Adult Basic Education Students Thrilled With New School Building

Nigste Bahta’s voice fills with pride and excitement when talking about the new Cedar Valley Learning Center in Apple Valley.

“I feel like I’m in school, like a real school,” said Bahta, a native of Ethiopia. Bahta is a student in District 196’s Adult Basic Education program, which this school year has moved into a renovated building—formerly a bank—just off Cedar Avenue near 145th Street West.

The building was basically gutted and redesigned inside with the program’s needs in mind, said Jeff Solomon, the district’s director of finance and operations. Before, the classes for the 20-plus-year-old program were held at .

Between the Cedar Valley Learning Center and the district’s other community service building—the Rahncliff Learning Center in Eagan—the district has programs that served about 1,400 students during the 2010-11 school year, including 790 English as a Second Language students.

About half those students now attend morning, afternoon or evening classes at Cedar Valley Learning Center, which wasn’t always feasible at the church.

“There’s an acknowledgement with this building that our students are as much a part of the community” as K-12 students, Adult Basic Education Program Manager Cathy Koering said.

“It’s exciting to come here,” said Anel Gazga, a student who hails from Mexico. Her classmates in a GED prep class agreed that the new location is a vast improvement.

While the immigrant population ABE serves has exploded in recent years, the program serves anyone who needs GED prep work or adults who are a few credits short of getting a high school diploma.

The program also aids dislocated workers and the unemployed, helping them with math and language refresher courses so they’re ready for post-secondary training.

The program graduated 123 students with either a GED or adult diploma this spring, Koering said.

The new building has a computer lab, five adult classrooms and a classroom devoted to the early childhood family education program that also teaches 25 pre-kindergarten children of some of the adult learners.

Each classroom is equipped with a smart board and several circular tables that are packed with students during classes. The computer lab features fiber connections to the school district’s wide area network and with language software.

The rooms are more organized, said Sonia Borrayes, also from Mexico, and the classrooms are quieter, with no noise from children that would sometimes hamper students’ ability to concentrate on lessons at the church.

“This looks and feels like a school,” said Huda Ali, who came to the United States from Somaliland.

The excitement about the new learning center is shared by the center’s staff.

The building will be dedicated at 10 a.m. Nov. 10 in a public ceremony that will feature the Apple Valley presenting a flag for the building.

“This is a wonderful program,” Gazga said. “We came to this country without English, and this has helped.”