When Connect 4 opened its doors in Berryville in the fall of 2018, 17 students enrolled in the new career and technical education program.
Eight years later, that number has reached 100.
The milestone represents significant growth for a program that remains a cooperative effort among Carroll County’s three public school districts — Berryville, Green Forest and Eureka Springs — providing students from all three districts access to hands-on career and technical training.
This year’s enrollment includes 53 students from Berryville, 31 from Green Forest and 16 from Eureka Springs. Of the 100 students, 61 are new to Connect 4 and 39 are returning. The group includes 53 juniors and 47 seniors.
“It’s been a game changer for us, to tell you the truth,” said Eureka Springs Superintendent Bryan Pruitt. “It gives our kids an incentive to pursue that, and for them to know that, hey, if you take care of your academics here, then when you get to be a junior and senior, you can go over to C4 and get that industrial training. It’s just another tool in the tool belt that gives them another avenue for them to be successful in life. The kids that went through that program have all excelled and done well, and they’re confident when they come out of there.”
Berryville Superintendent Owen Powell said reaching triple-digit enrollment is an important milestone for a program that has grown each year since its inception.
“It’s huge,” Powell said. “This is the first time that we’ve hit 100 students, so it’s definitely grown. It’s grown every year. We really knew that it would.”
“I was at a graduation here a couple years ago and one of the boys walked up to me and said ‘I just want to thank you for starting C4,’ ” Pruitt said. “He said, ‘because, Monday morning I start at Tyson as a maintenance trainee at $25 an hour.’
“That’s a good success story for our kids locally to know that you can graduate high school on Saturday, start on Monday, for that kind of money.”
For Connect 4 director James Knight, the growth is about more than enrollment. It reflects the program’s evolution into a pipeline connecting Carroll County students with employers — sometimes before those students have even graduated from high school.
“We’re always on the hunt for new industry partners and to develop more internships,” Knight said.
One of those partnerships was on display recently when Emery Sapp & Sons donated a large conveyor system to Connect 4.
The company didn’t simply deliver the equipment. ESS employees brought it to the Connect 4 facility, helped install it and provided a licensed electrician to make the necessary electrical connections.
“They not only donated the equipment, they brought it over, helped set it up, did all the electrical connections, the whole nine yards,” Knight said.
Knight estimated the company has invested several thousand dollars in the equipment and its installation. Once a safety guard is installed and the conveyor is ready for operation, ESS employees plan to return to Connect 4 to provide students with instruction on the equipment.
The donation continues a relationship between Connect 4 and ESS that has already led to jobs for program graduates. Knight said three members of the Connect 4 Class of 2026 went to work for the company after graduation, while other former students were already employed there. Two Connect 4 graduates who now work for ESS also helped with the conveyor project.
The relationship is an example of the industry involvement that has been part of Connect 4 since its beginning.
Plans for what became the Connect 4 Career Center were taking shape by 2017. The program was developed in the former National Guard armory on South Main Street in Berryville, with Tyson Foods contributing $1.3 million toward development of the facility.
Connect 4 began serving students in the fall of 2018 as a partnership among the Berryville, Green Forest and Eureka Springs school districts, with an initial emphasis on industrial maintenance and other skills needed by area employers.
“It’s been worth every bit of work and money that’s been put into the program,” Powell said.
“It’s just been a great program for us,” Pruitt said. “It took a lot of work and we kind of stepped out there on the limb a little bit when we had to get that thing started but luckily we had some good team members. Tyson stepped in and helped us with that and other local industries helped us.
“The mayor of Berryville, Tim McKinney kind of spearheaded this, and he helped us with it… Tim is very instrumental with C4 and I want to give him recognition for that as well.”
Knight said the program’s success has come from doing more than simply teaching technical skills.
“I think it’s a combination of a few things,” he said. “Number one, you treat people like people, and number two, you try to get them directed to a career path, not just get the training.”
Connect 4 works to build relationships between students and potential employers while the students are still in school.
“Trying to develop some work connections, workforce connections for them while they’re in school so that once they do have training, they can land that job,” Knight said. “I think that’s what’s really put us over the top here.”
The results are showing up in more than enrollment numbers.
Knight said Connect 4 achieved 100 percent placement among last year’s students. More than 80 percent went directly into the workforce or military, he said, while the remainder continued their education or training.
The program’s role doesn’t necessarily end when a student graduates, either.
“We’re trying to become a workforce center,” Knight said.
Employers are increasingly treating it that way.
Knight said businesses looking for workers routinely contact Connect 4 as graduation approaches.
“We get calls at the end of the year pretty regularly now about people looking for employees, and they call us,” he said. “They burn the phone up, it seems like, the last month and a half of school.”
Powell also sees room for continued growth because the skills being taught at Connect 4 are tied to jobs that aren’t disappearing.
“These jobs out there that require manual labor, like HVAC and plumbing and electrical, all those kind of skills, and those jobs that require those skills, that stuff’s not going away,” Powell said. “Everybody needs or wants AC, everybody wants electricity. So, you’ve got to have people with the skills that can come in and work on those things.”
For some of Connect 4’s earliest students, Knight said, the program opened possibilities they hadn’t previously considered.
“A couple of them had aspirations to be welder helpers and the rest of them thought they’d be stacking feed sacks,” he said.
Instead, several quickly moved into what Knight described as “really good jobs.”
Those success stories have helped create a cycle. Students receive training, employers hire them, graduates return to the program and companies become more willing to invest in the next group.
The recently donated ESS conveyor illustrates how those relationships can work in both directions.
A company that has hired Connect 4 graduates has now provided equipment that will be used to train future students. Among those helping bring that equipment into the program were former Connect 4 students who have moved from the classroom into the workforce themselves.
For a program that started with 17 students and now serves 100 from all three Carroll County school districts, the connection between training and employment remains central to what Connect 4 is trying to accomplish.
The goal isn’t simply to teach students how to do a job.
It’s to help them find one.
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