With budget cuts looming, CSI students receive recognition

They complete work in Adult Learning Center, which will have funding reduced by
11 percent next term

Staten Island Advance - May 25, 2004

The joy of yesterday’s recognition ceremony for students in the College of Staten Island’s Adult Learning Center had a tinge of sorrow attached next year’s term will begin with an 11 percent cut in the budget.

“A program like ours should not receive cuts,” said Staci Weile, program director, and director of grants and public contracts for CSI’s Office of Continuing Education and Professional Development. “The work we do is too important to the community.”

About 100 people gathered in the Green Dolphin Lounge on the Willowbrook campus to celebrate the success and hard work of students in the free program, which offers instruction in basic education, English as a Second Language (ESL) and preparation for the General Equivalency Diploma (GED).

According to Ms. Weile, the program served more than 750 students over the past year. It receives grant funding from state and city education departments.

Next year, the program will have to cut enrollment by at least 120, further glutting the waiting list, which already stands at over 250. Class hours and the ability to hire full-time faculty will also be decreased, she said.

But that news did little to dampen the mood, as students both young and old gathered, to celebrate a year’s worth of I hard work and dedication.

Iris Napolitano, a GED teacher in the program, praised the center for raising its students’ self-esteem.

“A lot of people come to these programs, and they’re stuck in dead-end jobs and they don’t know where to go,” she said. “This program lets them know that they’re important.”

Suk Hui Nico of Great Kills enthusiastically recounted her education in ESL, beginning with the alphabet and the difference between upper- and lower-case letters, to her current English reading habits.

“If you met me three years ago, I would have said, ‘hi,’ ‘thank you,’ and ‘bye,’ and that’s it,” she said.

Meanwhile, Bulls Head resident Sanda Ricker, a GED student, has a lofty goal — an aspiring writer, she wants to trump J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, “The Lord of the Rings.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and from this program, I got a lot of motivation,” she said.