Program helps immigrants earn their GEDs

Many immigrants who come to the Lowcountry have to make the tough choice to leave school early in their home countries in favor of work in America. Others come from rural areas where formal education wasn't offered.

But in a sign of the deepening roots of the area's fast-growing Hispanic population, more and more people are signing up for classes offered through the Beaufort County School District to earn a general equivalency degree or GED.

With the degrees, immigrant workers who might have started at manual labor jobs in landscaping or construction can attend technical schools or get better jobs, all keys to improving their lives and their connection to the community, organizers say.

Tonight, a graduation ceremony will be held in Oscar J. Frazier Park in Bluffton for the first 15 students who've completed the program over the past two years.

The ceremony will signify a key step in overcoming an educational gap that researchers say threatens to permanently relegate Hispanic immigrants to a lower class in society.

"Many people ... when they relocate to the United States, they had to interrupt their formal education in high school to go to work," said Luis Bell, executive director of the Hilton Head Island-based Latin American Council of South Carolina, which is partnering with the school district on the program. "So this is an opportunity for them to finish that stuff and to have the high school preparation. For them, (it's) ... a key to open the door for a career in the future."

A 2002 study by the Pew Hispanic Center shows that while education levels of Hispanic immigrants have risen over the past 30 years, the group still lags far behind others, making them more likely to live in poverty. The study showed that in 2000, about 60 percent of adult Hispanic immigrants had completed high school or college, compared with about 90 percent for other adults.

"Poorly educated immigrants face daunting job prospects in an epoch when college-educated workers continue to earn higher wages, while the earnings of workers with less than high school education fall behind," the study states. "Even if Latino immigrants are able to catch up with equally educated natives, the poor education of many provides them few opportunities to earn a good living."

The classes, held twice a week in Bluffton and on Hilton Head, are taught in Spanish, but are held in conjunction with English classes offered by the Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry. The school district is hoping to expand it to offer the GED programs in English instead of Spanish to make sure students are truly proficient in the language, said Maxine Stevenson, director of adult education for the district.

The adult education department already offers programs for high school diplomas and GEDs, but about two years ago started looking at creating programs specifically for Hispanic residents, Stevenson said. The district received a grant for the first year from the state education department's lifelong learning division and kept funding it after that, she said.The district does not ask students' residency status.

"We figured that if we educated them a little better, they would be better workers, better able to take care of their families, able to survive," she said. A household with educated parents also means children will have a better chance of getting a good education, she said.