$100,000 picks operation up by its Bootstrap

LYNN – Operation Bootstrap announced Wednesday that it has received a $100,000 grant to expand its adult education programs to focus on job preparation and career skills, as well as offer GED courses in Spanish.”A third of the adults in Lynn don’t have the skills they need to compete in the new economy,” Edward Tirrell, executive director of Operation Bootstrap, said Wednesday. “Seventy percent of all jobs in the North Shore by 2017 will require some kind of post-secondary education or training, according to projections. And to participate in that training, you have to have reading, writing and math skills that traditional adult education doesn’t get you to.”Operation Bootstrap provides adult education classes for 300 to 400 adult students each year, teaching three levels of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) as well as GED preparation classes. They have a waiting list that averages 1,500 students, Tirrell said.The $100,000 grant was awarded by the Cummings Foundation as part of its 100K for 100 program, where the family foundation awards $100,000 to 100 local nonprofits. Operation Bootstrap will receive $50,000 each of the next two years.State-funded programs, of which Bootstrap is one, only provide money for an adult basic education class and three levels of ESOL classes, which are designed to get students to a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level.Tirrell said the grant money will be used to add a fourth level to ESOL classes, which will bring students up to a seventh- or eighth-grade reading level.”That’s also not adequate, but it’s a step,” Tirrell said. “If we get more money we can get more levels, but at least we’re adding an initial step.”The Level 4 classes will also focus on job and career skills. In addition to improving their reading, writing and other skills, the students will know how to use a computer for career exploration, the job search, and how to prepare for and conduct a job interview.”Two-thirds of our students work full-time, almost all of them are working for minimum wage, and it’s almost impossible to support a family on minimum wage,” Tirrell said. “So we’re committed to helping people get better skills and get better jobs.”The curriculum is being developed by the Lynn Working Group on Adult Education, which has representatives of North Shore Community College, Operation Bootstrap, the North Shore Workforce Investment Board, Salem State University and others to help align adult education opportunities with local employment needs.”I think that the work world is expecting higher and higher skills from people to be successful in it, and we need to prepare our adult students to succeed,” Mary Sarris, executive director of the Workforce Investment Board, said Wednesday. “We’re taking adult education, especially at the higher levels, and teaching it in conjunction with the employment needs of the community, for instance health care, advanced manufacturing or financial services. Therefore, they are much more ready to get a job in an industry, or more ready to go to college to build a career that way, because they understand the math, the lingo and the communication skills that are present in that industry.”Sarris said such an approach was realistic and made the lessons more applicable.”I think you should learn in context of reality and learn basic skills and how it’s applied,” Sarris. “It makes it much more interesting, and it makes more sense that way.”Bootstrap will also use the grant money to offer GED-preparation courses in Spanish, Tirrell said.”We have a lot of students who have some of the skills they need to get a GED, but they may not have the English writing skills,” Tirrell said. “We are estimating that there are a large population of people who could get their high school equivalency if it were in Spanish.”The new classes will begin in September, and Tirrell said he hoped the grant money would enable Bootstrap to attract more philanthropy to help its mission.”There’s now about $1 millio