MY TURN By Kathryn Yuen

Save the Governor’s Schools of Excellence I am and will always be a “govie.” What is a govie, you ask? It is your son’s first grade teacher. It is the architect who designed your house. It is the researcher who helped develop your antibiotics. It is your best friend, it may even be you. For those readers who are not familiar with the Governor’s Schools of Excellence (PGSE), the top juniors and seniors from high schools around the state are selected to attend class, tuition free, for five weeks. Areas of study include: the school of Arts, Sciences, Global Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Information Society and Technology, International Studies, Teaching, and Agricultural Sciences. Graduates are govies. Governor Rendell has recently announced that due to budget cuts, these eight schools of excellence may have to be terminated. A decision could come any day. Each of these schools produces a myriad more of better educated more mature and learned people than any other program in the country. Although the entire country is in a stressful economic crisis, without the opportunity of Governor’s school, so many students like me would not have the opportunities we have now. I attended the School for the Arts (PGSA) this summer which opened the door for me into almost any art school I wanted to attend. Also, for many schools in-state, being a PGSE alumnus offers scholarships unavailable to other students. I ask, no, I beg of you to help support the cause to keep these Governor’s schools. The opportunity given to me has changed my life, and to take that away from anyone in the future is unfair. With the nightly performances by the music students, recitals by the dance students, acts by the theater students and the professional performances I was privy to, I learned with my peers how to be a polite audience member and learned how to respect all the performing arts for their true show of talent. In the ceramics studio where I spent most of my free time, I grew as a person while challenging myself to create bigger and better things on the pottery wheel. I made lifelong friends in Erie this summer, all of whom I keep in contact with. The artists and teachers who taught all of my fellow govies this summer became mentors and friends who know what it takes to remain artists in this critical world. I saw with my own eyes as 200 kids from all over the state grew together and became a more mature group of people. These are the people that will advocate the arts in our future that will keep them alive for the generations to come. I know as well that in the other Governor’s Schools, a very similar bond was made between the students and that all of those students feel the same way about their own Governor’s School. PGSA became my family. Everyone was greeted with smile and left with many hugs and promises of further contact. The relationships that were created are the threads that will grow to create amazing connections in the future. As an active citizen of Pennsylvania, I am so disheartened to hear that the Governor now wants to end the program. When parents, grandparents, friends and family greet the student that has just spent their summer learning from this amazing and eye opening program, they just know that the program has changed their loved one for the better. Almost every alumnus from any Governor’s school feels very similarly but our voices may not be enough. We need your help, and so do all of the potential artists, dancers, doctors, teachers, biologists, photographers, writers, computer scientists, global entrepreneurs and anyone else who could have the opportunity to attend PGSE in the future. We need you to show Governor Rendell how important these programs are. It may cost a lot but I think those extra dollars going towards hundred’s of children’s well being each year are worth it. Every PGSE is a life changing experience and the lives of the kids who come out of there are worth more than saving money. Kathryn Yuen is a student at Delaware Valley High School.