to contracts available on both companies’ websites.

Refunds denied

Mohamud and the other mothers have been trying for months to get their money back. She started with Osman Sheik-Yusuf, who she says told her he would get the necessary paperwork to the state authorities.

Had he done so, taxpayers would have underwritten the unsatisfactory tutoring services.

So long as parents submit paperwork showing the educational expenses qualified for the tax credit, the state pays for 75% of the cost. But if the expenses are not qualified, or paperwork is missing, the funds are paid back through the parents’ tax refund.

Because the process is so complicated, Minnesota Afterschool Advance advertises free tax preparation help to families who take out loans for tutoring with them.

It’s unclear how much Achievers and Success have received from state funds. The Minnesota Department of Education certifies tutoring companies for the tax credit program but doesn’t track how much tutoring companies are paid. The Department of Revenue only provided the total amount claimed under the credit, but said they don’t know how much was paid to individual tutors or lenders like Minnesota Afterschool Advance because it comes from individuals’ tax returns, which are private.

Mohamud said Osman Sheik-Yusuf stopped returning her calls, so she went to another man she knew to complain. But he blocked her number.

She and other moms complained about the men on social media and warned others not to use their services. That seemed to motivate Osman Sheik-Yusuf to resolve their complaints: the Venn Foundation contacted her with a form that would give them business power of attorney to represent her before the Department of Revenue. But she wasn’t sure what the form meant and was by that point too distrustful to sign anything she didn’t understand.

Mohamud says Osman Sheik-Yusuf also asked for a meeting with her and an imam at the Dar Al-Farooq mosque to mediate the dispute. But she says it ended with Sheik-Yusuf insulting her with a pejorative for a rural, uneducated person. Mohamud says she and her children no longer go to the Dar Al-Farooq mosque, having lost faith in its leaders.

A spokesperson for Dar Al-Farooq denied that an imam ever mediated a dispute at the mosque with a parent and Osman Sheik-Yusuf. Mohamud shared screenshots of text messages between her, Sheik-Yusuf and a religious leader connected to the mosque.

The spokesperson for Dar Al-Farooq also denied representatives from the companies ever addressed the congregation and said the mosque has “no formal or informal ties” with Osman and Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf.

The Dar Al-Farooq spokesperson also sent a recent , however, promoting Success Tutoring, saying it would provide “valuable context for your story” including the “systemic challenges minority families face 
 accessing the education tax credit.”

While the mosque claims it has no ties with Osman Sheik-Yusuf and Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf, the two appeared in a video promoting their services as recently as last month with a man who is the board secretary for Dar Al-Farooq, also known as the Al Jazari Institute, according to the organization’s most recently available tax filing. The man is also a lead organizer for ISAIAH’s Muslim Coalition, the group that Mohamud trusted.

Asked about the video, the spokesperson for Dar Al-Farooq said the man was there in his “personal capacity.”

Mohamud and other Somali mothers said they sent a letter to Attorney General Keith Ellison in April but have yet to hear back. The Attorney General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment about whether they’re investigating the mother’s complaints.

This year, after Mohamud’s tax return was garnished again, she and the other mothers became more assertive.

They went on a Somali-language YouTube channel to warn other families not to sign up for the services, after which she says she and the other women received threatening phone calls. They filed a police report in Minneapolis, but the case went nowhere. A spokesman for the police department said the case is inactive.

They went to the Department of Revenue and were advised to call a consumer complaint line. They had already done that, too.

Mohamud had met with Rep. Hodan Hassan, a Democrat from Minneapolis, who had helped her find the address for the Venn Foundation. So she and seven other moms went to the address, which turned out to be the home of Venn Foundation Director Jeff Ochs. (Hassan did not return calls or an email seeking comment.)

That was in the summer, and while he seemed helpful, the women still haven’t been made whole.

“We have gone everywhere looking for assistance,” Mohamud said.

In response to an interview request, Minnesota Afterschool Advance Director Erin Martin shared a joint statement with its parent organizations Youthprise and Venn Foundation saying they have a formal process for families with concerns.

“When there are breakdowns in the system that ultimately result in MAA families not receiving the (Minnesota Education Tax Credit) and instead repaying MAA from their normal tax refund, we understand and share their frustration,” the statement said.

“MAA is actively working with a number of stakeholders, including Minnesota Department of Revenue and a local faith leader, to understand and help address the concerns of a group of families, as well as to work on improving the overall (Minnesota Education Tax Credit) and assignment system for all involved moving forward.”

Mohamud said there have been three meetings with a different imam and representatives from Minnesota Afterschool Advance, but they’ve since broken down.

Martin testified before the Legislature in support of the bill expanding eligibility for the credit in March 2023, even holding up Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf’s Success Tutoring as an example of one of the many Black-owned organizations they partner with that provide “culturally relevant” services to low-income students in “new and creative ways.”

Asked if Minnesota Afterschool Advance still works with Success Tutoring and Achievers Tutoring, a spokeswoman said the businesses “are not an offering on MAA’s of available service providers.”

A spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Education would not say if the agency is investigating Success Tutoring and Achievers Tutoring, saying only the companies are no longer certified as eligible to be paid through the tax credit. Certification expires after two years, and there are only five providers currently certified, according to the Department of Education. That means many providers on MAA’s menu are not certified.

Youthprise spokeswoman Lynne Matthews also said Minnesota Afterschool Advance will periodically visit tutoring sites in person. If their expectations are not being met those tutors could be removed from their services menu, she said.

Asked if the organization would make the mothers whole, Matthews wrote, “Despite having no responsibility or legal obligation to do so, MAA wants to do what it can to help ease the burden that families may be experiencing as a result of systems failure, in certain circumstances.” 

A spokesperson for the Department of Revenue did not say if the agency is investigating Success Tutoring and Achievers Achievers, saying the agency can’t comment on specific cases. The spokesperson said they had met with “multiple taxpayers” with concerns about the tax credit.

“We are working with all parties involved to ensure specifics of the program are being properly communicated,” spokesman Ryan Brown wrote in an email.

Tutoring companies continue expansions

The tax credit remains popular with key legislators, including Republicans. Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, was one of the architects of the credit when it was created in 1997 as the head of a group called Minnesotans for School Choice. Robbins and Norris, who expanded the credit’s use as the head of Minnesota Afterschool Advance, defended its value despite allegations of misuse.

“Regardless of the issue with Success Tutoring, this is a tax credit that serves tens of thousands of families across the state,” Norris said. “And the income limit and the credit limit hadn’t been updated in over 25 years.”

Norris said he didn’t have enough information to say what the state should do to ensure low-income families aren’t losing their tax refunds to pay for substandard tutoring, but said it is something that should be looked at.

Robbins called the women’s experience “terrible” and was surprised to learn that it was possible for non-government organizations like Minnesota Afterschool Advance to be repaid from parents’ tax refunds and other credits — like the child tax credit and earned income tax credit — if the Education Tax Credit wasn’t awarded by the Department of Revenue.

She said that wasn’t the case when she advocated for its creation in the 1990s and she said she’s troubled by the existence of middlemen like Minnesota Afterschool Advance who have a claim to parents’ entire returns.

“If there’s a loophole that says they can claw back from other parts of the tax return, that should not be,” Robbins said. “If the tutoring service doesn’t provide the service and the family wants to withhold the payment, then that’s something the family and the tutoring service have to work out.”

Meanwhile, Mohamud and the other mothers say they continue to receive threatening phone calls and text messages from anonymous numbers for speaking out about their experiences.

And Achievers Tutoring and Success Tutoring continue to recruit families to their services.

Achievers Tutoring recently posted a video on TikTok and Facebook, which was shared by Success Tutoring, with Osman and Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf meeting with an imam at the mosque and lead organizer with ISAIAH’s Muslim Coalition.

They were in Columbus, Ohio, promoting their tutoring services to families there. Ohio’s program that funds tutoring services is easier to navigate, according shared by Dar Al-Farooq in its email to the Reformer.

