The R-Future children’s savings fund is a simple idea: Make a savings account for every city kid starting school, put some seed money in, and let it grow.
The city of Rochester is putting the idea into action in 2026 and expects to cover 1,000 city kindergartners. Eventually, the goal is to cover all students entering the city school district.
In the 2025-26 school year, that was about 2,500 students.
Each enrolled student will have $50 placed into their account, with an additional $100 added for students from a family below the federal poverty line. For a family of four, that’s $32,150 per year.
“It's not just opening up a savings account for a child using these seed funds, but it's also encouraging that child and their family to participate in financial education, financial counseling, or other activities and other programming in our community," said Angela Rollins, head of the city’s Office of Financial Empowerment.
Canandaigua National Bank is providing a $50,000 grant to support the project. ESL Federal Credit Union previously put up $244,000 to help set up the program.
The city of Rochester will serve as the custodian for
the savings accounts. Students will be unable to withdraw money from the accounts until they graduate high school or get GEDs. That includes any deposits the family makes into the account.
“We want to be sensitive to the fact that if a family does contribute substantial savings, and then they're facing an emergency, like their utilities are being turned off or they can't afford rent, we certainly don't want this program to hurt those families,” Rollins said. “So in that case, they would be able to submit a request to the city of Rochester for only their contributions to come out of the account, and we would have to review that on a case-by-case basis."
If the student doesn’t graduate high school or get their GED, the grant money used to fund the account would be forfeited and placed back into the program. Any deposits made by the family could still be withdrawn.
The city is encouraging parents to deposit $3.75 per month into the accounts through their child's senior year of high school. That totals to a dollar amount of 585 — Rochester’s area code.
