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Garden Quarter center appeals for funding After-school program in danger of losing backing from McHenry County Mental Health Board By JEFF ENGELHARDT jengelhardt@shawmedia.com McHENRY – An after-school program and mentor center for children in low-income families is in danger of losing funding from the McHenry County Mental Health Board. Garden Quarter Neighborhood Resource Center, a McHenry-based after-school re-
source center serving about 50 children, did not secure roughly $50,000 in requested funding from the Mental Health Board after failing to show how they assist the board’s mission, board President Connee Meschini said. But, Meschini said Garden Quarter will have a chance to show how it works toward the “prevention and treatment of
“The board believes it is a wonderful program, but it has to tie into our mission. [We’ve] been very vigilant in our allocations.” Connee Meschini, McHenry County Mental Health Board president mental illness, developmental disabilities and substance abuse” during an appeal hear-
ing Nov. 18. “The board believes it is a wonderful program, but it has
to tie into our mission,” Meschini said, noting the appeal could show that connection. “[We’ve] been very vigilant in our allocations.” Licia Sahagun, executive director of the resource center, said the Mental Health Board has funded the program the past four years and the funding accounts for about 50 percent of the total revenue. While
she did not want to address the appeal process as it still is ongoing, she said services have continued to grow as nearly 50 students – nearly all of which are in the under-served Latino population – attend the after-school program and a teen mentor program has started for girls.
See FUNDING, page A6
Longtime U.S. Rep. Phil Crane dies at 84
VALUE OF REMEDIAL CLASSES
Anti-tax crusader served in parts of McHenry County The ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photos by Kyle Grillot – kgrillot@shawmedia.com
Math instructor Corey Helm goes over factoring problems with students in a developmental math class Wednesday at McHenry County College. Estimates show that anywhere from a quarter to 40 percent of college students need at least some remediation in mathematics. Remediation is most prevalent at community colleges, where more than two-thirds of the students are estimated to take such a course.
Refresh for success MCC tries new programs to help developmental education students By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com CRYSTAL LAKE – The test was definitely a challenge for Mallory Wlasiuk. The McHenry West High School grad hadn’t taken a math class her senior year – most of the year was taken up by a work study program, in which she built a bright pink truck with her dad – and so the placement test at McHenry County College was something of a shock. She wasn’t that surprised by the results, though. “I’m not a math whiz,” said Wlasiuk, who hopes to take her marketing and advertising education to the Gary Lang car dealership where she has worked for the past three years. She was placed – like many other community college students – in a developmental math class, one that refreshes what she was supposed to learn in high school so that she can move into credit-earning
Jessica Capos of Huntley works with math instructor Angela Kahl inside the Sage Learning Center on Wednesday at McHenry County College. college-level courses. Nearly 70 percent of community college students nationwide take at least one remedial class, according to the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. Another 40 percent of students
at public four-year colleges need to take one of these courses. But while developmental courses are extremely common – MCC offers 44 sections of developmental math compared to 43 sections of credit-earning, college level math –
many students aren’t moving from those classes to getting a degree. Only 28 percent of community college students who take a developmental education course go on to earn a degree within eight years compared to 43 percent of students who don’t have to take these courses, according the Community College Research Center’s 2014 report. While McHenry County College doesn’t have the stats on how successful its students are, it hopes to soon, said Adriane Hutchinson who started as MCC’s dean of academic development two years ago. A few years before, a new administration charged staff with restructuring student affairs and realigning the departments that provide support services, disability services and service learning opportunities, she said. Around the same time, the college switched its database management system and issues with the conversion has
CHICAGO – Longtime Illinois U.S. Rep. Phil Crane – an anti-tax crusader and ardent advocate of limited government even before those views became a hallmark of the GOP under President Ronald Reagan – has died of lung cancer at age 84. The Chicago-born Crane died Saturday night at his daughter’s Jefferson, Maryland, home surrounded by Phil Crane, the children he 84, died of once delight- lung cancer ed in sending Saturday poems to, said Eric Elk, a congressional aide to Crane through much of the 1990s. The one-time history professor-turned politician represented Chicago’s far northwest suburbs, a district that at times included parts of McHenry County, for 35 years and was the longest-serving House Republican when he was defeated in 2004 by Democrat and then-political newcomer Melissa Bean. Crane also made an unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, losing out to the eventual winner, Ronald Reagan, who would go on to become the politician most closely associated with the modern conservative movement. But Crane had touted what he saw as the virtue of smaller government going back to the 1960s, spelling out his vision of a stripped down, lowtax federal government in his 1976 book, “The Sum of Good Government.” “Phil was conservative before it was cool to be conservative,” Elk said. After a stint in the U.S. Army in the mid-1950s, Crane earned a Ph.D. in history from Indiana University in 1963. He worked as an assistant history professor until 1967 at Bradley University, where also wrote on national politics. Crane was first elected to Congress in 1969 when a
See REFRESHER, page A6 See CRANE, page A6
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