Barton Community College has been awarded a grant of more than $1 million, paid out over three years, to develop its already robust inmate education programming at Ellsworth Correctional Facility and Larned Correctional and Mental Health Facility. The Improved Reentry Education (IRE) grants were given to only nine communities in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Education website, “IRE seeks to demonstrate that high-quality, appropriately designed, integrated, and well-implemented educational and related services—provided in institutional and community settings—are critical in supporting educational attainment and reentry success for previously incarcerated individuals.”More than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons each year, and only 70 percent of adults in state prison and fewer than half of the juveniles who are incarcerated have a high school diploma or GED, which is the root of the problem of recidivism, according to Jobs for the Future (JFF), a non-profit geared toward ensuring equality of economic and educational opportunities.