Ten years ago, George Weiss promised 69 second-graders in a Boston-area grade school that he would pay their college tuition if they graduated from high school.

Weiss will soon be making good on that promise, as 46 of those former second-graders graduate from high school this month and all 69 kids prepare for college or the military.

"When I was in second grade I didn't even know what college was," said Dino DeSousa, who graduated last week from Cambridge Rindge & Latin School and will be attending St. Joseph's College in Standish, Maine, this fall. "Now I'm going to be the first in my family to ever get there."

Weiss, president of George Weiss Associates, Inc., a money management firm with offices in Hartford, Connecticut, and New York City, "adopted" five grade-school classes — three in Philadelphia, one in Hartford, and one in East Cambridge, Massachusetts — more than a decade ago with the promise that he would underwrite their educational needs — tutors, mentors, extra classes — through high school, and beyond. Since then, his Say Yes to Education foundation has spent more than $20 million making sure that low-income, inner-city kids have a chance to succeed.

"What people don't understand is that these are great kids," Weiss told the AP. "They just don't have the same support systems or abilities to [succeed] that most suburban kids do. But when you give them that support, it really shows what they can do."