Struggling student's mind was blown when inmates he had never met gave up their paychecks to raise $32K for him
A person might get help from the most unlikely sources when a need arises. However, a sophomore high school student at a private school never knew that prison inmates would come to his rescue while his family was facing financial constraints and couldn't pay his tuition fees. The family had faced medical emergencies that had used up their money and the student's parents had both lost their jobs at that time, per The Washington Post. The teen, Sy Newson Green, was shocked to find out about his financial backers.
Sy had already attended all-boys Palma School for a year and was very happy there when a crisis hit his family. His father had to go through a heart transplant and his mom had lost her vision after a softball hit her eye. The parents didn't have jobs and although the school could offer him some scholarship, it could have been nowhere near the amount $12,900, the tuition fees charged for a year. That's when the inmates at the Soledad State Prison chipped in the rest of the amount. It was a big feat for the inmates for a wide variety of reasons. They pooled all the money they had earned by doing cleaning and clerking jobs inside the prison.
The prisoners usually earn about eight cents as base pay an hour in California for tasks like mopping the floors. So the amount, $32,000, that they gathered for the student was no less than a big surprise for everyone. Those with industry jobs can make up to a dollar an hour, which can come up to $100 per month, per CBS News. So, around 800 inmates came together to gather that amount over 3 years. "Incarcerated people were so drawn to…the idea of going a mile deep in a young man's life, that they were giving up their month's pay to contribute," a former inmate, Jason Bryant, shared. Sy was stunned that prison inmates he hadn't known and met were ready to pay such a huge amount for his private school tuition fees.
"I was mind-blown…And then immediately, I was just grateful," Sy added. "I broke down and started crying because I knew where it was coming from," Sy's dad, Frank Green, told The Washington Post. The 49-year-old had lost his job with a limo company around that time. The inmates had started collecting the money in the fall of 2016 and had enough money to cover the teen's tuition when he started his sophomore year back in 2017. They had raised $24,000 by themselves and received $8000 as a donation from outside the prison. The teen graduated from high school in 2020 and started attending the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he played for the basketball team.
"It definitely was a surprise and a huge honor. That’s not something that happens every day," Sy said about the donation. The idea of the scholarship came from the prison-school book group called "Exercises in Empathy," a Palma School program. Volunteers from the school would go to the prison to read and discuss books with the inmates for self-improvement. Bryant was also a part of the group. "I think that inherently most people, even those of us who have made the worst decision in our lives, want to be a part of something good. This idea, when we started, was just so good: We can help some young man get a head start that a lot of us didn’t have," he pointed out. Sy planned to pay the kindness shown to him forward, per CBS News. "They put all this effort and all this work into me. So I have to honor that and carry that legacy on."