Adult School

A Philadelphia adult school yesterday filed a lawsuit against Charles Barkley, contending that the 76ers' all-star forward had reneged on a $50,000 deal to make six personal appearances. "We have been having a very difficult time, if not impossible time, getting him to appear," said Michael M. Goss, an attorney for the corporation that operates the PTC Career Institute. According to the three-page lawsuit filed in Montgomery County Court on behalf of the school, Houston-based Charles Barkley Inc. entered into a contract on May 5, 1986, in which it agreed to deliver Barkley for six days over a two-year period.

Nearly 60 years ago, the Radnor Boosters Club, a group of former football players, was searching for ways to interest more people in the high school. Harry Creutzburg saw a Reader's Digest article about the nation's first adult night school in Maplewood, N.J. He decided the concept would be good for Radnor, said his daughter, Carol Creutzburg of Wayne. "He went over (to Maplewood) with one other person to visit the school," she said, recounting the origins of Main Line School Night in 1937.

Classes at the Upper Moreland Adult Evening School will continue uninterrupted. The school program had been jeopardized by high insurance premiums and a shortage of volunteers, but the township Board of Commissioners has joined the school board in a rescue plan. A proposal submitted Monday night calls for the township to provide liability insurance for the school and to provide help in administering the program, beginning with the fall semester, and for the school district to continue providing classroom space.

Riverside's two-story, red-brick high school building is expected to be open after hours this fall. About 200 adults are being offered a chance to enroll in nine night courses to be held at the school, including aerobics, computer science and small- engine repair. The courses are scheduled to start the first week of October and run through the end of December. The philosophy behind the new adult school is that "education should be lifelong and that the school really is the center of the community," said Riverside High School Principal Orvyl Wilson.

Learn to cook, dance, tune up a car, ride a horse, fly a plane, fly a balloon, play the dulcimer. It's adult-school season again in Burlington County, time for high school and elementary school classrooms to be busy after hours most weeknights. Learn to stop smoking, do aerobic exercise, use power tools to carve wood, operate computers. The classrooms look bustling, but these are not the best of times for adult schools. "The economy is hurting people. For many, it can come down to $40 for a course or for another pair of sneakers for their kid," said Aleyne Larsen- Craig, director of the Lenape adult school.

The demise of the inexpensive driver-training program for high school students was made final last week when the Board of Education unanimously rescinded its decision to fund the program for the rest of the school year. The program was suspended last month after the state Department of Motor Vehicles cited the adult school, which administers the after-school program, for not having the proper license. DMV officials told the adult school administrator that because the course charged money, a $250 commercial business license was necessary.

It began in 1947, with kids at Haverford High sitting around at lunch, spinning records, and pretending to be on radio. Principal Oscar Granger had an idea: Why pretend? Why not start an FM station? FM was new. The first FM station had begun only in 1941. But Granger applied for a Class D educational license, and on Dec. 6, 1949, listeners in the school auditorium - and elsewhere - heard this: "Friends and patrons of Haverford Township schools, good evening! You are now tuned to radio station WHHS, at 89.3 on your FM dial, your own Haverford Township broadcasting studio, located on the second floor of the senior high school building.

A deaf Bridgeport man has sued the Upper Merion Area School District, contending that the district violated federal civil rights laws by refusing to provide him with a sign language interpreter in the adult school course he is attending. William F. Oehler filed the suit yesterday in U.S. District Court here, contending that the district violated his rights under the three-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as well as his due process rights under the Constitution.

John Demby has been named the interim athletic director at Rancocas Valley for the remainder of the school year. Demby has replaced Carmen Cella, the longtime athletic director at Rancocas Valley, who returned to become the interim AD in late December after athletic director Len Grzywacz left for personal reasons. Cella, who retired after the 1998 school year, said that this was his final week in the interim roll and that Demby only wants the job on an interim basis. "John doesn't want the position past this school year," Cella said yesterday.

The Camden County Technical School Board agreed last night to raise tuition for its adult school by about 3 percent, starting with the 2000-01 school year. The district's postsecondary Technical Institute offers course levels ranging from 12 to 32 hours per week at its Gloucester Township and Pennsauken campuses. For the 12-hour-per-week course, tuition for Camden County students will jump $16, from $488 to $504. For out-of-county students, tuition will be $590. For the 32-hour-per-week courses, tuition will go up $42, from $1,302 to $1,344.