The men asked viewers to come to the Minnesota Capitol in January for Youth Day to advocate for making tutoring funding easier to access.

“We need to make the funding accessible. We need to make the funding something that is practically usable,” Abdijalil Sheik-Yusuf said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

VERNON — The sun was not out yet but, across the street from the town’s community college, order numbers were already piling in on the display monitor above Nikki Murray. The McDonald’s cashier slipped in one-liners with waiting customers while she wrapped their Egg McMuffin breakfast sandwiches. Her grin was contagious.

She tried to ignore how her back hurt. Work at the fast food chain can get exhausting — there is always another customer ready to order or another table to wipe down. She wouldn’t get a break until she clocked out.

Murray, who makes $10 an hour, often wonders if she would be in a better place if she’d finished college.

In the early 2000s, she spent her days in the same part of town, enrolled at Vernon College. Murray, now 49, knew a degree meant she could make more money for her kids, but the stress and demands of family life weighed too heavily on her, and she dropped out.

Two miles east, off Vernon’s main retail street, Krystal Fancher Smith worked out of her mother’s desk, in her mother’s leather chair. She has been training for nine years to take over her family’s business, Fancher Electric.

Smith, 41, also went to Vernon College for a while and was 10 credit hours short of graduation. The classroom was never a good fit for her, she said, and somewhere along the way, college stopped feeling worth the effort. She dropped out and has no plans of going back.

Murray and Smith, both lifelong Vernon residents, represent the kind of students that community colleges in Texas and across the country have struggled to keep. The two entered Vernon College young, wide-eyed and enticed by higher education’s promise to pave a path to a better life. But Murray and Smith grew and changed, their plans shifted with them and, for different reasons, the idea of college lost its luster.

In this low-income, rural northwest Texas town on the border with Oklahoma, most residents don’t have a college degree and say they don’t need one to make a decent living wage. The town’s bacon production plant and hospital both hire young people right out of high school.

Here and across the nation, young people and their families have become increasingly as they face pressure to enter the workforce to make money right away. For students who do enroll in college, barriers including high costs and family obligations can get in the way of finishing, putting them in debt without any of the benefits.

“The purpose of community college is for someone to improve their life 
 We provide that opportunity,” said Dusty Johnston, the president of the college. “Not everybody is ready to take advantage of that opportunity.”

This skepticism has become an existential challenge for many Texas community colleges. Drops in enrollment numbers after the pandemic meant community colleges received less state funding, threatening their operations. Vernon College lost one in four of its students, or about 800 students, one of the largest declines in the state.

Community colleges such as Vernon were thrown a temporary lifeline when state lawmakers to move away from an emphasis on enrollment. Colleges are now funded based on student outcomes.

Schools like Vernon College must still reexamine their recruiting tactics and the programs they offer if they want more students to enroll and graduate. To survive in the long run, they need to prove their relevance to the people they mean to serve.

No one orders at the self-service kiosk at the McDonald’s in Vernon. They prefer to give their orders directly to Murray, a familiar presence at the cash register.

One woman was late to work on a recent Wednesday but stopped in to ask Murray for a cup of ice. A retired truck driver sat at a table by the door, a morning routine for him. Murray let out a laugh as a woman swatted her husband’s shoulder for adding an ice cream to their order.

Murray finds joy in her work, but a melancholy settles in when her shift ends and she makes her way home. Though the fast food job covers the bills, it’s a marker of everything she didn’t get to be.

“Look where I’m at at my age. I had the opportunity to have a better life,” Murray said, fiddling with her black visor embroidered with the golden arches of the McDonald’s logo.

Murray became a mother before she could plan for college, which meant she first needed to be a provider.

She was 15 when she had her first child; two daughters followed years later. Research shows that early pregnancy compromises educational attainment. , according to Power to Decide, a teen pregnancy prevention group.

Murray went to work straight out of high school. She was young — she did not know a world outside of Vernon’s eight square miles — but she knew she was ready to move mountains to get her baby what he needed.

