Coaching

Larry B. Rentz, Sr. Is Closing the Guidance Gap for High School Students

November 10, 2026

Every spring, millions of high school seniors cross a stage, collect a diploma, and step into a future that many of them have never been taught how to plan. Some have a clear destination. Many more have potential, ambition, and real interest, but no map for turning those into a career, a business, a branch of service, or a degree. Larry B. Rentz, Sr. calls this the guidance gap, and he has built a program designed to close it.

That program is Pathlight, a multi-year high school curriculum that guides students and their families toward a meaningful next phase of life. Its premise is simple and overdue: the years before graduation should be spent discovering what a young person wants to do, then building a deliberate path to get there, not scrambling to figure it out after the cap and gown come off.

Three Decades of Preparing Young Leaders

Rentz does not come to this work as a newcomer. For more than 30 years, he has prepared youth, young adults, and emerging professionals to lead with purpose. His career has taken him across secondary and higher education, federal service, military leadership, and complex organizations. In each of those settings, he has designed programs, mentored future leaders, and built learning environments that tie together personal growth, service, cultural awareness, and mission-driven leadership.

That breadth matters. Rentz has seen up close what young people need to succeed in very different environments, from a classroom to a military unit to a federal agency. Pathlight distills that experience into a structured approach that schools and families can put to work.

What Pathlight Does

Pathlight envisions a future in which the distance between a student’s potential, desire, opportunity, and direction disappears. The program closes that distance through four core elements:

Trusted coaching that helps students identify their strengths and interests
Meaningful exposure to real-world careers and pathways
Structured guidance that turns broad goals into a concrete, multi-year plan
Skill-building experiences that prepare students for whatever comes after high school

Rather than treating post-secondary planning as a single meeting with a counselor during senior year, Pathlight spreads the work across a student’s high school career. Students design a plan, execute it step by step, and adjust as they learn more about themselves.

Just as important, Pathlight does not assume that every student is headed to the same place. Whether a young person’s goal is entrepreneurship, military service, trade school, or college, the program helps them reach it through mentoring, coaching, and direct connections with community partners in each of those fields.

Built on Clear Values

Pathlight’s work is grounded in eight guiding principles:

Purpose: helping youth discover direction, build confidence, and take meaningful steps forward
Integrity: serving with honesty, accountability, and trust in every interaction
Guidance: providing practical support that turns uncertainty into opportunity
Excellence: delivering high-quality service with care, consistency, and compassion
Access: connecting youth and families to resources, pathways, and supportive networks
Partnership: building strong relationships that expand opportunity and strengthen impact
Respect: honoring the experiences, values, and communities of every person served
Impact: focusing on lasting growth, confidence, preparedness, and meaningful outcomes

These values reflect a belief that runs through Rentz’s career: young people rise to meet expectations when they are given honest support, real options, and adults who take their futures seriously.

A Call to Schools, Districts, Parents, and Youth Organizations

Rentz is clear about who he wants to reach. School administrators, school districts, parents, and youth-serving organizations, he says, share both the capacity and the responsibility to help young people create better futures for themselves.

“I would like to partner with those organizations to bring my over 30 years of experience training and mentoring young people to create a path for themselves,” Rentz says.

For school leaders, Pathlight offers a structured curriculum that complements existing counseling resources. For parents, it offers a partner in one of the most consequential conversations they will have with their children. For community organizations, it offers a framework for turning mentoring into measurable progress.

The Takeaway

Rentz’s message to readers is direct: a program exists that can close the guidance gap. Through structure, mentorship, and community connection, Pathlight helps young people discover their purpose and develop a strategy to live in it, long before graduation day arrives.

For students who have the desire but not yet the direction, that may make all the difference.