Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Center to focus on youth, graduation rates

 Buffalo State College’s off-site Community Academic Center is opening up this October. The Community Academic Center located at 214 Grant St. aims to support Buffalo’s youth and improve high school graduation rates.
 “We were looking for something situated on the West Side,” said Maureen McCarthy, CEURE associate at Buffalo State’s Volunteer and Service Learning Center. “This location is just past Lafayette High School and in a hub of a lot of activity so we’ll be able to reach out to that community well.”
 The center’s activities are still being worked out but right now organizers hope to have an afterschool art program, a girl talk group for young teens and depending on the communities’ needs, English as a Second Language (ESL) classes also. Partnerships are in the process of being built between the Academic Center and West Side schools like Lafayette High School and Grover Cleveland High School.
The Community Academic Center is expected to be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. starting Oct. 18. By Brian Geerhart and Erica Lindo