Team Edwards, Muroc school district stand up Center of Excellence

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Julius Delos Reyes
  • 95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Team Edwards joined forces with the Muroc Joint Unified School District to establish the Center of Excellence during a lease-signing ceremony June 15 at the old Edwards Middle School here. 

Through the lease agreement, the base will take over the responsibility of maintaining the facility and turning it into an educational center catering to adults, and middle school students and high school students.

"The Center of Excellence is a culmination of several programs that aims to improve schools on base," said Cathi Cleveland, 95th Contracting Squadron business operations director and Muroc School-Improvement Partnership president. 

One of the Center of Excellence's plans is to build mentoring and tutoring programs, said Dr. Sue Jacobsen, 95th Mission Support and Services Squadron force development director and the Center of Excellence college programs director. 

"For the high school program, because of budget cuts and budget restraints, the school district just can not provide rich elective, mentoring and tutoring programs for the students anymore," Ms. Cleveland said. 

The school improvement partnership, through the Center of Excellence, will step up to provide these programs, she said. 

The mentoring and tutoring programs will be started with the high school students first. 

"As we test the program, we will expand it to the middle school," Ms. Cleveland said. 

This gives high school and middle school students an opportunity to have programs available for them before and after school hours. 

"We have a lot of problems with the children not really having anywhere to go," Ms. Cleveland said. 

Though there are some services provided for the children such as the Teen Center and after-school programs, there are a lot of people who work off-base, and their children are dropped off too early, she said. 

One thing the Center of Excellence will do is to provide programs that will allow students to come before and after school so that they are being more productive, Ms. Cleveland said. 

"Through the Center of Excellence, we can give them something productive to do and fulfill the need of giving them an activity that would be worthwhile for the community," Dr. Jacobsen said. "We can get people on base to mentor these students." 

The Center of Excellence will also provide rooms for classes for some of the college schools on base. 

The college classes can be expanded and the center is looking on offering some college classes that will benefit high school students, Dr. Jacobsen said. This gives them credit not only for their high school programs but also college or preparatory classes. 

"We don't have sufficient facilities for the college programs offered at night," Dr. Jacobsen said. "We use different rooms. I think this would be very ideal for the college classes." 

The Center of Excellence is all done through private donations and volunteers, Ms. Cleveland said. 

"There will be no Air Force funds used in the programs," she said. "We will look for organizations and non-profit agencies to provide us with donations." 

Even at an early stage, various organizations have already rendered their services to adopt a room for maintenance, Ms. Cleveland said. 

"A lot of folks really want to be involved in it because it is beneficial for everyone," Dr. Jacobsen said. 

By adopting a room, organizations can come speak as mentors to the students, Ms. Cleveland said. They can also do career mentoring, take students to their workplace and show them what they do. 

Additional plans also include having volunteers to teach or tutor students, a gifted and talented program, an information repository for how to apply for jobs on base and the different volunteer and shadowing programs. 

"We are going to have certified mentors and tutors so parents and students can rest assured they are getting quality mentoring and tutoring," Ms. Cleveland said. 

Dr. Jacobsen said they are hoping to have the center up and running shortly before the school sessions start in the fall. 

Parents working on base, who want to maximize their children's learning opportunities, can enroll their children at the on-base schools and have them go to the Center of Excellence as well, Ms. Cleveland said.

"You can take your children (to school) either where you reside or where you work," she said. "The Muroc district just needs to make sure there is enough room to accommodate the student."