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The Department of Commerce announced that the Jobs for America’s Graduates-South Carolina program has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the AT&T Foundation to expand the program in South Carolina.

JAG-SC employs an intensive curriculum based on developing real-world job skills to prevent at-risk students from dropping out of high school and help them move toward successful careers. JAG-SC currently serves 785 students in 19 South Carolina high schools.

The grant money will be used to introduce the program to the C. A. Johnson Academy. The new program is scheduled to start at the beginning of the spring semester. The $200,000 in grant funding will be issued over the next four years. JAG-SC was chosen from among approximately 2,000 other applicants nationwide for the grant award. 

The AT&T Foundation made grants to seven JAG state affiliates that total nearly $1.5 million, and are all part of the greater $100 million education initiative of AT&T and the AT&T Foundation — AT&T Aspire. The four-year initiative includes grants to schools and nonprofits, a companywide job shadowing program, funding for 100 community dropout prevention summits organized by America's Promise Alliance and the commissioning of major national research.

JAG-SC began in 2005 with funding from the State Workforce Investment Board and the support of Gov. Mark Sanford and the South Carolina Department of Commerce. The JAG national model has a 28-year track record of significant reductions in the dropout rate among participating students, and early indications are that JAG-SC is on track to have a similar impact in South Carolina. The JAG-SC Two-Year Progress Report, published in 2008, by the Department of Commerce, contained promising news about the potential for JAG-SC statewide based on the success of students currently in the program. 

After two years in JAG-SC, tenth graders in the program had decreased their rate of absences by 41 percent and their suspensions by 35 percent. Educators also reported gains of 9 percent in GPA and 6 percent in the number of classes passed by JAG-SC participants. Approximately 95 percent of JAG-SC participants did not drop out of school after joining the program.