Unique ‘Deal’ at Inner-City School : All-Expense-Paid Education if Pupils Live Up to Contract

Ewing Marion Kauffman, 71, co-owner of the Kansas City Royals baseball team, was waving his arms, gesturing enthusiastically as he responded to a barrage of questions in the inner-city school auditorium.

Being discussed was a “deal” Kauffman has struck with 240 Westport Middle School eighth-graders and their parents--an arrangement that will provide each of the school’s eighth-graders with a four-year scholarship to the college, university, trade or vocational school of his or her choice, including tuition, books, fees, room and board.

“What’s the catch?” shouted a parent.

“Your child must graduate from high school. That’s the catch,” replied Kauffman, founder and chairman of Marion Laboratories, a Kansas City-based pharmaceuticals firm.

Students participating in the program, called Project Choice, were required to sign a contract promising they will complete high school in four years with passing grades, regular attendance and no serious disciplinary problems, abstain from drugs and alcohol and avoid parenthood.

Parents Signed Contract

Their parents also signed the contract, agreeing to meet regularly with teachers and counselors and participate in school activities.

Kauffman’s announcement came as a complete surprise to the eighth-graders who heard about Project Choice at an assembly in April, said Debra Nelson, 39, assistant principal. She said Kauffman detailed the program, funded by a foundation that bears his name, explaining that each student would receive from $30,000 to $60,000 in scholarship money.

The following night parents and students met in the same auditorium for a question-and-answer session and an enrollment ceremony.

Interviewed at Marion Laboratories, the company he founded in 1950 in the basement of his home, Kauffman explained his reasons for funding the program.

“We have racial discrimination now. We have economic discrimination now,” he said. “The answer to social and economic injustice is education.”

His company, with 3,265 employees and sales totaling $597 million last year, develops, manufactures and markets prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. Marion Laboratories also has “unusual feelings of corporate social responsibility,” its chairman said.

“We looked at all of the schools in Kansas City and selected the Westport eighth-graders because they go on to Westport High School across the street, a midtown school where the dropout rate is 30%, a school of disadvantaged youth with serious drug, attendance, alcohol and pregnancy problems,” according to Kauffman, who graduated from the school in 1934.

But the fact that he attended Westport High had little to do with the decision to institute Project Choice at Westport Middle School, Kauffman said. Rather, the program was looking for a school that desperately needed help and that was ethnically diverse. (Westport is 60% black, 20% Latino, 14% white, 6% Asian.)

In his meeting with students and parents, Kauffman explained that each day, students will be tutored by remedial teachers paid for by the foundation. “We want to improve their grades, to make sure they do well in math and English and other subjects. The smart ones will have special instructors to make them even smarter.”

Random Drug Testing

When he noted that the contract grants permission to test students randomly for alcohol and drugs, parents responded with a rousing round of applause. “If the student tests positive, he or she will be placed on probation. If the test comes up positive a second time, that person is out of the program,” he continued.

Thomas J. Rhone, 56, is director of Project Choice. He was principal of Kansas City’s Wyandotte High School for 12 years before joining Marion Laboratories in 1984 in the professional recruiting department. His wife, Marjorie, is an English teacher and his daughter, Susan, teaches kindergarten.

“The binding agreement the kids and their parents or guardian sign was drawn up by a battery of attorneys and written so the eighth-graders can understand it and their parents can understand it as well,” Rhone said.

School records and test scores are monitored by Project Choice. “This is to protect our investment,” he said. “We want them to be successful. There are other scholarship programs for the underprivileged but, to our knowledge, this is the only one that requires the students to abstain from drugs, alcohol and pregnancy and insists on parental participation.

“If qualified, these young people can go to any school in the country--to Stanford or Harvard or wherever they choose. If they want to be a doctor, fine, we will pay their way beyond four years of college, right up to getting a medical degree,” Rhone continued. “If they want to be computer programmers, aviation mechanics, manicurists, policemen, whatever--we will make sure they get the best education possible if they carry out their commitments. We want to attack all the reasons why young people are not successful in education.”

Westport High School was established in 1852. The present building, a four-story brick structure at 315 East 39th St., was built in 1908. By 1929 Westport High boasted more Rhodes Scholars than any other high school in America.

Today the student norm is drug and alcohol use, pregnancy and failing grades, and nearly one-third of the students drop out, said Kauffman.

Karen Swift, 48, principal for the past six years, expects Project Choice “to turn this place around, to eliminate the high dropout rate with incoming freshman, to cut down on drugs and to get parents involved.” (Currently there is no PTA or similar group at the school.)

“Everyone will be on an equal footing as a freshman. Everyone will be helping each other to make the program succeed,” said Swift. “A lot of parents were struck with disbelief (about the program). Some could not quite comprehend it.”

When Gayle Ledgerwood, a Westport Middle School English teacher, heard Kauffman detail Project Choice at the school assembly, she cried.

When one of her eighth-grade students asked if she was ill, Ledgerwood, 48, replied: “No, honey, just happy.”

“I’m overwhelmed,” she said later. “I love my kids. I know it’s going to make an enormous difference in their lives. It has already in their attitudes.”

Said speech and drama teacher LouElla Tyrus, 36: “Our students are from the type of environment where they are pressured by their peers. We cannot teach them on the street. They have to be in school. There are so many students who have high hopes and great ambitions, but they don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. This provides that light.”

What do Westport’s students think about Project Choice?

Already, said Deshanna Crowbarker, her classmates are changing their ways and getting passing grades.

“My mama says it gives me the opportunity she didn’t have when she was coming up,” noted Sonia Parlor, who wants to be a cosmetologist.

Henry Simpson, thinking about a career in the computer industry, said: “I have something to look forward to for the first time in my life.”

Added Romel Wilson: “We’re going to make it work, just you wait and see.”