I know that at one point we had many individuals, mostly women, that were on Welfare that were attending Community College. And then with the new law, schooling or higher education was not defined as work so they had to leave. What has been the loss of that? Do you have any numbers of people?
No. We are asked this question from time to time. Because students are not identified to us in that way anymore, we're not 2107 2/23/01 - FY '02 OPERATING BUDGET able to really track it in a data way. We only know that anecdotally, and that was the response I gave the Councilwoman earlier, that the numbers are definitely less, but we can't give you a definitive number because it's not reported to us in that way any longer.
Well, many of them had kids in the day care center that you have. Incredible day care center. I don't how many people have gone and seen it, but it is a very good facility. How is that operating and how many kids are now in the day care center, do you know, and was that part of the impact? Because I imagine that many of the people and many of the women that were on Welfare had their kids in that day care center so they can study.
Dr. Jones, can you tell me about how many children are there right now? Fifty-two is the answer. And again, I don't know right off the top of my head if we know how many would be children of families on public assistance. We don't know that, do we? No, we don't know that again.
Do you have numbers 2108 2/23/01 - FY '02 OPERATING BUDGET of different high schools and how many high schools feed into Community College every year?
And the retention rate and the individuals, how many of them -- I imagine it's a two-year associate degree?
How many of them go on to the four-year colleges and so on?
Yes, with the caveat that because almost all go on to private universities, we are dependent on that university to give us the data. Some give it to us more regularly than others.
I really would like to look at that. If you can send that over to the president, I'd really like to see what's the flow and graduation rate. 2109 2/23/01 - FY '02 OPERATING BUDGET The outreach aspect of Community College, how are you doing that? What is the success rate of your effort?
Well, our enrollment is rising. This will current semester in our credit programs we're 5 percent larger than we were a year ago in the spring, and our non-credit numbers are up too. So I think we are reaching out in many different ways, some of them obviously relate to marketing and so on, but some of them are programmatic in nature. When I mentioned in response to earlier questions about our relationship with the public schools, for example, that's a connection that ultimately we hope will lead to a transition into our college environment and that effects enrollment. I would say in ever category essentially this year, we are up in enrollment.
You currently have some satellites; is there any plans to build any more satellites for Community College in other parts of the City?
Not at the moment. Our 2110 2/23/01 - FY '02 OPERATING BUDGET three regional centers are each up in terms of enrollment. I've mentioned the Northwest because it was the one that we moved most recently into a new facility. With that move and with the addition of space, it has grown considerably faster than the other two, considerably faster than the main campus too. But all three regional centers are gradually moving up in terms of enrollment. But I think we have a lot of other things on our plate at the moment in terms of anticipated needs. I mentioned the business and industry center. We are losing our lease at our current site and are having to negotiate a least at another site. That's an issue that we have to address first. We have still not completed the renovation of our Northwest center. We're two-thirds the way through or three-quarters of the way through, but that's part of our master plan. So there are a series of other steps first, I think. We will continue the community-based sites that we have around the City in terms of at least some initial offerings.
One last thing, my entrepreneurial friend over here to my left and I 2111 2/23/01 - FY '02 OPERATING BUDGET were talking, maybe that we could begin naming rights and selling naming rights to raise some more funds to Community College. That seems to be the fad nowadays.
We will have plenty of things. If you know anyone that would like to take advantage of that.
Or we could wrap Community college in these huge advertisements, wall wraps. (Laughter.)
Thank you. Are there any further questions? Dr. Curtis, thank you so much for all the wonderful work you do. We certainly want to thank everyone who has joined you today. Good luck. Thank you.
This hearing stands in recess until Tuesday at 9 a.m. (Council adjourned at 5:45 p.m.) - - - 2112 C E R T I F I C A T I O N I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of February 23, 2001, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. RE: COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ___________________________ Josephine Cardillo, RPR and Notary Public ___________________________ Lisa C. Bradley, RPR and Notary Public