By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Gov. Mike Beebe today honored 43 “career coaches,” including a couple of celebrity University of Arkansas graduates, who will soon be offering guidance to high school students in some of the state’s most economically challenged counties.

Former Arkansas Razorback and professional football player Marcus Monk, and Furonda Brasfield, who recently appeared on the reality TV show America’s Top Model, are among those who are completing their training program and later this month will head off to their new jobs.

“You are empowering young people to be able to see what they can be,” Beebe said at a news conference honoring the group.

Monk and Brasfield both said they hope to show students that work and education can lead to success.

“What better way to help out my community,” Monk told reporters. “I’m looking for big things and positive things with the program.”

The East Poinsett County High School and the University of Arkansas graduate said he will work out of Mid-South Community College in West Memphis and be assigned to schools in Crittenden County.

Brasfield, a graduate of Stuttgart High and the UA, has been assigned to Southeast Arkansas College in Pine Bluff and will work with students at Watson Chapel.

“The thing that intrigued me most about this program was the opportunity to reach back and to help young people make good decisions,” Brasfield said.

The new program is an expansion of Arkansas Works, the governor’s strategic initiative to coordinate education, career training and economic development.

Jim Purcell, director of the state Department of Higher Education, said the program is being paid for through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

Each participant is to receive a salary and benefits package of about $50,000 a year, he said. The coaches will be employed by two-year colleges in the communities where they are placed.

The first coaches are being placed in Bradley, Chicot, Crittenden, Desha, Hempstead, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lee, Mississippi, Monroe, Nevada, Newton, Ouachita, Phillips, Poinsett, St. Francis, Searcy, Sharp, Stone and Woodruff counties.
The counties were chosen for their high unemployment and/or low college-going rates.

Beebe said the career coaches will work with guidance counselors to meet the needs of students.

“It’s to supplement and augment the high school counselors” who are currently “loaded down and overworked,” the governor said. “This doesn’t replace what our counselors traditionally do.”

Gov. Mike Bebee’s Arkansas Works program has been expanded to include career coaches at some high schools in Southeast Arkansas and elsewhere in the state.

By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

NORTH LITTLE ROCK — Forty-three “career coaches” will be placed in Arkansas high schools in January to offer additional career guidance to students, Gov. Mike Beebe announced today.

“Our counselors are overworked in our high schools,” Beebe said at a joint meeting of the state Board of Education and the state Higher Education Coordinating Board at Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock.

“We’ve asked our counselors to be mama and daddy and social worker, disciplinarian, sometimes health expert,” Beebe said. “We’ve asked them to do virtually everything in the world without giving them additional resources and helping them do that. We’re going to provide them some help.”

Beebe also unveiled a new online resource to help Arkansans find jobs and announced that up to $8,000 in financial aid may be available, depending on each applicant’s needs, to help pay for career training and education.

The projects are part of an expansion of Arkansas Works, the governor’s strategic initiative to coordinate education, career training and economic development. The expansion is estimated to cost $10 million to $12 million and will be paid for with federal money obtained through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

The coaches will be employed by two-year colleges in the communities where they are placed. Twenty-one counties have been chosen to receive the first coaches as part of a three-year pilot program that could be expanded to more counties later, depending on how successful the program is and how much money becomes available, Beebe said.

The first coaches will be placed in schools in Bradley, Chicot, Crittenden, Desha, Hempstead, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lee, Mississippi, Monroe, Nevada, Newton, Ouachita, Phillips, Poinsett, St. Francis, Searcy, Sharp, Stone and Woodruff counties.

The counties were chosen for their high unemployment and/or low college-going rates.

“We’re going to start it out in some designated areas that the greatest amount of risk exists in,” Beebe said.

The coaching jobs will go to people who are “committed and passionate about what we’re trying to do,” the governor said. College degrees will be required.

Beebe also said Arkansans can now get help locating jobs through the College and Career Planning System, which can be found on Arkansas Works’ Web site.

“Once they go to that central point they can establish what they want to do in life, what are their likes and what are their dislikes, what are they strong at and what are they weak at, and match up what that career might be, match up the opportunities that exist out there for that career, match up the companies that are looking for that sort of stuff, match up what they need to learn going forward in order to be able to achieve that,” Beebe said.

Beebe said the projects he announced today should “put us in a posture that when this recession is over, as it will be, we’re in the best position to come out of it on a rising tide that turns all up.”

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On the Net:
www.arworks.arkansas.gov

LITTLE ROCK – The number of Arkansas high school students who smoke is at an all time low, according to a state Department of Health study released Monday.

About 20.4 of high school students surveyed this year said they smoke, down from 35.8 percent in 2000, according to the report. Two years ago, 25.3 percent of high schoolers surveyed in the Youth Tobacco Study said they smoked.

“We think this is the best kind of news we can have in public health, since smoking is linked to most of the top 10 causes of death in our state – especially to heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic lung disease,” state Health Director Paul Halverson said.

Nearly 28,000 high school students in the state smoke, down from 34,223 in 2005, the report said.

Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, director of the department’s Center for Health Advancement, said one of the reasons for the decline in high school-age smokers is the anti-smoking campaign the state has established since voters in 2001 approved the Arkansas tobacco settlement.

The $2.4 million annual anti-smoking media campaign began more than five years ago.

The tobacco prevention and cessation programs are funded under a plan approved by voters in 2001 to spend proceeds from Arkansas’ $1.6 billion tobacco settlement. The state receives $40 million to $50 million annually under a 1999 settlement of a multi-state lawsuit against big tobacco companies.

Senior high students were honored for their academic achievements April 27 in the Bison Arena. Casey Beliew, Student Council president and Jeff Cagle, high school principal, welcomed parents and visitors.

BENTONVILLE — High school officials want to provide more options to students interested in architecture and theater.

BENTONVILLE — High school officials want to provide more options to students interested in architecture and theater.

STRONG — A sheriff says a cloud of pepper spray released at Strong High School during lunch sent 10 sickened students to the hospital.

Ashley Strange’s high school softball career is ending with a big disappointment. A recent graduate of Sheridan High School, Strange was scheduled to be in Fayetteville today to play in the Arkansas High School Coaches Association All-Star game held at the University of Arkansas’ Bogle Park.

SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL The Aquaculture/Fisheries Center of Excellence at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff will offer a fun learning opportunity for high school students this fall. Aquatic Sciences Day will be held 9:30 a.m. to noon Sept. 24 at the university’s Aquaculture Research Station.