Gov. Tom Wolf wants to offer first-of-its-kind college tuition benefit to Pa. National Guard member families

Only Minnesota offers a similar educational benefit to its Guard members

• Jan Murphy/PennLive
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(Harrisburg) — Gov. Tom Wolf wants to break new ground with a new incentive program to entice members of the Pennsylvania National Guard to re-enlist for six years by offering them a tuition assistance plan for their spouses or children.

The Pennsylvania National Guard Military Family Education Program, or Pennsylvania GI Bill of Rights as Wolf refers to it, would provide up to 10 semesters of tuition-free education for the service member’s spouse or family to attend most of Pennsylvania’s higher education institutions.

The amount of assistance paid would be capped at Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education base tuition rate, which this year is $3,858 per semester. The grant could be used to pay for an education leading to an industrial certificate up to and including a graduate degree.

Further, the benefit can be used by service member’s spouse or their children up through age 26 immediately while the soldier or airman is serving in the Guard or any time after they leave the service.

Only Minnesota offers a similar educational benefit to its Guard members but that program is limited to the service member’s spouse, Wolf said in outlining the program to a room filled with soldiers and airmen and surrounded by military equipment at Fort Indiantown Gap on Wednesday.

Early estimates of the proposed program price it out to about $2.5 million a year and money was built into the governor’s $34.1 billion budget proposal for it.

The program expands on the Education Assistance Program benefits available to service members upon entering into a six-year enlistment in the Pennsylvania National Guard but those benefits are not transferrable to family members.

“Helping our service members and their families obtain post-secondary education without the financial burden that usually goes along with that can also go a long way to help military families get the education that they need for the good jobs and fulfilling careers that we need them to have right here in Pennsylvania,” Wolf said.

First Sgt. Bruce Facer, who has accrued 28 years of service in the U.S. Navy and Pennsylvania National Guard, said his family played a big part in his decision to remain in the military as long as he has.

“If my family wasn’t involved or on board with what I do, I would have been gone a long time ago because what I do affects them,” he said. “Families are a big part of what we do. Because without their support we cannot do what we do.”

He and his wife Sandy have a 20-year-old son who dropped out of college to make some money for when he decides to go back to school. “Should this program come to fruition it will be a great relief for our family to know that our son’s educational future will be secure,” Sandy Facer said.

Beyond what it would mean to her own family, Facer added she knows it will be a help to other Guard families from her work with a military family support group.

“I see so many National Guard soldiers and their families with young children. Many of them working hard just to live day by day and they are struggling. Affording a college education for their children seems to be but just a dream,” she said. “But with this Military Family Education Program, every qualified National Guard family in Pennsylvania can see their way forward to a good education for their children without that impossible debt.”

Maj. Gen. Tony Carrelli, the state’s adjutant general, called the program not only a re-enlistment tool but a retention tool for the nearly 20,000 Pennsylvania National Guard members who are called upon often on a moment’s notice to respond to natural disasters in and outside of Pennsylvania, not to mention being deployed overseas.

From digging cars out on the highway, rescuing people on rooftops in flooded areas or being mobilized for about a year, he said, “We’re here for the safety and security of our communities at the sacrifice of our own family. This [program] is for those families that sacrifice.”

Republican and Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate were on hand at the event to voice their support for this initiative.

Sen. Mike Regan, R-Cumberland County, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee who is championing the proposed bill in his chamber, acknowledged the important role families play in re-enlistment decisions. He said this proposal could help boost the lagging number of the Guardsmen who re-enlist.

Rep. Chris Sainato, D-Lawrence County, who intends to be an advocate for the bill in the House as the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee, said he sees this as a win-win for the service members and their families as well as the commonwealth.

“We keep the children in Pennsylvania,” he said. “We keep you men and women in the Guard because you are trained. You’re the best at what you do. You’ve done it for a long time. Keeping you there is cost efficient for the state.”

The way the proposed legislation is drafted, a Wolf Administration official said families would immediately be eligible for the program, but the first grants would not go out until the start of the fall semester in 2020.