Cleveland High Tries Partnership Plan

While the Parent Teacher Student Assn. at Cleveland High School in Reseda has managed for several years to raise money by selling refreshments at high school football games, some of its members have decided they have to get beyond hotdogs and sodas.

Now, they’re trying to go corporate.

Borrowing from his experience as a computer system engineer for the Department of Water and Power and teaming up with Cleveland’s new principal, Eileen Banta, PTSA President Jai Rao has started a campaign to set up corporate partnerships with the high school.

Other schools have tried to do the same, often with successful results. Mark Keppel Elementary School in Glendale has set up for itself a foundation to receive grants. Brian Ellis, the chairman of Make Keppel Special, recently managed to gather $40,000 to build a playground for the school.

A letter Rao drafted and sent out to local corporations asks for $1,100 to be donated to the school for the purchase of an IBM-compatible computer. Cleveland has two new occupational teachers who are trained in teaching computer classes. But with only two PCs and a handful of outdated Apple IIs, the school could use some newer computers, Rao said.

In return, Rao wrote: “The (high school) will provide, as pay-back to the corporate partners, a number of its graduates with good English language and math abilities, proficient in the use of the PC . . .”