Murray was ready to work, and work she did, but her grit was not enough to pull her out of hardship. She would skip meals so her kids would not go to bed hungry. The house she could afford — which belonged to her late father — was in a neighborhood that exposed her kids to crime and violence.

She encountered what economists call the “paper ceiling,” a limit to how much a worker can usually bring in without a college degree. U.S. workers with just a high school diploma made than those with an associate’s degree — a $7,904 loss per year.

Murray was aware that college could help her. Vernon College, with its tan one-story buildings and white pedestrian bridges, was a brand new fixture in town when she was a kid. At 25, two more years in school seemed like a fair tradeoff for her young family’s chance at a better life. So she enrolled to get a degree in criminal justice.

But Murray couldn’t just set aside her parental responsibilities when she was at Vernon College. She also couldn’t shake an abusive relationship, which brought turbulence to her day-to-day life and chipped away at her self-esteem. On campus, she struggled in her math course.

“I couldn’t focus,” she said. “You had to stay up late, you had to watch your kids, watch them go through what you’re going through. It wasn’t good for them.”

Murray eventually got out of that relationship, but she did not pass that class or finish college.

There was a time when Murray wanted to be a nurse, like the aunts who raised her. But she never applied for the nursing program; she didn’t think she would be accepted. Then she imagined she could become a probation officer. With a criminal justice degree, she thought she could help Black men get a fairer footing out of prison.

Murray had dreams that are now all smudged up and hard to decipher.

“I got to go back,” she said. “But when your bones ache like mine, I don’t know. I’m pretty much settled here.”

The wind turbines carry you into town, the towering white structures turning in almost perfect unison. Shipping cargo trains run along the main highway, their Amazon Prime and FedEx labels serving as a small reminder of corporate, fast-changing America.

Vernon used to be a booming town — residents recall having a JCPenney and a bowling alley. But when the main highway was rerouted away from town, it hurt business. All there is to eat now is burgers, Murray said.

Still, people like her stay. This is their community — a place where your neighbor will babysit your kid so you can finish high school. And if residents want to go to college, Vernon College offers the easiest, most affordable option.

Back in 1970, voters in Wilbarger County agreed to form a junior college district. Baby boomers in a postwar economy had turned college age and were interested in postsecondary education; community colleges were popping up nationwide.

Vernon College welcomed its first class of 608 students in 1972. The promise was to give people in Wilbarger and the 11 surrounding counties a chance at social mobility. Residents continued to be persuaded by that pitch and, as demand exploded, the college expanded its class sizes and services. It opened a second campus in Wichita Falls, which houses a skills training center.

Five decades later, the promise is the same. But Vernon College — along with community colleges across Texas and the country — is now fighting for its livelihood.

The college had been shrinking even before the pandemic. In 2010, nearly 3,200 students were enrolled at the college. That number dropped to about 2,900 in 2019 and to just over 2,100 students this year, representing a 26.8% decrease in enrollment since the pandemic.

“A lot of community colleges, in fact, are facing a relevancy crisis. And you see that playing out somewhat in our enrollment,” said Karen Stout, the CEO of the national community college network Achieving the Dream. “We have to think about redesigning. Our communities need us to do that.”

Along with enrollment drops, the share of full-time students who attended Vernon College the previous year and returned for another year — known as the retention rate — was 22% in 2021, the lowest it has been in the past 15 years. The retention rate for part-time students, who represent most of the school’s student body, wasn’t much higher.

In the thick of the pandemic, the dorms, with room for about 120 students, were so vacant that nearly every student had an empty bed instead of a roommate. The dining hall — a hub to meet between classes — was absent of conversation. Students at the college say meeting other people on campus became difficult.

While many Texas community colleges have seen to pre-pandemic levels, Vernon College has not.

Community college students in Texas choose either a workforce training program to get a job-specific certification, or an academic path to get an associate’s degree or credits to transfer to a four-year college. The enrollment declines at Vernon College stem from fewer students pursuing the academic track.

That tells Johnston, the community college president, that area residents are thinking twice about the value of higher education.

