Business Leaders Invest in 3 Rs as Schools’ Adoptive ‘Parents’

As the controller of the one of the nation’s largest plumbing equipment manufacturers, Milt Meler’s day is full of signing checks, handling personnel problems and attending “countless meetings.”

But once a week, the Price Pfister Inc. executive leaves his corporate environs in Pacoima and drives to Vaughn Street School, a nearby elementary school in a tough Pacoima barrio.

When he arrives, Meler forgets about his ledgers and focuses on tutoring the students in simple division.

Executive ‘Nearly Froze’

“When I first realized that they didn’t even understand 12 divided by 6, I nearly froze,” said Meler, one of 11 executives from Price Pfister who tutor at Vaughn. “By the end of the first hour, I had them doing problems like 72 divided by 4.”

Meler is part of a quiet revolution that is bringing the business community into public school classrooms throughout the country. The names of the programs vary from region to region. In Los Angeles, it is called Adopt-a-School. Pittsburgh’s program is called Partnerships in Education and San Francisco has Corporate Action in Public Schools. But whatever the program is called, the basic premise is the same: a commitment by the corporate community to improve academic performance through donations of money, equipment, time and personnel.

“This is a unique period in the history of U.S. education because this is the first time there has been widespread corporate interest in public education,” said Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in New York.

“In the past, business’ major involvement with education was with universities through grants for research. But this movement is entirely different. These partnership programs have the executives going into classrooms, rolling up their sleeves and working with the students on a one-on-one basis,” he added.

For example, in Pittsburgh, WQED, a Public Broadcasting Corp. station, has high school students come to its studios and work with camera and sound equipment. High school juniors and seniors in Dallas can shadow executives of major corporations for two weeks so the students can see what these businessmen do. Employees of Burbank-based Lockheed California Co. work with metal shop students at Maclay Junior High in Pacoima. At the same time, advertising executives of the Chicago branch of Ogilvy & Mather Inc. tutor students in English skills at Chicago’s Roberto Clemente High School, where 60% of the largely Latino student body comes from lower middle-class backgrounds.

Partnerships Mushroomed

Since 1980, the number of businesses working with schools has mushroomed from a handful to more than 46,000 in 1984, according to a U.S. Department of Education survey. In some cities, such as Pittsburgh, Dallas and St. Louis, nearly every school has a partnership program with a business.

Los Angeles began its Adopt-a-School program in 1979 with only one company--Atlantic Richfield Co. Today about 450 of the 818 Los Angeles city district schools have been adopted. About 90 of the 172 Valley schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District have been adopted.

The marriages between businesses and public schools take many forms. In some cities, the program encourages one business to become affiliated with one school. Once the school and the business have been paired, the two entities determine what the needs of the school are and how the business can help.

Wayne Carlson, director of the Los Angeles school district’s Adopt-a-School, said the local program has been structured in a manner to allow businesses to do almost anything that helps to improve a school’s academic and social program.

This has led IBM to donate a computer and establish a computer lab for Harding Street Elementary School in Sylmar and Mercury Savings & Loan to set up a program to help the students of Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in Laurel Canyon to learn about the banking system. It also has provided enough leeway so that East Los Angeles-based Dolores Canning Co. can pay for eye and dental care of nearby Hammel Street School students who cannot afford the medical treatment.

Nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities--many of which have been linked with public schools through service projects and student teaching programs-- have added a new twist to their traditional relationships with local schools by entering the partnership arena. Some students from the Health Careers High School in St. Louis, for instance, travel to nearby St. Louis University once a week where they work with blood-analysis machines as part of their training in medical technology.

CSU Sponsorships

California State University, Northridge, has adopted nine San Fernando Valley schools. Programs include CSUN students and faculty tutoring at Dearborn Elementary in Northridge and working with limited-English speaking students at Rinaldi Adult School in Granada Hills. In San Francisco, Women Entrepreneurs, a group that gives guidance to women establishing their own businesses, has set up a program that encourages junior and senior high school girls to become businesswomen.

Some corporations would rather work with the entire school district than work with a single school. Businesses in Paterson , N.J., through the Paterson Education Foundation, established a Mini-grants for Teachers fund that provides grants ranging from $100 to $800 for special classroom projects. For the past two years in Decatur, Ill., corporate members of that city’s Partners in Education have held a career fair where high school students can talk about employment opportunities with recruiters from large and small firms in the area.

Educators and executives point to several circumstances that led to the birth of the partnership movement. In the late 1970s, the National Chamber of Commerce encouraged its members to work with local public schools as a way to improve what the National Chamber believed was a decline in the quality of graduates from many public schools.

