A one-bedroom apartment in Maryland will run you about $700 a month — plus, there are car payments, entertainment expenses and insurance and utility bills.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am telling you the truth. I am not lying, embellishing or exaggerating,” said Magellan Westbrook, 35, ticking off living expenses to a classroom of ninth-graders at Milford Mill Academy Tuesday. “These are true numbers and I’m not done yet . . . because we still have to eat.”
That’s $400 more on the chalkboard list. Adding the numbers, Westbrook gave the students the sobering facts: All told, it will cost you more than $40,000 a year to live once you’re on your own.
The cold, hard facts in Westbrook’s speech were meant to inspire participation in the Maryland Scholars program – a statewide program, backed by the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education, aimed at preparing students for life after graduation through a more rigorous curriculum.
To sell the program, more than 2,000 speakers from the business community are fanning out across the state between October and December, peddling real-world advice straight from the 9-to-5 trenches to about 75,000 ninth-graders in more than 200 high schools.
Westbrook, a Verizon manager, is one of the speakers committed to encouraging students to challenge themselves. As a Baltimore City native, he reflects on his experiences when he pitches the program.
“I just want them to see me because I grew up there and I didn’t do drugs, commit murder, and I made it,” Westbrook said. “I want to give them a jump on things, have them push harder than they would have.”
Maryland Scholars – which was expanded statewide this year – sets curriculum that goes beyond the standard high school graduation requirements. Students must earn at least a 2.5 grade point average with courses in algebra II, two extra lab sciences and two years of the same foreign language in order to be recognized as a Maryland Scholar.
The program is unique because it pitches the importance of high-level courses to all students, not just college-bound ones, said Kathleen Seay, deputy director of the Maryland Business Roundtable.
“We’re not just trying to increase the number of kids who go to college,” she said. “We think this course of study will help kids who are going straight into the work force. If you’re not going to get a college education, you need to get the best foundation in high school that you can.”
Maryland Scholars was piloted in Harford and Frederick counties last year and spurred jumps in higher-level course completion, especially among minority and low-income students. For example, completion rates for a fourth-year lab science among Hispanic students in Frederick spiked by 80 percent, from 19 to 34 students. In Harford, low-income students taking a foreign lan