Ark. Program To Provide Career Coaches For Schools

ANDREW DeMILLO

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Forty-three "career coaches" will be placed in high schools around Arkansas next year to help students chart their college and career goals, state officials announced Monday.

The coaches will be placed in schools starting in January as part of a $10 million expansion of Arkansas Works, a state program to coordinate education, training and economic development. The three-year pilot program is funded by federal money, officials said.

Gov. Mike Beebe said the career coaches would assist existing guidance counselors at the schools by providing help to students in planning their careers and college goals.

"Our counselors are overworked in our high schools," Beebe said at a joint meeting of the state boards of education and higher education at Pulaski Tech. "We've asked our counselors to be mama and daddy and social worker, disciplinarian, sometimes health expert. We've asked them to do everything in the world without giving them additional resources."

The career coaches will be employed by the two-year colleges located in the communities where the coaches are placed. The coaches will be placed in 58 school districts in 21 counties, mostly in the Arkansas Delta, and the counties were chosen because they had either high unemployment or a low percentage of students going to college.