Programs Promote Education Tuneups Students Get Tools To Continue Schooling

Briana Currie always liked the challenge of taking things apart and putting them back together.

“But I was confused about what I wanted to do,” said Currie, a 14-year-old freshman at Post Falls High School.

Joining the Educational Talent Search helped Currie solve the career puzzle. After taking a career survey and touring North Idaho College’s automotive program, she decided she’d like to be an auto mechanic.

This week is National Trio Week, which honors students like Currie who are setting career goals and overcoming social, academic or cultural barriers to higher education.

It’s one of three federal programs, thus the name Trio, that encourages high school students to continue their schooling. Educational Talent Search is aimed at students whose parents have low incomes or don’t have college degrees.

The University of Idaho administers a $212,000 grant to 400 students in Lewiston, Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls. The program’s funding is linked to success: 60 percent of the program’s seniors must go on to some kind of secondary education. In Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls, 81 percent of the program’s participants are going on to college.

Advocates stress the programs are a hand up not a handout. Three full-time high school counselors help students find scholarships and financial aid opportunities. Many families are resigned to the belief that higher education is too expensive for them, said Dee Dee Brown, the program’s regional coordinator.

“Just about all of our parents have no idea how they are going to get their kids through college,” Brown said. “But there are enough resources out there for any child to go to any college they want to. The big factors are their motivation and their grades.”

Counselors help students with study skills and tutoring. They organize college and career fairs and trips to employers, such as Coeur d’Alene’s Prohaska Law Firm.

Next to cost, red tape is holding many families back from college.

“Suddenly they get inundated with so much paperwork and it’s overwhelming for them,” counselor Bonnie Baker said. The program is helping senior Vicki Martin navigate admissions and financial aid forms for the University of Advancement and Computer Technology in Phoenix. After talking with the recruiter at a college fair, Martin decided she could give up snowboarding for the desert sun and a specialty computer degree.

“I saw this picture of what could happen and then it was like, ‘Hey, I could do this,”’ Martin said.

“There’s financial aid … student loans, you’ll get through it no matter what. You just have to set your heart on something.”

Not enough of her friends and classmates are doing that, Martin added.

“People in school say they don’t have enough time. But it’s your future. You have to make the time.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo