With the job market growing increasingly tight, local libraries are offering free classes for the General Equivalency Diploma Test.
The Pima County Public Library has offered a preparation and tutoring program for the GED Test since fall 2007. The program started at a couple locations but has expanded recently.
Its continuation has allowed more people to use the program, some with the hope of being better able to compete in the job market.
Fred Walker, 41, attends a GED Test class at the Sam Lena-South Tucson Branch Library. He says that similar classes at Pima Community College have long waiting lists and the library's classes were his only option.
Though Walker has been able to find work without a high school diploma, he says it has become increasingly difficult over the last decade. Most employers want to see a GED at the minimum.
People like Walker are the key to improving the nation's current economic situation, said Jose Colchado, GED Test instructor at the Valencia Branch Library.
"With all the budgetary problems this state has, we need to create taxpayers, not tax users, to pull ourselves out," Colchado said.
Maria Acevedo, an instructor at Sam Lena, has been teaching GED Test preparation since 1974. She said she believes that South Tucson can greatly benefit from adult education.
"I was excited when I was assigned here a couple years ago, because this area, more than others, has a clearer need for improving education," Acevedo said.
According to an article written by Roy Flores, PCC chancellor, 18 percent of Arizona diplomas awarded between 2008 and 2009 were GEDs. He also said that the Alliance for Excellent Education reported an estimated 3,300 students dropped out of high school in the Tucson metropolitan area in 2008 alone.
Some of these former students now look to the library's program to catch up on the education they missed.
Chris Celix, 20, dropped out of school in eighth grade. He now attends Acevedo's class.
"I just want to do it for myself, because I knew I could have done it the first time," Celix said.
The success of the program has left Dawn Gardner, a program administrator, encouraged.
Gardner, a librarian with the Pima County Public Library, said that a survey given to the exiting students in fall 2009 showed that 98 percent felt more prepared for the GED examination.
