TheNEXT STEPS PROGRAM Helps Richmond County Students
Augusta Chronicle - June 2008 Program reforms troubled students
Hawthorne Welcher said he was skeptical that a day-long counseling program could reform the students who posed the "toughest" discipline problems in his school.
But after seeing his students emerge from the Hargrove Next Steps Program, Lucy C. Laney High School's principal now calls himself a believer.
Augusta Chronicle - December 2007 Counseling program weighed
Venus Cain walked out of her office in the middle of a school day and found a young girl lying on a bench at Riverwalk Augusta. Her teenage cousin had gone to get change for a soft drink.
"I looked at her and said, 'My God. This child is awful young to be homeless,' " Mrs. Cain, a Richmond County school board member, recalled saying when she met the two a couple of months ago.