Jefferson High pilots College and Career Access Program to guide first-generation and low-income students

Jefferson High School in Sioux Falls is piloting a College and Career Access Program this year that pairs four dedicated college-and-career advisers with the school counseling team to guide students and families through college, technical-school and military pathways.

"Our advisors work alongside the counseling department at Jefferson to make sure that our students are getting that 1 on 1 guidance and resources," said Jessica Carlson, director of the College and Career Access Program. Carlson said advisors help students with everything from exploring majors to completing the FAFSA and finding scholarships, and that they are available for evening and virtual meetings with families.

Holly Severson, department chair of counseling at Jefferson, said the advisers build on existing counseling work by handling resource navigation while counselors continue to manage confidential interventions. "We have kind of been developing our guardrails…where our counseling team specifically are the intervention folks, where our advising team is the resource folks," Severson said, adding that the arrangement has been "very well received at Jefferson."

The pilot is funded and organized by Promising Futures Fund, a local nonprofit. Founder Steve Hildebrand said the program’s design drew on models such as the Washington, D.C., College Access Program and two state scholarship initiatives. "With these two scholarship programs, along with this college access program, more students are gonna be going to college or technical school, and they're going in South Dakota," Hildebrand said, referring to the Build Dakota technical-school scholarship and the Freedom Scholarship program.

Hildebrand provided concrete fundraising targets for expansion: the full model—four advisers in each of the district’s four high schools, a director and ordinary program expenses—would cost about $1,300,000 per year. "It's about $1,300,000 a year," he said, and added that Promising Futures has raised $400,000, enough to support the program at Jefferson for one year. He estimated roughly $300,000 per additional high school to replicate the current service level.

Early results at Jefferson include one-on-one meetings that helped a student facing family hardship see college as possible and identify scholarship opportunities, advisers said. Jessica Carlson described the advisers' process: teachers, staff, parents or students use a confidential referral form to connect families to advisers, who then meet individually to walk students through admissions, applications and financial-aid steps.

Promising Futures also described a broader pipeline approach: staff previously organized eighth-grade campus visits and are integrating that work into a five-year trajectory starting in eighth grade and continuing through high school. Hildebrand said the program will take the roughly 400 ninth-graders at Jefferson on campus visits this year as part of that expansion.

Hildebrand noted fundraising and careful replication as the main near-term hurdles. "We raised 400,000, which pays for this program for 1 year at Jefferson," he said. He added the organization has roughly six months to secure additional funds to meet its stated expansion timeline. Promising Futures said it maintains a low overhead rate and that donations are directed to school programming.

Carlee, the Sioux Falls School District communications strategist who moderated the episode, closed by thanking the guests and noting the district and Promising Futures will return with updates on the pilot’s progress.

Next steps: Promising Futures and district leaders will continue piloting at Jefferson while fundraising to support broader rollout; the organization has signaled a six-month window to raise the additional funds needed to replicate the model at other district high schools.