INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Leaders at Victory College Prep on the southeast side of Indianapolis hope a recent $1.5 million grant will encourage students to go to college.

The school’s executive director, Ryan Gall, joined Daybreak on Friday to discuss the plans for the grant.

Victory College Prep is the only charter school to be awarded the grant from the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation.

“We’re incredibly grateful. The whole goal is for them to combat declining college enrollment rates in Marion County. And so we’re just one of five school corporations that got the money. We’re the only charter school and we’re the smallest school corporation. So we’re really excited,” Gall said.

According to the Fairbanks Foundation, it awarded a total of $5 million in short-term grants to Marion County school corporations, community-based organizations, and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education to assist students and their families in meeting Indiana’s new FAFSA mandate. 

“The money over the next five years will help us really do two things. Make sure our kids are better prepared to go to college after graduation and help us send more kids to college after graduation. So we’ll be doing a number of strategies from college coaching, parent meetings, financial education, teacher improvement of practices to prepare kids for SAT, offering more dual credit, dual enrollment course work,really comprehensive,” Gall said.

The school plans to implement a new series of Family Financial Literacy Workshops and coaching created in coordination with experts from a community partner organization. The goal will be to help families create a sustainable financial plan for their student’s matriculation to college while providing them access to other vital resources from the convenience of the school network campus.

The school plans to partner with Southeast Community Services in the effort.

“Community partnerships are going to be crucial. We can get really good at educating kids and making sure they’re ready for college. But to do work with the families, we need an outside partner. So Southeast Community Services will work with our families to provide financial coaching. They’ll do a series of meetings on ‘how do you pay for college?’ I’m a first-generation college student. A lot of our children are first generation college students and having that family plan and those family supports – Southeast Community Services is probably one of the best partners to do that,” Gall said.

To hear more about the plan watch the full interview above.