By Lisa Anderson, Staff Reporter
State and city budget cutbacks appear to doom plans for a new community college in East Harlem that could draw students away from Hostos Community College.
The absence of capital funding to build the new school, which would share space with a language immersion center, would remove a potential challenge to Hostos' position as a central component of higher education for the city's Latin community.
The City University of New York, of which Hostos is a part, had envisioned the new college as part of a package for the East Harlem empowerment zone, one of the areas slated to receive federal and matching city aid for improvements. Vice Chancellor Richard Freeland had proposed the education programs as part of an Educational Outreach Center last October. But Gov. George Pataki's state budget does not include the $1.5 million needed to renovate a federally owned factory building that was to house the facility.
The City University has not applied for empowerment zone funding for the school, said Rita Rodin, a university spokeswoman.
With state budget cuts also hitting the city system's 21 colleges, even if the building on 118th Street near the Harlem River were renovated, staffing it would be another matter.
"Given the current budget, whether any of this will materialize is questionable," said Carl Polowczyk, dean of academic affairs at Bronx Community College, which is also a part of CUNY. "They are asking us to reduce enrollment. A new college right now is dubious. There is so much up in the air right now it is difficult to make any plans."
The new community college was intended to head off overcrowding that officials believe is coming because of growing public school enrollment and increasing immigration, Rodin said.
Officials also cited increased immigration as a primary reason for including a noncollege-credit language immersion center at the East Harlem school.
"By the year 2000, 50 percent of freshmen are going to be foreign-born," Rodin said. "We see a need for ways to help students learn English faster." Since a majority of immigrant students speak Spanish, Hostos -- the only bilingual community college in the city college system -- has been a key institution.
Community colleges, which offer two-year degrees, are a route chosen by many immigrants who then go on to four-year colleges.
"This is a way for students who might not otherwise qualify," said Rodin. "If they need remedial work, English as a second language, credits in certain areas, they can go to community colleges."
According to Hostos officials, 80 percent of the 5,270 students at Hostos are female and single, divorced or separated. Almost 70 percent have children. Ninety-five percent have incomes below the poverty level and 51 percent receive public assistance.
"They are students who dream that this is not accessible to them," said Diana Diaz, a professor of English at Hostos, as she recalled a recent student who is now in the accounting department at Xerox.
"We make a fundamental difference in our student's life," said Diaz. "Not all of them graduate, but many got what they came for, and that's important. We have a phenomenal impact on the lives of the people who have come to us. We have been a force for empowering and educating."
Meanwhile, City University officials have not decided the fate of the East Harlem school.
"We are just taking it one step at a time," Rodin said.