Report Provided Stimulus

Another stimulus was the report issued by President Reagan’s Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives, which called upon businesses to donate time and volunteers to work with community organizations in solving local problems.

Finally, many business people concede that self-interest is an important reason for their involvement. The benefits of the positive media coverage given to a company working with children is not lost on any corporate public relations executive trying to convince his company to adopt a school.

When Mercury Savings adopted Wonderland Avenue, for example, announcements of the adoption and the playground ceremony were placed on the news wire service that informs most Los Angeles media of planned news events. Indeed, most schools and businesses have become quite adept at sending press releases to the news media whenever a donation or a ceremony surrounding a partnership is about to occur.

Several firms said, however, that even more important was their belief that their involvement with public education is a way to ensure that the schools turn out students who can easily be transformed into a pool of competent workers.

“Between 1978 and 1980, we went through a hiring phase,” said Barbara Penkal, a public affairs officer for Lockheed California as she explained the impetus for the company’s involvement with the Los Angeles school district’s Adopt-a-School program. “We were shocked to discover that many candidates couldn’t fill out an employment application form. We expect to train people, but we also expect that people who come to us have basic reading, writing skills.”

Adds Rick Pacheco, executive director of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce that has been involved in that city’s partnership program since 1965: “When you look at a group of school kids, you are looking at the future. We are going to have to deal with these kids as taxpayers or employees, or as welfare recipients or, even worse, as public offenders. So if you can catch them when they are young, if you can show them successful members of the community from all walks of life, you may inspire these kids.”

Executives agree there are many unexpected benefits from their involvement with public schools. Employees who are given time off from work to tutor youngsters often return to the job invigorated and full of new pride and loyalty to their employer.

Many corporate executives admit that they had low opinions about public schools, but, after their company adopted a school, they changed their minds.

“This . . . gives us a way to have firsthand contact instead of just reading about what’s going on inside our schools,” said Bruce Schwaegler, president of Bullock’s, a Los Angeles-based division of Federated Department Stores.

The interest from businesses has also helped to improve teacher morale.

“Until a year ago teachers felt society was saying to us, ‘You educate the kids, and if they have problems, it’s your fault,’ ” said Grant Halley, a teacher at Vaughn Street School. “Since our school was adopted by Price Pfister, that siege mentality has changed. We know somebody wants to help. Now we know that the business community cares about these kids.”

Problems Despite Success

But even with all the success of partnership programs, there have been some problems, and educators--while praising the new interest and involvement by business--voice some reservations about the program.

Corporate largess often depends on a booming economy and profitability. When lean times arrive, philanthropic programs are often the first to be eliminated. For example, when the oil boom of the late 1970s went bust in 1982, Adopt-a-School programs in Tulsa and Houston were crippled. In Houston alone, nearly a quarter of the corporate participants withdrew.

After Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios hit the financial skids in 1982, it had to end its camera and film editing training program with Palms Junior High in Hollywood. Days before 20th Century Fox Film Corp. reported a $74-million operating loss for the last quarter of its 1984 fiscal year, the company backed out of an ambitious program with Emerson Junior High in West Los Angeles.

“Changes in staffing, cutbacks, people being transferred, all of these and more impact these programs,” said David Bergholz, president of the Public Education Fund, the Pittsburgh organization that oversees the area’s business-school partnership program.

Bergholz is also concerned that the praise that companies receive for their participation in these programs not exceed the actual value of the volunteer activity.

“Clearly this is a limited mechanism. It is a great way to get corporations involved, but . . . we cannot let a corporation think they are doing a big thing when they aren’t,” Bergholz said.

Carnegie Foundation President Boyer worries that businesses might try to shape the educational goals and policies of the schools that they become involved with.

“I heard of an advertising firm that adopted a high school and provided employees to help teach English and other classes,” Boyer said. “What these employees did was teach copywriting in the English classes. They taught how to develop an advertising budget and called it an ‘economics’ course. They almost created an industry-related prep school. Schools should watch out for this. Schools must maintain their integrity.”

Even with these reservations, educators are determined to encourage the growth of the partnership movement by showing companies the benefits of participation. There are now partnership newsletters circulated to potential sponsors.

When executives meet at private club lunches or corporate retreats, those who are already involved in partnerships often assume a salesman-type role when trying to convince others to become involved.

But probably the most effective tool in attracting new participants to partnership programs is the reports the volunteers make about how working with children has changed their outlook.

“I got a better sense of accomplishment from my first tutoring session than I’ve gotten for a long time,” said Price Pfister’s Meler. “It really felt great and doing just a little means so much to those kids.”