Halloween on an iffy Youngstown street....

Monday, November 2, 2009

I think I have made it pretty clear, my neighborhood, and street, are not the best. Normally for Halloween, we drive to a cute little neighborhodd in Niles and go trick or treating there. This year though, the kids were sick so we were stuck home. I got to see first hand what a VERY sad affair Halloween is on my street. There were two brave souls out trying to trick or treat with their children, but no one answered the door for them. Almost every single porch light up and down the entire street was turned off. Couple that with the mostly malfunctioning street lights, and our street was quite dark. To top it off, after the trick or treaters gave up, there wasn't a soul in sight. The place was deserted all night long. It was just sad. I have never lived anywhere that you simply couldn't go trick or treating in such a populated neighborhood. What's truly sad is that I KNOW there are many families with children living here. Everyone has simply given up. It is symbolic. It is symbolic of how we have all given up on this neighborhood. The good families here COULD decorate their homes and give treats. We COULD go trick or treating if the neighborhood wasn't deserted for greener pastures each year. But sadly, I can't blame them. We do it to. As a parent ( a responsible parent anyway ), you have those silly fears of what if I knock on the wrong door? What if it's a sex offenders house? What if the person answering is high? What if the person handing out treats is armed? What if? What could you do? Run background checks on all possible homes and sign them up for trick or treating if met with approval? I don't think so. Nope, I guess we just keep going to greener pastures.... Oh, and to those that have a problem with strange families and strange children showing up to trick or treat each year (and trust me, I have heard it) - What's the most you're going to give away to the non-neighbor kids? $2 in candy? $3? Consider it a random act of kindness. Anyway, Halloween this year sucked. I haven't the first clue what our street could do to pull together to make it better for our neighborhood, but that too is symbolic. If you can't make Halloween work, how do you tackle the rest?

Alright, so we got a "community college" of sorts, now what?

Monday, September 28, 2009

I think it's a bit of synchronicity that just days after posting my last blog, I started seeing signs for Eastern Gateway Community College popping up around town. Apparently, I need to keep better tabs on what's going on in the Mahoning Valley :). Anyway, they are now offically open. They're site is located here - http://www.egatewaycc.us/ and they do have a smattering of course offerings to start off with.

I hate to start off with criticisms BUT most of the course offerings are online only, what they do offer in person is spread over 4 or 5 borrowed campuses, they don't seem to offer an actual degree or certification in anything at all - just random courses and worst of all, their prices are high. I'm sorry but $96 to $116 per course hour is not affordable AND there doesn't seem to be any discount for additional hours. If you reference say, the Houston Community College Systems' 2009-2010 Tuition and fee schedule you'll see that a properly established community college will start off with lower rates ($87.50 FLAT for in district students) and then DISCOUNT for additional hours tacked on. So, for instance, if I took 10 credit hours here at $96 an hour, with no discount, I pay $960. Ouch. At our example school (HCC) those same 10 hours, starting at a somewhat similar rate ($87.50), end up costing me only $571.00!!!!

Now to be fair(ish) - I looked into what seems to be EGCC's parent company (or partner), Jefferson Community College, and they don't charge much less (though they actually have real courses and degrees) and even found this sad little table - http://ns3.jcc.edu/jcc/PageList.aspx?pageid=10 basically showing that state and community college education in Ohio is a rip off.

As much as I would love to spend all day analyzing this, I have real work to get to. So, for now, I guess it's good someone came here but they really need to get their act together. In essence, we STILL don't have a community college, no matter what they "say".

Why is there no community college?

Thursday, September 3, 2009

I was researching a project for a client this morning and was thinking "Hey, maybe I should grab a quickie class on PHP to beef up my skills. In fact, I should get in the habit of taking at least one class a semester just to to keep up with the industry."

So, I went looking and there isn't anywhere to do it! There is no community college around here. If I want to take a class at YSU I have to go through admissions and all that PITA crud and then there are probably prerequisites, if they even have a class on PHP. I certainly don't want to go to a votech and get ripped off. I just want to go to a nice little community college, get a nice little certificate of completion and be done with it.

Why, oh why, in the Mahoning Valley, of all places, is there no community college? No place for subpar high school students to get easy degrees - no place for secretaries to learn new skills one class at a time - no place for housewives to take cooking classes or knitting classes - no place for overachieving teens to get college credit the fast and easy way - no place for community CPR classes - no place for those with limited time and limited budgets to go and learn without getting ripped off in financial aid and loans (you know, the type of college you can actually afford to pay for out of pocket) - NOTHING. I even checked Trumbull county and NOTHING. What the hell!?!

So, here's another common sense proposal (that should have been done ages ago) to improve the Valley and the lives of its citizens: Bring in a GOOD COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM.

In the meantime, I guess i'll just have to settle for an online class and send my educational dollars elsewhere.

If anyone knows why we don't have something as fundamental as a community college in the Mahoning Valley or has any ideas on how to get one, chime in!