Schools

Library To Offer Adult Ed After School Axes Program

The library is also adding additional evening hours during the summer.

With Westhampton Beach School District board members voting Monday night to from their budget to make ends meet, the said that it intends to step up and offer more to adults.

"We want to do our part," said , director of the library.

Zubiller, says the library is looking into duplicating some of the programs offered by the school district, but in the meantime, she said residents can take advantage of the many programs the library already offers, including an online adult education program that has over 500 classes.

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The online program, said Zubiller, offers 24/7 real instruction in classes ranging from accounting, to office skills, to photography to parenting and performing arts.

The library also, said Zubiller, is offering additional evening Pilates and yoga sessions, as well as dessert and discussion programs during the week.

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As always, she said, the library has computer classes and numerous other clubs, classes and free passes to museums, including the Intrepid, the Natural History Museum and art museums.

The library is also going to be open later hours, said Zubblier.

Starting May 1, the library will be open till 10 p.m. during the week, till 7 p.m. on Saturdays and 5 p.m. on Sunday.

, superintendent of Westhampton Beach Schools, said, the school district is "fortunate that the Westhampton Library has extensive adult education offerings available to our community to fill the void."

He said it was a difficult decision to cut adult education from the district's budget, however, he said, "Ultimately, although the program has provided a value-added service to the community for many years, we determined that it was somewhat removed from the core mission of a public school district."

He said, "The current fiscal environment has forced us to make programmatic cuts and before we eliminate programs that service our students directly, we felt it was necessary to eliminate the adult education program."

According to Radday, the adult education program, which offers about 50 classes per semester, ran the district $41,754 for 2011/12.  Some 285 adults register for programs each semester with 30 percent of them being non-residents.

 


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