Actor Kevin Bacon: Save Pa. gifted teen program

Movie star and Philadelphia native Kevin Bacon is appealling to Gov. Rendell to retain an educational program for gifted teens that has fallen victim to the state's budget crisis.

The Governor's School for Excellence of the Arts, founded in 1973, has trained 19,000 Pennsylvania teenagers in realms as diverse as medicine and entertainment. The program cost the state $3.2 million last year.

A spokesman for Rendell has said that the program needs to be eliminated in order to fund vital human services. The spokesman sais the governor would try to reinstate it if the economy improved.

Bacon, an alumnus of the school's arts program, is pleading to keep the program up and running.

"We urge Gov. Rendell to reconsider his decision," Bacon and Hester Kamin, a 1992 graduate, write in a letter to the Inquirer published this morning. "The Governor's School of Excellence for the Arts is not a summer camp; it is an intensive training program that builds leaders, managers, and advocates for the arts, education and young people."

Bacon and Kamin said they wrote the letter on the behalf of 32 professional artists and educators from around the country.