REMARKS
Council Member Ayala shares her personal experience with education programs
0:16:36
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99 sec
Council Member Diana I. Ayala shares her personal experience with education programs as a young single parent.
She describes how she was encouraged to get her GED and enroll in Bronx Community College, where she benefited from a program similar to the current CUNY Education Development Program.
- Ayala emphasizes the importance of programs that provide support and 'hand holding' for young parents on public assistance
- She expresses excitement about how the program has advanced over the years
- Ayala positions herself as a success story of such educational support programs
Diana I. Ayala
0:16:36
Thank you for your testimony.
0:16:40
It's actually one of my favorite hearings because it touches on something that is really important to me when I was a younger parent of 2, I had dropped out of school, and I hadn't finished high school, and a friend of mine had gone to Bronx Community College.
0:17:02
And she made it sound so interesting that I was like, you know, maybe I wanna go back to school.
0:17:07
And so it encouraged me to go and get my my GED.
0:17:10
And so I went at my school to Bronx Community College, and it was there that I met what was, I guess, the that iteration of the CUNY Education Development Program.
0:17:20
And they made the offer for parents that were single parents primarily on public assistance that would like to further their education to come and meet with them.
0:17:32
And I I took them up on that opportunity, and I'm sitting here before you as as as a success story rate of that program.
0:17:40
And I have always advocated for that level of of programming to exist specifically for, you know, young women like myself, right, who found found myself in a position where I needed kind of that that hand holding that the program provided.
0:17:59
So I'm excited to hear about, you know, how is advanced in all of these years.
0:18:05
My my five year old is now thirty four, so you've had quite a number of years to perfect it.
0:18:11
So I'm hoping that we've made some advances since then.
