Article

State budget cuts can't kill teens' quest for knowledge or Governor's School

Monday, July 31, 2006 • BY JOHN MOONEY • Star-Ledger Staff

Inside Drew University's Hall of Sciences, a group of high school students scrawled formulas across blackboards to compute Kepler's Laws of planetary motion.

In a basement studio at the College of New Jersey, a group of teens finished shooting the last scenes of a short film, one of a dozen the class will complete this summer.

Elsewhere, students set out to explore South Jersey's Mullica River estuary and debated how the world might react to an avian flu outbreak.

It was all part of New Jersey's popular Governor's School enrichment programs for high school seniors, which opened this month on six college campuses across the state after coming perilously close to extinction a few months ago due to state budget cuts.

There are nearly 600 students from New Jersey's public and private high schools in the elite monthlong program and they're covering a lot of ground -- from performing Haydn's Divertimento in B flat to studying the cancer-related enzyme adenosine deaminase.

"We're curing cancer, aren't we?" joked Neha Limaye of Westfield High School as she worked on the chemistry project at Drew.

"In time," answered teacher Adam Cassano.

Janet Shin, from Paramus High School, has been playing the flute since fourth grade and competing since middle school. She said her time at the Governor's School at College of New Jersey has been a chance to learn and make friends with other talented teens.

Behind the scenes, she said, some students have been critical of Gov. Jon Corzine for eliminating the program's $1.9 million in funding.

"Among ourselves, we call it the 'Privately Funded School' instead of the Governor's School," she said

When Corzine's plan to eliminate state funding for the Governor's School made news earlier this year, parents and teachers rallied to save it. With Corzine's support, a fundraising effort led by Ruthi Byrne, wife of former Gov. Brendan Byrne, received pledges of more than $2.3 million.

Administrators said they remained concerned about the program, and about the possibility of future students having to pay tuition. A new board, composed largely of program graduates, will soon begin grappling with the funding questions.

"My only commitment I have is that I am really interested in this program continuing," said Jane Oates, who as director of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education took the program's reins this spring. "After seeing these kids, even the naysayers would turn their heads in amazement."

During a film class at the arts school at College of New Jersey, Chad Cooper of Eastern High School in Voorhees directed a short film titled "Positively Negative" -- complete with a boom operator, director of photography and script supervisor, all under 18 years old.

"It's about a simple conversation over coffee and how it can completely change how someone looks at life," Chad, 17, said during a break. "It's the first real film piece I have ever done. And the hardest experience ever. But it feels great."

At the international studies program at Ramapo, not even an unexpected early end last week -- after a student contracted whooping cough -- could sour the experience for the rest of the students.

The Ramapo program was hit hardest by the budget problems, and administrators were forced to abandon an annual trip to Quebec and then cancel plans for a week in Washington, D.C., as well.

But Robert Edmiston of Montclair High School said he gained a lot from the program as he finished up his research on how Russia might react to a potential avian flu outbreak. It wasn't just the depth of the classes, he said, but also the time spent with other students from around the state.

"I've done a lot of sleep-away camps and things like that, but never has there been a bond like this," Edmiston said. "It's the enthusiasm for learning that we all have in common."

It's this kind of loyalty that organizers and others hope can sustain the program -- because there's little hope the state will pay the bills anytime soon.

Tuition is frequently mentioned as an option, as much as $3,000 for each student, but that isn't final, either. "And there will be no discussion with the word tuition without also talking about (financial) aid," Oates said. A number of companies, she said, have already offered to provide scholarships.

As part of the fundraising this year, parents were asked for voluntary contributions, and the program raised about $29,000 from 50 families, Oates said.

"I don't know how we will keep going back to the same funders every year," she said. "This will have to be a shared responsibility from now on, and parents will have to be part of that."

Oates also said she hopes the programs do a better job of reaching out to lower-income students. There are very few this year -- partly because many of these students are not exposed to higher-level work in their schools, and partly because the schools are not nominating enough of the students who are qualified, Oates said.

A couple of the colleges involved are revisiting where the programs fit into their missions as well, especially as they face their own state funding cuts. The director of the Drew program, David Miyamoto, said the school was at a "crossroads" after more than two decades on Drew's campus.

"We've had 23 very good years, and it may be time to let someone else do it," said Miyamoto, who is also the chairman of Drew's biology department.

In the meantime, he said, Drew's program reaps benefits for the school by providing teaching ideas and even research data that ends up published in research journals.

At Drew last week, teacher Randy Heuer led a team of students who were poised at computer terminals as they devised a program to use algorithms to track airplanes. Heuer spent 25 years at Bell Labs working in computer science, yet even he was impressed.

"These kids are something else," he said. "They are so smart, it's scary."

MAKING THE GRADE

Return to Articles page