It began in 1947, with kids at Haverford High sitting around at lunch, spinning records, and pretending to be on radio. Principal Oscar Granger had an idea: Why pretend? Why not start an FM station? FM was new. The first FM station had begun only in 1941. But Granger applied for a Class D educational license, and on Dec. 6, 1949, listeners in the school auditorium - and elsewhere - heard this: "Friends and patrons of Haverford Township schools, good evening! You are now tuned to radio station WHHS, at 89.3 on your FM dial, your own Haverford Township broadcasting studio, located on the second floor of the senior high school building.

After seven weeks of freedom, Faridah Ali must return to prison for up to a year on her fraud conviction in a scheme in which Community College of Philadelphia paid for nonexistent adult-school classes at her West Philadelphia Muslim school. U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam called yesterday's sentencing unusual - the judge's original sentence of house arrest and probation was vacated on appeal by federal prosecutors - and invited the defense attorney to ask him to reconsider the prison term if he could find legal precedent.

YOUR REPORT on Philadelphia's dropout crisis ("Aiming to turn lives around," Oct. 19) did an excellent job of shining light on causes and short-term effects. It is great to hear that we are reinforcing our efforts to keep people in school, and to reconnect out-of-school youth to school and alternative-education programs. Unfortunately, there are many more older drop-outs. The 2000 census puts the number at more than 437,000 adults in Philadelphia, 25 or older, who do not have a high-school diploma.

After he graduated from Temple University with a degree in elementary education, Dennis St. John headed to the Betsy Ross Bridge. To be an ironworker. It was what he knew, coming from a family of bricklayers and ironworkers. In fact, it was in high school shop class - he's North Catholic, Class of '66 - that a teacher persuaded him to study education. It turns out that the teacher knew better. St. John left the bridge for 16 years as an educator, including more than nine as administrative principal in Berlin Township, before becoming community activities coordinator for Haddon Township, in 1986.

Judith Eadson sat on a stool in wood shop, chips falling all around as she patiently carved a figurine of a gnome. It has taken the 56-year-old Pitman resident 15 years of adult education to get good enough so that her gnome looks like, well, a gnome. "Girls couldn't do it in high school," she explained. "I had to wait for adult school. " Every day after the bells ring and children stage a mass exodus at their schools, classrooms light up as a night shift of learning begins.

Melissa McGinness left high school after ninth grade, had a baby, and dropped out of two successive alternative-education programs. At 17, she was without a diploma and had 2-year-old Cheyenne to take care of. Then, McGinness heard about the Highland Park Program for Success, an alternative school of the Gloucester City School District that started this fall. Small classes that met from 3 to 7 p.m., self-paced learning, on-site care for her daughter, and a chance to start over in her home district sounded perfect to her. Now, McGinness is a success story, well on her way to receiving her diploma by the end of this school year.

The Camden County Technical School District yesterday approved a tuition increase of $2 per credit hour for its adult school for 2000-01. Since most full-time courses at the district's postsecondary technical institute are about 12 credit hours, that is an increase of $24 per course, said Gary Bennett, the district's assistant superintendent for business. Tuition will be $37 per credit hour for Camden County residents and $43 for everyone else. Tuition for postsecondary courses began in 1997 due to a reduction in state funding.

John Demby has been named the interim athletic director at Rancocas Valley for the remainder of the school year. Demby has replaced Carmen Cella, the longtime athletic director at Rancocas Valley, who returned to become the interim AD in late December after athletic director Len Grzywacz left for personal reasons. Cella, who retired after the 1998 school year, said that this was his final week in the interim roll and that Demby only wants the job on an interim basis. "John doesn't want the position past this school year," Cella said yesterday.

The Camden County Technical School Board agreed last night to raise tuition for its adult school by about 3 percent, starting with the 2000-01 school year. The district's postsecondary Technical Institute offers course levels ranging from 12 to 32 hours per week at its Gloucester Township and Pennsauken campuses. For the 12-hour-per-week course, tuition for Camden County students will jump $16, from $488 to $504. For out-of-county students, tuition will be $590. For the 32-hour-per-week courses, tuition will go up $42, from $1,302 to $1,344.

The days would start at 5 a.m. with a two-mile run. They inevitably would include push-ups and sometimes wouldn't end until the time when many folks were settling under the covers to watch the evening news. Free time? Let's just say Willingboro football star Terrell Watkins couldn't have filled in any of his classmates had they missed a day of their favorite soap opera last summer. Watkins, a senior running back and safety, is considered one of the top college prospects in South Jersey.