SOUTH BAY / COVER STORY : Bridging the Gap : With school districts increasingly strapped for money, individuals and companies are giving time and materials. In many cases, fund raising has become a necessity.

Once, in days that veteran educators remember well, South Bay school districts could not only pay to educate their stu dents, but they could send them on field trips, put on school plays and teach music.

“I remember when I went to Inglewood as a teacher in 1957, we had after-school programs four days a week, school plays, field trips and fine arts programs,” said Kenneth L. Moffett, now superintendent of the Lennox school district. “And the district paid for it.”

Today, districts--from the poorest South Bay areas to the most affluent--rely on outside sources to give students opportunities that cannot be funded by a 1990s school budget.

Many districts are working to bridge the gap, but much of the private giving to schools is not in the form of a check. It comes in volunteered time and goods. On any given day, including Saturdays and Sundays, volunteers throughout the South Bay are on school campuses cleaning rooms, tutoring, coaching students or installing equipment.

Without legions of volunteers, corporate gifts and community service groups, students would not have computer labs or athletic equipment, academic tutoring or flourishing fine arts programs. And some of the schools would be without equipment as basic as copy machines.

Which means that superintendents, principals, teachers and librarians are on the hustle, getting money, materials and volunteers from whatever sources seem most likely. Virtually all school districts in the South Bay solicit and receive contributions from the area’s major aerospace, automobile, computer and oil companies. Some of the districts have established education foundations that seek corporate money, plan major fund-raising events and help in a variety of other ways.

For example, an education foundation has adopted a Carson school and works with students, parents and teachers to find items and services--often from corporate sources--that the school needs.

In some wealthier communities, parents have joined to start nonprofit education foundations that have raised millions of dollars over the years. The money provides everything from computers to full-time writing tutors.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District has such a foundation, and Redondo Beach has its School Teams for Educational Partnerships, or STEP program, in which citizens and civic and business leaders support schools by sponsoring programs, tutors, clubs and materials for the schools.

The most popular business education course at the La Tijera School in Inglewood, meanwhile, is run by former employees of Mattel, the El Segundo toy company famous for its Barbie dolls.

Once a month, members of the Mattel Alumni Assn. teach a two-hour class on what skills students will need to be successful in business. Classes are heavy on visuals, props and, of course, toys.

In the Mattel Alumni Life Skills program, lessons focus on such topics as promotion, profit, personnel and even packaging. Students in the program sign a contract effectively making them part of a company, and deadlines for projects are rigorously enforced. Eighth-graders who have gone through the first part of the program incorporate and produce a product they must design, package, market and sell.

Recently, alumni Fred Held, Derek Gable and Lou Silberman asked Aki Umemoto, a producer of commercials for Mattel, to tell the class about his job. And if a 13-year-old had to describe the ideal job, it might sound a lot like what Umemoto, 39, does for a living.

“See, I always loved cartoons, and I loved comic books and films--like ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ” Umemoto said to a class of seventh-graders. “So I wanted a job where I could combine all of that.”

Umemoto gave the students storyboards for a commercial he put together for Top Speed (the fastest Hot Wheels ever), and turned on a television.

“And it Jumps! . . . at Top Speed! Pow!” Umemoto yells as the cars whiz by on the screen. The students lean forward, entranced by the almost supernatural fun the youngsters in the commercial are having with the cars.

After the class, Held, Gable and Silberman are delighted with the rapport between Umemoto and the students. The day’s lesson was not only about effective advertising and commercials.

“See, we also want them to know that they can have fun working,” said Gable, who worked on teams that invented toys before leaving Mattel to start his own invention business.

If the Life Skills course is a business class like no other, it’s also one that most districts could not afford. If it had to pay for the program, between the hours of labor and materials needed for the class, the Inglewood Unified School District would be out about $60,000 a year, Silberman said.

The effects of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limited property taxes, and Southern California’s recent recession have combined to limit the amount of money the state passes along to schools. California ranks 47th in the nation in spending per student.

A project at Curtiss Middle School in Carson illustrates the breadth of need at many schools and the level of community and corporate response.

Volunteers from Educare Foundation, a national nonprofit foundation based in Calabasas, went to Curtiss and asked students and teachers what they needed most. The list is long, but in addition to supplying the office with some machinery, providing workshops for students and teachers, Educare heeded the request to help the students fix up their bathrooms. With funding from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, Target Stores and Shell Oil, the foundation supplied paint, tools and instructions, and recruited students to do the work.

