Robertson County has a 78% rate of high school graduates, ranking it sixth in its local area; however, of those graduates, 16% of them go on to earn a Bachelor’s degree (Town Charts 2013). Considering that on the average only slightly over 400 students attend grades K through 12 in the school system there, coupled with the fact that the poverty rate there is 30.4% (Lifestories Catalog; US Census 2018), those figures are not to be dismissed.  However, some those graduates don’t get into college without assistance. And that is where the Robertson County Extension Homemakers and their Scholarship programs come in.

Robertson County at one time had several Extension Homemaker Clubs within their ranks.  Now although their numbers are not as large as in the past, their community achievements are still notable.  Included on their list of contributions in this year were not one, but two scholarships awarded to 2020 graduates of Robertson County School .One of them is named for the Robertson County Extension Homemaker Program, the other is the Phyllis Insko Scholarship, named for a late Homemaker in memory of her contributions to education as a long time teacher in the county system.

Qualifications for receiving the scholarships include grades, community involvement and last but not least an essay written discussing why they deserve the scholarship and what their education plans are.  Normally the judging of these essays is simply done by a committee meeting a month prior to graduation. However life in the times of COVID-19 made matters just a bit more complicated.  Social distancing prevented judging the essays the usual way and instead they were "passed around" among the committee members via technology. Some of those judging weren't as tech-literate as others, but arrangements were made and from the 11 entries two winners were chosen.

The recipients were Alaina Craig and Miguel Delgado.  Alaina plains to pursue a career in Nursing and Miguel has enrolled in a Welding program. Both will attend Maysville Community and Technical College in Fall 2020.  The benefits of these scholarships are far reaching and will permit these graduates to pursue careers they might have been hard pressed to do other wise.  This is encouraging to other community youth, in circumstances that might prevent them from pursuing secondary education, to know there are those involved who care about their future and their success. Hopefully this will cause the numbers of graduating seniors from Robertson County that plan to attend college to increase and give this small rural countyan optimistic outlook on the future.