WATCH | Jackson remains focused on children in new job back home

Gary Jackson, the Workforce Director and Economic Development Manager with Hot Springs Metro Partnership, talks about his new job and his desire to help students thrive. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record
Gary Jackson, the Workforce Director and Economic Development Manager with Hot Springs Metro Partnership, talks about his new job and his desire to help students thrive. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record

While he has been away from Hot Springs for the past 18 years, Gary Jackson has returned to the Spa City and is using his former career as a football coach and school administrator to create opportunities for area children to help grow the workforce.

Jackson joined the Hot Springs Metro Partnership earlier this month as workforce director and economic development manager, and he will be working with area schools to help students find the right employment or education opportunities.

"We all know that there are kids that are probably looking to go to college and those that are not," he said. "I've tracked the data off of the Department of Education website and looked at everybody's graduation rates, and what we're focusing in on is that there is a shortage of workforce, and there's no magic bus that's going to come in.

"My job is to help grow the workforce of the kids that we have in our schools here and also to try to recruit workforce in. I've had some fantastic dialogue with Lake Hamilton, Fountain Lake, Hot Springs, and things like that, and we want to take it to where we're working with the teachers as well, all the way down into the junior highs to introduce what career technical education is. It's not just an elective, but it's a career," Jackson said.

Video not playing? Click here https://www.youtube.com/embed/uo_rcweGo9o  

There has been a shift in the workforce across the country, he said, and it is not only due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There's more information in your phone than you probably were exposed to in your entire school career," he said. "As these jobs are changing and as they're growing and moving into technology, there's a big push of going into that area, and our colleges aren't preparing kids for those areas. Many of our kids have been exposed to more at the age of 12 than we were after finishing a college degree because they have the world at their fingertips."

Jackson's desire is to reach children in middle school to help "tear down that stigma of it's OK not to go to college," he said.

"I just got off the phone this morning with the career person at Lake Hamilton, already reaching down into the middle school," he said. "So many kids at that age, they see their parents as a mechanic or something like that, and you ask them a question, 'What are you gonna do when you get out of high school? Are you going to college?' And they say, 'Well, you know, I'm thinking about ... ' knowing that they probably don't want to."

Talking to someone at Fountain Lake recently, Jackson said he had asked his plumber if he recalled his ACT score.

"He said, 'I don't, but here's my invoice. I did get a high school diploma, but it's $150 an hour,'" Jackson said. "He's doing OK. Tearing down those walls for those kids who may be a little bit insecure because they don't want to answer they're not going to college that that's OK, that there's great careers out there. And my hope is that we can build our workforce from within."

A Hot Springs graduate who went to Henderson State University, Jackson got his first job coaching football and teaching social studies at Russellville.

"I wanted to be a football coach," he said, having played for both the Trojans and the Reddies. "My minor was in social studies. I liked the social sciences. And as I grew and ended up I coached at Hot Springs High School where I went to school at for a little bit and went to Cutter Morning Star to be a head football coach and athletic director.

"Well, my wife is a reading specialist, and when I go home at night, I'm wanting to talk about what I'm doing. And she's telling me about kids and reading and their struggles, and it is the root of all education. If you can't read, and you can't comprehend, you're gonna struggle," he said.

His conversations with his wife led him back to college, earning a master's degree from Harding University in educational leadership with the desire to work with children who struggled to read. About eight years ago, while a principal at West Memphis, he helped start a reading class.

"It was not a special needs class," he said. "Your dyslexic kids are very intelligent, just do not read. I looked at it from a standpoint of attacking that to improve other core areas and to give our kids an opportunity. At least they can have a plan after diploma where they can have the chance to be successful because I knew that they probably were not going to school."

Jackson said the response from schools has been positive.

"I've been on the phone this morning early with Fountain Lake and Lake Hamilton about Draft Day coming up and getting our kids exposed on those industries. ... I think there's close to 75 that are coming in, and our kids are gonna get to interview for, and there's going to be some kids offered some jobs," he said.

"(They are) putting together just a short five-question survey to our industries, 'What are the basic skills that you're looking for that you would be wanting to hire students to be an employee at your business,' and then start embedding those skills into the curriculums from 12th grade all the way down to seventh grade.

"So those kids in seventh grade know, 'Hey, it's OK to be a boat mechanic. That's a good-paying job. It's OK to do things that you don't have to go to college for and acquire all this debt,'" he said.

  photo  Gary Jackson, the Workforce Director and Economic Development Manager with Hot Springs Metro Partnership, talks about his new job and his desire to help students thrive. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record
 
 
  photo  Gary Jackson, the Workforce Director and Economic Development Manager with Hot Springs Metro Partnership, talks about his new job and his desire to help students thrive. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record
 
 
  photo  Gary Jackson, the Workforce Director and Economic Development Manager with Hot Springs Metro Partnership, talks about his new job and his desire to help students thrive. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record
 
 

Upcoming Events