Kiryas Joel to get training facility

Recordonline: Kiryas Joel - For two years it has sat empty: 5,000 square feet of space built with $400,000 in state money to put more Kiryas Joel citizens to work and help its businesses thrive.Village officials blame utility problems for the delayed opening. But now that everything except natural gas is hooked up, they vow to roll out all they have touted for the Kiryas Joel Workforce Development Center: computer courses, English lessons, job placement, a chamber of commerce and more.More than 20 computers once used for night classes in the basement of a Kiryas Joel nursery school have been set up in two classrooms. A phone system and thousands of dollars' worth of furniture, including desks for 100 students, are on order.And just this month, SUNY Orange President Bill Richards and two of his assistants visited the center to discuss offering SUNY courses there. Village officials say the college is providing a survey that will be sent to every household in the next few weeks to determine what courses residents want....Kiryas Joel Administrator Gedalye Szegedin said yesterday during a building tour. He hopes to begin classes after Passover, in May.The vocational needs in this Hasidic community of 18,000 are formidable. Focused much more intently on religion than careers, young people here enter adulthood virtually bereft of work skills. Men who become the main breadwinners for families will have studied only religious texts and spoken only Yiddish or Hebrew in the classroom since the age of 12.The result is Orange County's lowest median household income - just more than $15,000 when the 2000 census was taken - and heavy dependence on government assistance.