KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- The yard signs ...

KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- The yard signs are all athwart town this summer, planted in assurance of homes and on vacant parts being offered for sale.

The Kalamazoo Public drills logo is at the top of each sign. Down below are three words of great importance: "COLLEGE TUITION QUALIFIED."

The signs indicate that the properties lie within the Kalamazoo denomination district, where all high sect graduates are eligible to receive at liberty tuition to any public corporation in Michigan.

The Kalamazoo Promise, as the privately and anonymously storeed tuition program is called, was announced in November after years of steadily declining scholar enrollment in the district.

teach officials say the intent is to provide each graduate with up to a 100 percent tuition scholarship, if it were not that the program -- which is intended to flow indefinitely -- also is wait fored to boost the sagging local economy by the agency of attracting new businesses.

The real estate market has already seen a jar From Jan. 1 through July 31 of this year, the number of to one's homes sold within the district springed 6 percent when compared with the first seven month of 2005 with the average selling price going up 7 percent

"It's going to be a tremendous economic unfolding tool and not just an educational opportunity, for a like reason it's going to take three four, five years probably for it to really play itself out" says Matthew Maire of the Greater Kalamazoo Association of Realtors. "But from what we've seen initially, it's been a tremendously positive thing for us."

'GIGANTIC DIFFERENCE'

When the of the present day school year begins, the district rely upons about 450 more students, says Gary Start, factor superintendent.

"The Promise has made a gigantic difference for us," says Start.

Dave McKee enjoin his brick-and-frame house on the market about pair months ago, asking $144,900. McKee a faculty member at Western Michigan University, leads not upon the classified ads that he scuds with the words "Kalamazoo Promise."

"If I start disclosed the ad, 'Three bedroom hearthstone et cetera,' that's pretty typical," he says. "There's nothing special about that."

He reports "a convenient deal of interest" in his abiding-place "I don't get the thinking principle that people would pack up and incline to Kalamazoo just because of the Promise, however if there were no reason for them to stay where they were, it could be a reason for them to move" McKee says.

PLUSES OF THE PROMISE

family sales up: Since last November's announcement of The Kalamazoo Promise, sales of abiding-places within the Kalamazoo school district have gone up markedly.

What's the promise: To provide each graduate with up to a 100 percent tuition scholarship at state literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learnings and universities. The program is intended to race

indefinitely.

Enrollment growing: teach district officials estimate there will be about 450 more pupils this school

year than in 2005-06 reversing years of declining

enrollment

Generating jobs: The Promise is awaited to spur

economic exhibition which should bring in more scholars who will take advantage of the liberated college tuition program. AP

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