June 23 2005 - The Daily Record
37 students from 19 towns graduate from Jobs Plus
NewBridge Services help students earn GEDs and find jobs
By Rob Seman, Daily Record
BOONTON -- Frank D'Urso watched with pride as his son, Benjamin, 17, in cap and gown, received his high school diploma on Wednesday evening.
The elder D'Urso also remembered what it took to get to this big moment.
Benjamin had gone back and forth between a Christian high school and Boonton High School, failing because of truancy and a lack of motivation.
"I literally had to pull this kid out of bed to go to school every day," D'Urso said of his son.
That changed when Benjamin D'Urso stopped going to school and instead began attending the NewBridge Services 70001 Jobs Plus Program, which helps students who dropped out of or had other difficulties with high schools to earn a state-issued high school diploma.
"It was easier for me to pay attention because there weren't as many distractions as there are in high school," Benjamin D'Urso said.
At a ceremony at the Boonton Elks Lodge, this year's class of 37 students from 19 towns in Morris County graduated from the program on Wednesday night, including D'Urso.
Benjamin D'Urso's classmates had similar stories. Some of them said there is an inaccurate perception that those who seek their GED's are not intelligent. Adam Willard, 19, who dropped out of Randolph High School last year, said there are other reasons.
"When I went to class, I did well, I did my work," Willard said. "But I'm not a morning person. I was just truant all the time."
"We as people have to come to grips with the fact that failure doesn't determine our life and destiny," Willard, who was the class speaker, said to his peers. "We do."
The program tailors the equivalency test preparation to each student's needs and pace. The program also helps the students find jobs and college and monitors their progress for a year after graduation.
"I would like to go to a college graduation for one of them," said Joan Ratliff, the program's GED coordinator.
Kristelle Marshall, 17, of Morristown, said, "I had an attitude. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be anywhere."
But Marshall said she didn't want to graduate late. She had moved from Morristown in the 9th grade to East Orange, but moved back in her senior year, losing high school credits in the process.
By attending Newbridge, Marshall earned those credits back. She'll be attending Atlanta Metropolitan College in Georgia and then plans to transfer to Clark Atlanta University.
"I want to be a pediatrician one day," Marshall said.
Marshall's story somewhat resembles that of the keynote speaker of the event, Lisa Hackley, assistant treasurer and branch manager of North Fork Bank in Boonton.
Hackley told the audience that she grew up in suburban southern New Jersey where she played field hockey and was hoping to parlay her love of music into a stage career.
Then her brother died in a car accident, and her family moved to Philadelphia. The lack of sports and music programs in the neighborhood school she began attending left Hackley feeling directionless.
Hackley said she was inspired by two words in her high school valedictorian's speech, "strength and perseverance."
"I knew I had to build strength to get my life together," Hackley said.
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