He thinks about this when he sees the hiring signs plastered on the glass windows of fast food restaurants around town. By the McDonald’s counter where Murray serves customers, it’s hard to miss the “WE ARE HIRING” sign taped up on the wall. Competitive pay, a flexible schedule and a monthly phone allowance are some of the benefits the fast food chain offers.

Plenty of other jobs in town also take employees right out of high school. Before Murray joined the restaurant, she worked for the biggest employers in the county: a Tyson Foods bacon-processing plant, North Texas State Hospital and the juvenile detention facility.

“The job opportunities in rural America that require a bachelor’s degree are not there,” Johnston said.

Community colleges in Texas have historically received state funding based on enrollment, so the enrollment declines in recent years meant less money for the schools. Not too long ago, Johnston was preparing to cut programs and lay off staff, he said.

“People like me were losing sleep about what [the enrollment drops] would mean,” he said.

That changed when lawmakers earlier this year that put about $650 million into the state’s two-year public institutions as part of an agreement to start funding them based on student outcomes instead of enrollment. Vernon College is set to see a 43.5% increase in state dollars this year, amounting to $2.5 million. The funding overhaul “saved our hide,” Johnston said.

While the college gained some breathing room, it is still under pressure to figure out how to make higher education relevant for residents in its community.

“Our challenge is to influence people to do what we know is good for them through recruiting and through advising and mentoring,” he said. “How do we get you to understand that education can improve your life?”

There’s a family Christmas photo in Danny Fancher’s office. It’s 1988, and his daughter Krystal is 6; her three baby brothers are 3. The triplets sport identical red sweater vests and bowties, while Krystal stands out in her white dress and striped undershirt.

Just like in the photo, Krystal Fancher Smith and her brothers went separate ways when it came to school: They graduated from college, she did not.

“That’s their lane. It’s just not my lane,” she said.

Smith’s initial plan was to do a year at Vernon College before transferring to Texas Tech University in Lubbock, potentially saving thousands of dollars in tuition.

But during her time at Vernon College, she didn’t like any of it. She didn’t like writing papers. She failed a physical education course because she skipped class.

“I didn’t have this big goal of what I wanted to be or do. I was still figuring it out,” Smith said. “And the last place I wanted to be was school.”

When her first semester at Texas Tech rolled around, the Fanchers rented a moving truck and loaded it up. Most of her clothes were already packed when Smith realized she didn’t really want to go to college, or for her parents to waste their money.

“They’re going to be so mad. They’re going to be so mad,” she remembered thinking as she went to tell them she had changed her mind. “And they weren’t mad.”

When you ask Danny Fancher how that conversation went, he gets quiet, and then smiles. He could relate to his daughter: An electrician had plucked him out of a high school class straight into a job.

“She started college. But she’s like me, she didn’t like it,” he said.

Danny Fancher and his daughter did not need a college degree to make a good wage in Vernon. The phone is often ringing at Fancher Electric, the biggest electric company in Wilbarger County, with calls from clients who need their lights back on or their air conditioning units fixed. Smith takes every call. Her husband, Trey, tag-teams the electrical work with her dad.

“It wasn’t that I had a dream of doing this. But, I mean, we’re both very happy we’re here,” she said. “I’m very glad not to see all my dad’s hard work go down the drain.”

In Vernon, she said, residents don’t need college to stay. To run Fancher Electric, Smith needed to master bookkeeping and business management. Both skills are taught at Vernon College, but she learned them from her mother.

“At this point in my life, I would not” go back to college, she said.

To stay a town fixture, Vernon College knows it needs to be attractive to residents like the electricians at Fancher Electric who have never liked sitting still in a traditional classroom. It also needs to convince fast food workers like Murray to set aside their anxieties about college and the lure of immediate earnings from near-minimum wage jobs.

In a town that’s become increasingly skeptical about the value of a degree, Vernon College has had to embrace non-degree programs that meet the needs of local employers and lead their students to high-paying jobs.

“You’re going to live a valuable life right here in this town without a college degree,” said Kathy Craighead, the Vernon Chamber of Commerce director. “Not every career requires a college education. A piece of paper makes you no more smart than someone without one. I definitely see that.”

