The State needs this grant: A letter to the governor

On Dec. 9, Gov. Gregoire released a budget proposal that drastically cut state tuition assistance, including the State Need Grant program. About 20% of the Evergreen student body relies on the State Need Grant. Testimonies to the Governor from students poured in. Below is one such testimony. It is important to recognize that LeAnn Brinkman’s story is not unique.

I’m a single mom to six children, four of them still school age (16, 9, 7 and 6) and in the home.

I left a domestic violence situation only two years ago and returned to college shortly after that. I volunteer my time with the juvenile courts as a guardian ad litem, so I am not one to ride off society without putting back anything I can. I do not get welfare, but my children get food to eat and shots when they need them.

I spent nine years in a violent situation, never knowing day-to-day who would be hit, if he would let us sleep at home through the night—my children, at 3 and 4 years old, brought home by police from 10 blocks away—and never knowing day-to-day whether the electricity or water would be shut off.

Without that grant, I wouldn’t have been able to return to school. I graduated with my associate’s degree in June—honors and Phi Theta Kappa. I’ve spoken for wwee (Washington Women’s Employment and Education) and Northwest Furniture Banks in Pierce and King counties on domestic violence. I’ve met mayors, the head of the Urban League, and so many important people that I can’t remember them all. I’m raising my children in a safe home that has heat and electricity and water all the time. And I’m raising them away from violence and fear.
I’m doing this because I was able to make something of myself. I was able to make something of myself because of the confidence school gave me and the respect I got from peers and professors. I never thought of myself as intelligent, but when I got the chance to actually go to school and I was allowed to actually talk to people, I learned I was not as dumb as [my former partner] said I was and not as much of a loser as he said I was.

I was able to go to school because of the generosity of our state officials in giving single moms grants to help them survive.
Because of those grants, I am a domestic violence survivor with an associate’s degree, a member of Phi Theta Kappa, a volunteer for the juvenile courts—giving our children a voice in the system—a student working on bachelor’s degrees in criminal justice or psychology or anything else I decide along the way I want to do. Because of those grants, I will be able to give back to my state all that was given to me, someday.

I want the state to know this: If that grant had not been available to me, I could not have gone to school. I could not have left the DV situation, because I had no hope and no self-esteem. I would not have a degree, or be volunteering. I would not have well-adjusted children that are not afraid to go to sleep.

If I didn’t have that grant, this is what you would have: A mother stuck in a violent home with children being abused. I would barely contribute to society because of not being allowed to talk to anyone or have anything in my life that I was proud of. You would also have children living off the welfare system and soaking the money out of our state for benefits for food, medical, and counseling, because of the messed-up heads they would have from [such] a home life.

Doesn’t the state realize that they are actually saving money by giving those that need that money the grants to go to school? The state is getting me out of a DV home, sending me to school, therefore protecting my children, which in turn allows them to grow up stable and healthy and mentally ok, so that they can then contribute to your society.

Without this grant, I would still be in that home, my children living in violence, and they would grow up and raise their children like they were raised—in poverty, with no education, and believing that hitting children is the way to be.

Now I know they have a chance to grow up productive and contribute to society, rather than be a weight on it.

Funny—all this, because of one small grant that the state feels so insignificant it can just be eliminated.

I’d like the governor to look at my children, in those little blue eyes and tell them that their future was not worth the little grant money I got that helped me go to school. That the grant money was not worth them having a safe home where they won’t be hit. That the grant money was not worth their mom going to school to assure they have a future, and having a mother to be a role model.

Governor, please look at my children and tell them that they are not worth that grant money, and that’s why you feel it’s ok to stop it.

LeAnn Brinkman
PROUD WWEE graduate
PROUD Student The Evergreen State College, Tacoma Campus
and PROUD mom to six children that the state saved from a lifetime of hell—because of the grant.