Life Skills Center to graduate 40

YOUNGSTOWN -- Life Skills Center of Youngstown will hold its graduation ceremony at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Stambaugh Auditorium, awarding state-certified high school diplomas to about 40 area students.
The evening will feature a keynote address by Anthony Ceiphas, probation officer of the Mahoning County Juvenile Court.
The center, 3405 Market St., educates nearly 400 at-risk or dropout students. Its winter graduating class joins students from 23 Life Skills Centers nationwide who will graduate this December. And they will join the more than 4,700 students who have graduated since the first center was founded in 1999.
In addition to the Youngstown school, tuition-free Life Skills Centers are also located in Warren, Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Elyria, Middletown, Springfield and Toledo; and in Phoenix, Ariz.; Denver and Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Detroit and Pontiac, Mich. They currently serve nearly 10,000 pupils.
Akron-based White Hat Management, LLC, is Ohio's largest operator of charter schools and the fourth largest in the United States dedicated to educating K-12 pupils. Founded in 1998 by Akron, Ohio industrialist and education activist David Brennan, the company operates three types of school; Life Skills Centers; HOPE Academies, which are community-based charter public schools for pupils in kindergarten through 12th grade; and OHDELA and PDELA, which provide distance learning resources for home-schooling in Ohio and Pennsylvania.