Sioux Falls — The Sioux Falls School District and the Promising Futures Fund have launched a pilot College and Career Access Program at Jefferson High School to connect students and families with advisers who guide them through college, technical school, military and workforce pathways, district and nonprofit officials said. "The program is being piloted at Jefferson this year," said Jessica Carlson, director of the College and Career Access Program.

The program is aimed primarily at students from first-generation and low-income backgrounds, Carlson said, and advisers work alongside Jefferson’s counseling department to provide one-on-one guidance on admissions, scholarships and financial aid applications such as the FAFSA. "Our advisors are there to walk alongside them to really navigate those processes and barriers that might prevent them from taking concrete steps towards those goals," Carlson said.

Holly Severson, department chair of counseling at Jefferson, described how advisers complement counseling services by handling resource-focused tasks while counselors manage confidential interventions. "We’ve kind of been developing our guardrails," Severson said, explaining that counselors handle intervention cases (for example, housing crises or social work needs) while advisers provide application help, job-shadowing coordination and classroom presentations.

Promising Futures Fund founder Steve Hildebrand said the local program draws on models from successful college-access initiatives elsewhere and on two years of planning with school leaders. He said the four advisers at Jefferson have already met with hundreds of students and shared stories of immediate impact, including students who learned they qualified for admission or scholarships after conversations with advisers. "They’re making a difference," Hildebrand said.

Organizers named the program’s core advisers as Maya Selland, Kate Telkamp, Braden Medrano and Jesus Gonzales Barajas, each bringing backgrounds in higher-education outreach, counseling, behavioral supports and bilingual community engagement. Carlson said referrals come from counseling staff, teachers and parents via a confidential referral form, and advisers meet students in person, during evenings or virtually to accommodate families.

Hildebrand placed the pilot in the broader local context, citing scholarship programs that work alongside the initiative: the Build Dakota scholarship for technical school and the Freedom Scholarship, "which is up to $6,000 per student per year" at participating institutions. He said the full-scale model — four advisers at each of the district’s four high schools plus a director and program expenses — would cost about $1.3 million annually. Promising Futures has raised $400,000 to fund the Jefferson pilot for one year and estimates roughly $300,000 is needed to stand up the program at each additional high school.

Hildebrand stressed fundraising and smart, phased expansion as the next steps. "We’ve got about 6 months to put this money together," he said, adding that Promising Futures operates with about 6% overhead and that earlier work now reaches 21 district schools. He also characterized economic barriers as a principal challenge: "If you have a 47% rate of poverty in the district, you’re gonna have a large percentage of kids that are facing a barrier," he said.

Organizers said donors who want to support the program can contact Promising Futures Fund via stevepromisingfuturesfund.org. The district’s communications team said it will provide future updates as the pilot continues and as fundraising decisions are made.