The little boy's cheeks flushed red and his right leg bounced up and down, up and down as he sat in the school cafeteria with the Benton County sheriff's deputy who was eating lunch with him.

"He's one of my friends," said Dawsen Lee, 11, a fourth-grade student at Sugar Creek Elementary School in Bentonville.

Sgt. Chris Berry is among the few adults outside of teachers to pay attention to Dawsen, who struggles in school. Dawsen doesn't have many friends, isn't sure where he lives and is often afraid of men because a father figure was mean, he said. The only person he thinks of as his actual father died in December.

"I'm having a hard time because of what I've been through," Dawsen said.

When Berry visits, Dawsen said he feels happy because he has someone with whom to talk. The two have a lot in common -- they both like snow, football and wearing ties.

The sheriff's mentoring program is among at least two growing programs targeting "at-risk" students in Benton County.

At-risk students include those from single-parent homes or with absentee or incarcerated parents, children in foster care and children who live in severe poverty, said Tamara White, school counselor. White picked out students she thought needed a deputy mentor -- students who struggle socially, academically or emotionally.

About 25 deputies and five civil staff members from the Sheriff's Office mentor about 35 students in four Benton County schools, said Keshia Guyll, Sheriff's Office spokeswoman. Sugar Creek Elementary School and Ardis Ann Middle School, also in Bentonville, were added to the program this school year. Deputies at those schools see about 22 students, White said.

Other schools are starting or expanding mentoring programs, educators said.

A program that hires "advocates" who act as one-on-one mentors to children started this year at Lincoln and Washington junior high schools and Bentonville High School, said Mary Ley, executive director of communications and community partnerships for the Bentonville School District. The advocates act like "surrogate moms" who make sure students have what they need for classes and help them succeed, she said.

The Bentonville district's program is modeled on Springdale's Anchor Mentoring Program, which started in 2010 and is funded by the Care Foundation, a fund of the Endeavor Foundation, said Jill Kaplan, vice president of strategy and communications at Endeavor Foundation. The community foundation, which is governed by a board of local business, civic and community leaders, also funded the Bentonville program with $78,000, Ley said.

Other mentoring programs have operated in Washington County for years and representatives want to expand them.

Nob Hill firefighters started visiting students at Sonora Elementary School in Springdale three years ago, said Gary Hull, fire chief. The department staff would like to expand to include the middle school, he said. Currently, about 30 Nob Hill firefighters volunteer to mentor students.

"We do everything we can to get them out the door with better learning than they had when they came in," Hull said. "We go over and work with the students on reading and community support, (and) try to help them get through life."

'Positive Attention'

Berry has visited Dawsen as often as possible since November. He worries about Dawsen, he said.

While visiting earlier this month, Berry let Dawsen chatter, then sit quietly.

White said, in the few months the new program has been in place at Ardis Ann Middle School and Sugar Creek Elementary, she has seen students with mentors start wanting to come to school. She said student self-esteem has started to climb, and in some cases, grades improved, she said.

"All it is is a little positive attention directed at that individual child," White said about the program. "It just kind of lifts them up."

Colton Cook, 11, a sixth-grade student at Ardis Ann, had a D grade in one class before Deputy Cody Elkinton started mentoring him, Colton said.

"You brought your grade up to a C, right?" Elkinton said during a lunch visit earlier this month.

"Yeah," Colton said.

Elkinton often brings Colton lunch when he comes to visit. He wears his deputy uniform, which impresses the other students. He and Colton talk about Colton's problems, and Elkinton encourages him to do his homework. Most of the time, the pair go outside and play during recess. On a recent, windy February morning, Elkinton and Colton talked about plans to go trout fishing together.

"A mentor, to me, is someone who hangs out with you and helps you with stuff," Colton said.

Mentoring seems to benefit children's emotional well-being, peer relationships, academic attitudes and grades, according to a 2013 Public/Private Ventures project distributed by MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization that focuses on policies and programs affecting low-income people, according to the group's website.

Locally, educators said mentor programs at their schools are paying off. Ley said Bentonville schools see marked improvement among students with mentors.

A student at Lincoln Junior High School, for example, improved his grades in his core classes by 21 percent this year over last school year. The same student missed 20 days of school last year, compared to six days this year, Ley said.

Another student was failing math, but brought her grade up this year to 70 percent. She missed school 21 days last year compared to seven this year, Ley said.

About 70 school children and four mentors in three schools are in the district's program this school year, but Ley hopes to expand the program to elementary schools next year.

Keeping Students

The mentoring programs are meant to keep students from falling behind, losing interest and dropping out of school, Ley said.

"If we don't keep them going at junior high, that's when you can really lose them in high school," she said.

Mentoring isn't new, but as Northwest Arkansas schools get bigger, parents and educators may be worried some children are falling through the cracks and dropping out of school, said Gary Ritter, director of the Office for Education Policy at the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

For example, Bentonville has an 86 percent graduation rate, Ritter said. That means, statistically, by the time a freshman class reaches graduation, about 200 students of the original class dropped out without graduating, he said. For an affluent school district, like Bentonville, people might expect more children to graduate than that, Ritter said.

Mentoring programs may address some of those concerns, educators said.

Ritter said information soon will be available about whether at least one local mentoring program works to help students stay in school, better their grades and graduate.

The university implemented its own mentoring program in the 2012-2013 school year. The Razor Create Opportunities for Arkansas's Career Hopes program pairs college students seeking master's and doctoral degrees with students in 15 Northwest Arkansas high schools, Ritter said.

The "coaches," or mentors, encourage students to succeed, said Sarah Burks, graduate research assistant in the Office of Education Policy. Coaches talk with students about college and careers, and make students feel like someone cares about them, Burks said.

The university program -- a three-year, grant-funded offshoot of Arkansas Works -- is meant to prepare students for "what's next," Ritter said.

Students will be surveyed this summer and test scores will be evaluated, Ritter said. Results using data from the program will be available this year, he said.

Even without concrete data, educators said they see the excitement in the children's faces when their mentors visit. The more excited Dawsen gets when he sees Berry, the redder his cheeks become. After about 30 minutes into his recent visit, Dawsen's cheeks turned the color of cherries.

Dawsen said Berry makes him feel better about everything -- even himself. Things might be getting easier with school, too, he said.

NW News on 03/02/2014