Tom Kacich (kacich@news-gazette.com ) wrote a wonderful commentary on Lincoln Challenge Academy on Sunday, December 16, 2007. The program is a 22 week program twice a year and is run by the Illinois National Guard. The program is for 16-18 year old high school drop outs. About 2/3 of the nearly 800 students that go through Rantoul, Illinois each year get the GED during the training or within one year. About 2/3 are from inner city areas and about 2/3 are minorities. Sadly, as was mentioned in the article, many of the cadets have to go back to the inner city.
There are some community members here in Champaign/Urbana who would like to develop a post challenge residential program for students are not yet ready for independent and unsupervised living. I made some comments about the Unit 4 situation a couple of days ago on this blog. My point was that many students, not just those coming out of Challenge, needed some supervised "case management" if you want to call it that.
If you read the article you will know that the 10,000 students that have come through LCA need this programs desperately. We need to protect their investment by caring for them a little longer until they can really live independently. I would appreciate your comment.
