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Health & Fitness

Blog: Student Letters to Save Adult Education #2

This amazing letter was mailed to Board President Garcia in January by former Evans student Oxana Miliaeva. The LAUSD School Board does not want more success stories like this one.

Oxana Miliaeva

January 31, 2012

 

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Honorable Monica Garcia, President

LAUSD Board of Education

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333 South Beaudry Avenue                                                                 

Los Angeles, CA 90017                                 

 

 

Subject:  Support for Adult Education in LAUSD

 

Dear Board President Monica Garcia:

 

As a graduate of Evans Community Adult School, I am writing to ask your support for Adult Education.  These schools assist people like me to learn English to fully participate in this country, become college and career ready and improve their economic circumstances through education.

 

I will illustrate the importance of schools like Evans on the example from my own life. I received a Bachelors Degree with Honors from Georgetown University. I also hold a Masters Degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Upon graduation, I got a job at one of the most prestigious international development institutions in America, where I have been working for over two years. I own my success story first and foremost to Evans, one of the Adult Schools which you are considering to shut down in your new budget proposal.

 

I believe that the reason behind your proposal to cut the funding to Community Adult Schools is that they do not make a change in students’ lives. I claim that the opposite is true. I arrived in this country from Russia eleven years ago. I was eighteen, poor and spoke zero English. One year of intensive English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at Evans provided me with sufficient foundation to start taking native-level English language classes (English 101) at Santa Monica College. My education at Evans allowed me to successfully transfer from Santa Monica College to Georgetown University on a full scholarship three years later. Without Evans, I could not have afforded the English classes, and would not have been able to be where I am now.

 

The quality of education I received at Evans was excellent and at times superior to the classes that I took at Georgetown. The reason for it is genuine passion for teaching each and every Evans staff, which positively influenced my adaptation to the new country that I now call home. Evans teachers became my first American friends. I greatly value these friendships and continue them to this very day. Every time I go back to Los Angeles, I visit Evans and talk to current students about the value of Evans education and the possibilities that it opens for them.

 

I urge your support of all of our adult schools. It is vital to our city to have accessible, low cost, quality education and job training programs so all residents can fully participate in and improve our communities.

 

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance. If necessary, I am ready to make a trip to Los Angeles from Washington DC to present to you the importance of Adult School education and the possibilities that it opens for people like me.

 

Yours truly,

Oxana Miliaeva

Consultant

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