Craighead said the college added a barbering program to train students on how to shave and style hair after Black parents started to leave town to get their boys’ haircuts because there weren’t enough Black barber shops.

At Fancher Electric, one worker used to make a three-hour commute from Wilbarger County to Dallas just to take classes. Vernon College has since created a program where residents can get certified in installing, maintaining and repairing heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.

And at a new truck driving school, students practice simulator training and range and road driving in a five-week course.

Now, Wilbarger County is on the brink of getting . The companies behind the plant estimate over 1,600 new jobs in construction, operations and transportation and distribution. The college is assessing how it can provide training for those future employees.

First impressions also matter to a college determined to boost interest and enrollment. So Sjohonton Fanner, a recruiter at Vernon College, goes into high school cafeterias and sets up booths at college fairs to talk to students about starting the process of going to college.

He knows college is a loaded word. Sometimes, students’ eyes glaze over when he talks about what Vernon College can do for them. Even those interested in the idea of a degree, like Murray, are overwhelmed by what it entails.

Attitudes toward college start at home, he said. Murray’s mother never talked to her about college — though she had seen plenty of advertising at school. Smith had a model for how to make it without a degree from her father.

“Most people want to be what they see. It depends on the home life,” Fanner said. “This generation has parents, like me, in deep student debt.”

When kids bring up their anxieties about the cost, he gets it. All the plush chaparrals, the school’s mascot, and stickers that Vernon College gives away when promoting its programs do not ease the reality that higher education, even community college, is expensive.

The at Vernon College this year is about $3,600. Students must then pay for food, housing and books, which is about $8,900 a year in Vernon. At a public, four-year college in Texas, the average cost is about $8,000 for in-state tuition alone and about $11,500 for books, room and board.

Fanner tells students federal financial aid and state scholarships can ease the burden. In the 2022-23 school year, 82% of students attending Vernon College received financial aid through grants. The average scholarship or grant award was about $4,300. In a town where one in five residents live below the poverty line, paying for the remaining balance can feel impossible.

Fanner, who grew up in Vernon, went to college on a football scholarship; he started at Ranger College, about 150 miles south of home, before he transferred to a state school in Oklahoma. Five kids later, he is still paying off his student loans.

“I understand the financial aspect
 You’re going to have to pay the bill,” he said. “It could be until death do you apart.”

So if residents in his town decide to join the workforce straight out of high school, he gets that too. But he makes it clear: Vernon College will still be there for Murray, Smith and anyone who changes their mind.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. This reporting is part of a collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News’ , and the , , , and . Support from Ascendium made the project possible.

Disclosure: Texas Tech University has been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

UPchieve, an ed tech nonprofit, is bringing on volunteer tutors to offer free, on-demand academic and college application support to any U.S. middle or high school student attending a Title I school or living in a low-income neighborhood.

The platform is a game changer for students of color living in poverty, disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and unable to access costly individualized tutoring. Often working jobs or tending to family responsibilities, many are prevented from utilizing traditional offerings afterschool.

Through a mobile app or website, students are matched with one of 20,000 trained, volunteer tutors worldwide within five minutes. Sessions are typically 40 minutes, but can extend beyond an hour until students feel confident with the task at hand. 

“Right now in the United States, that sort of extra support is not available to the majority of low-income students,” said founder Aly Murray. “That’s where we come in. We think that every student, regardless of their family’s income, should be able to get support with their classes and applying to college when they need it.” 

Murray, who grew up low-income to an immigrant single mother, launched UPchieve in 2017 looking to build the platform she wished she had as a child. Of the more than 37,000 students who have completed over 100,000 sessions since, 64% are first-generation college-bound and 81% are students of color.

More than half are not enrolled in any other academic or college access program, and many start programming with very low motivation or in the lower third percentiles in terms of academic performance — sometimes grade levels behind. 

“We’re reaching kids — and this is exactly what we wanted,” Murray added. “UPchieve is especially valuable and high impact in cases where kids have nothing else,” especially those whose college and career trajectory could be changed by this level of support.

