Amarillo College will administer a grant of more than $1.1 million a year for up to five years, spearheading the efforts of a regional consortium bent on expanding the quantity, accessibility and focus of adult-education programs for low-income residents across the Texas Panhandle.
The Adult Education and Literacy Grant comes courtesy of the Texas Workforce Commission and is intended to provide English language, math, reading, and writing instruction to help students acquire the skills needed to succeed in the workforce, earn a high school equivalency, or enter college or career training.
Census data reveals that the Panhandle is home to some 58,000 individuals 18 or older who do not have secondary degrees and are not enrolled in school, a tally that demographers say helps explain why the number of persons living in poverty within Texas’ 26 northernmost counties continues to climb.
The principals within the Panhandle Adult Education Literacy (AEL) Consortium are AC, Region 16 Education Service Center, Clarendon College and Frank Phillips College. They aim to provide relevant curriculum leading to gainful employment or advanced educational opportunities. They also hope to remove barriers (i.e. cost and transportation) to key student milestones—GED and English as a Second Language credentials.
They will employ both traditional instruction and scaled distance-learning options to serve AEL students throughout the Panhandle, including far rural areas. However, such an ambitious undertaking requires the aid of able, collaborating organizations, and the consortium has many.
“This grant represents a beacon of hope for adults and families throughout the Panhandle who are constrained by low income due to inadequate educational attainment,” Dr. Tamara Clunis, AC’s dean of academic success, said.
Dozens of community and faith-based organizations are actively recruiting students and opening doors to accommodate classes across the region.
Entities like the Amarillo Area Adult Literacy Council, Workforce Solutions Panhandle, Speiro Legacies, Panhandle Regional Planning Commission—Workforce Development Division, and many more are bringing their unique resources to bear, not only to help significantly increase the number of low-income adults participating in AEL programs, but to help increase their chances for success. These organizations will provide support, counseling, employment or other non-instructional services.
The consortium and its wide-ranging community network are unified behind a strategy that incorporates and conjoins some pro-activities already serving the region—Career Pathways, No Limits No Excuses, Navigating Neighborhoods, Accelerate Texas—all of which will help the consortium reach its goal of serving 1,970 students in basic adult education, ESL, and GED preparation and testing.
“This grant represents a beacon of hope for adults and families throughout the Panhandle who are constrained by low income due to inadequate educational attainment,” Dr. Tamara Clunis, AC’s dean of academic success, said.
Efforts to improve adult literacy here and elsewhere in Texas are not new. Region 16 served as the Panhandle’s AEL provider for 41 years, garnering numerous awards and recognition from the Texas Education Agency, the grantor, along the way. But in 2013, legislation in Texas was passed that transferred responsibility for adult education from the TEA to the Texas Workforce Commission.
Educational attainment leading to employment and other wage-earning upward mobility has become the focus, and few are more equipped to comply with that particular aim than a successful community college.
“This is about lifting people up, putting people to work or setting them on a career path that will change their lives,” Clunis said. “We’re equipping people with skills that will enhance not only their own quality of life and that of their families, but ultimately the economic vitality of the region we all call home will be a beneficiary, too.”