Oil Money Put to Good Use

Good news in Arkansas. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that the Murphy Oil Company has made a huge donation of $50 million dollars to pay for up to five years of college for every student from El Dorado High School in El Dorado, Arkansas. Yup, that's how it is. Every student that graduates from El Dorado High School will receive money to pay for college (with only a few stipulations...see below).

Murphy Oil Company is based in El Dorado and this is their way of giving back to the community. You can use the tuition money anywhere you choose, but you will receive the equivalent of what it would cost to attend the most expensive state university in Arkansas.

Now maybe this doesn't seem like such a big deal. Lots of companies are giving lots of scholarships and doing lots of wonderful things. True. But, we don't always here about it, and often there are so many strings attached to the scholarships, they end up only supporting a few students. This seems to be a truly generous offer to pay for college tuition for up to 1, 335 students, the entire high school student body. There are only a few caveats. You have to live in the El Dorado school district. You have to have attended school in the school district since 9th grade. And you have to graduate from high school. If you are thinking of moving to El Dorado to take advantage of this deal, know your child will only receive 65% of the funds if he or she has only attended school in the district since 9th grade. Not the whole pie, but still a very generous offer. When I think back to my own college days, something like this would have made it possible for me to attend school without dragging behind me a ball and chain of student loans, and I could have dropped a few of my jobs.

During the day I work as an elementary school principal. There is so much potential in the kids I get to work with. So much joy and such a sense of play. And it surprises me some days. Many of the kids in my school come with so many strikes against them, and they just keep plugging along smiling the whole way. I wish I could open up my checkbook and make it happen. Certainly one of the reasons to become a millionaire.

So, today we celebrate that some of those extra dollars we recently spent on gas is quietly being funneled to a group of kids in Arkansas. I think more money could be spent on kids by oil companies who made record profits this year, but we'll take what we can get.