That was the case for Michael Lyons, a rising 11th grader who works at a Bloomington, Illinois grocery store three days a week and usually starts schoolwork at about 10 p.m. Having used the platform since finding it in an internet search for writing help in 7th grade, Lyons now has dreams of becoming an elementary school teacher. 

“I need help on demand,” Lyons said. â€œI think of [UPchieve] as a teacher away from school 
 I could participate more, because I know what I’m doing.” 

After just nine sessions, students scored an average of nine percentile points higher on the national Star math assessment, gains equivalent to 8 months of additional learning, according to policy research firm Mathematica, which studied 9th and 10th graders in the 2021-22 school year. Students also showed increased academic motivation, confidence, and engagement in class. 

Mathematica’s report was the first to show the effectiveness of on-demand tutoring — findings “useful for the field of math tutoring because they are examples of preliminary evidence that on-demand, online tutoring drawing on unpaid, volunteer tutors improves math achievement and motivation.”

Math, particularly algebra and geometry, is UPchieve’s most commonly requested subject, accounting for about 56% of 2022’s sessions, followed by humanities and writing support at 22%, science at 17% and college prep at 5%. 

Because the model draws on volunteer labor, the operational cost to provide one student with a year’s worth of unlimited tutoring is only $5. In comparison, other tutoring programs with similar impact can cost thousands per student. 

UPchieve’s international tutor base ranges from college students and retired teachers to business professionals looking to make an impact. The majority have prior tutor experience, but all have to complete an introductory training to learn best practices and demonstrate content mastery. 

David Seides, director of finance and customer experience at AT&T, began volunteering nearly three years ago, encouraged to put some hours in as a corporate sponsor. To date, he’s logged over 400 sessions. 

He sets the times he is available each week, and gets alerts when students request help. When he has an extra hour, Seides pops online to see if there’s any students waiting. The setup is ideal, he said, because his work schedule is unpredictable.

For students who are struggling in class but don’t want to let on to the teacher or their peers, UPchieve provides a level of needed distance, too.

“This online platform, it’s anonymous enough that I think we get people coming with the real problems that they can’t figure out how to solve,” Seides said. 

Confidence was a struggle for Stacy, a rising 11th grader from Ghana now in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her math grades pre-tutoring were in the 70s. Today, she regularly earns As and sees a future at one of the University of Massachusetts campuses. 

“I was surprised because I didn’t expect the tutors to help me so well. I started crying and screaming when I got it,” she told the nonprofit.

“They don’t just help me do [homework], but also make sure I understand,” Stacy said. “They also give me similar problems just like the ones on my homework or what I’m learning in school 
 My math teacher is really impressed with my grades and understanding in class now. I am very grateful for that.”

Like other programs, UPchieve is still working on how to get students to regularly return. While some students log on far above average, up to 400 hours in a single year, only about 12% of new students log 10 or more sessions — about 6 hours, the threshold for seeing large academic gains.

In comparison to the popular Khan Academy, UPchieve does seem to be striking a chord with students. Only about 7% of Khan’s new users complete two or more hours of sessions, according to a .

Adding an audio or video connection would be a welcome change, or being able to “favorite” past tutors, students told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. 

The current text-based communication is preferred by most — especially because many use the platform late at night, or have slow or limited internet access. A predominantly text-based platform also streamlines student safety, Murray said, as chat logs are stored and reviewed, and filters in place prevent emails or social media accounts from being shared.

UPchieve does plan to develop voice capabilities, with safety measures, for students and tutors who both opt-in in future versions of the app, for times when a concept is particularly confusing. One of Seides student’s, for example, once had difficulty understanding which way to flip their paper to understand reflection and rotations on a quadrant plane.

Still, in its current iteration, the platform is filling a gap for students who need it most. 

“It has given me a support system in stressful times. Without the comfort of private tutors that my peers had, I knew I would have to work even harder,” Xin, a high school student in Queens, NY, told the nonprofit. “Having UPchieve meant that I wouldn’t have to work alone or live with the constant anxiety of falling behind.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.