By 8:30 on two recent Saturday mornings, volunteers were at the school, teaching students how to paint the walls and install doors in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms.

That same Saturday, the Palos Verdes Links, a social and service club of 28 women who act as mentors, were meeting with 30 Curtis eighth-graders they will work with next year. The Links spent about $20,000 in the 1993-94 school year, taking 25 students on trips to San Francisco and Sacramento, where they saw the Assembly in session.

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The program, called Links Implementing the Fulfillment of Education, provides math tutors, brings in guest speakers, and takes the students on college and career explorations to UCLA, USC and Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

The Links members gave each student a $25 U.S. Savings Bond and plan to give them a $50 bond this year.

The volunteer efforts of Educare and the Links have been essential to offering opportunities to Curtiss students that they otherwise would not have, Principal William Elkins said.

“It has been very positive, very positive working with Educare,” Elkins said. “And the Links--they’re doing this because they care. There’s no other reason.”

Occasionally schools such as Curtiss and La Tijera hit the jackpot, and volunteers with time, expertise and money appear out of the blue. But it is more common for schools to seek out help.

Virtually every school district in the South Bay relies on corporate giving. The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District raised $678,939 this year and $703,227 in 1993. The El Segundo Unified and Hermosa Beach Unified districts have foundations devoted to raising money. Chevron, Allied Signal, Rockwell and Hughes are major contributors to the foundations.

Redondo Beach Unified School District receives help from the Advanced Technology Consortium, GTE and Southern California Edison. Northrop has given more than $25,000 to Hawthorne High School in the last year and also donated a Ford 12-passenger propane-powered van. TRW donated 40 computers for computer art classes to Centinela Valley schools, and Xerox gave $5,000 in copying supplies.

Schools sometimes receive unsolicited help and gifts, but more often, teachers, parents, administrators and staff are on the lookout for funds and materials.

At San Pedro High School, Sharon Ogomori, the school librarian, sent out more than 2,000 letters to companies and organizations asking them to donate their used computer equipment. Her campaign resulted in the donation of 19 computers. Impressed by her efforts, the Detwiler Foundation, based in La Jolla, matched the donations through its Computers for Schools program, giving the school another 19 computers.

The Detwiler Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to provide solutions to California’s technology gap, also provides computers to 18 other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Contributors to Detwiler’s program include Pacific Bell, GTE, IBM, CompUSA and Bank of America.

“San Pedro High School is an excellent example of the grass-roots initiatives that are sprouting up all over the state by schools participating in the Matching Challenge,” said Diana Detwiler, the executive director of Computers for Schools.

Ogomori’s experience shows that soliciting help is a major part of many district administrators’ jobs.

“I got into education because I love kids, but basically I’ve become the chief executive of a nonprofit organization,” said Moffett, the Lennox superintendent.

Lennox has sought partnerships with the UCLA School of Medicine, Hughes and many other companies, agencies and schools, Moffett said. The total amount contributed to the district adds up to 18% to 20% of the district’s $24-million budget.

Moffett, who was named national superintendent of the year by the National Assn. of School Superintendents, said the emphasis on fund raising means that the definition of a good superintendent has changed. A superintendent does not just have a good relationship with the staff, supervise the curriculum and get parents involved. A good superintendent, much like a good university president, goes out and gets money for the district.

One of the most skilled, Moffett said, is Inglewood Supt. McKinley Nash.

“Mac is really good at that. He’ll bring it in through a lot of corporations. You just watch Inglewood.”

Nash has only been at the helm in Inglewood since July, but long before his arrival, Inglewood schools had partnerships with organizations, companies and other private donors.

After the results of the Los Angeles County Academic Decathlon were announced earlier this month, students and administrators at Morningside High School in Inglewood were aglow because of the team’s performance.

The school didn’t win, or even place in the top 20. But with seven weeks of preparation--compared to the eight months or so that more affluent schools spend shaping a team--the school added almost 4,000 points to last year’s score and won the title of most-improved school in the county.

Also, Principal Liza Daniels’ daughter, Portia, and Yeni Menendez both won bronze medals in the Super Quiz portion of the decathlon.

With a little more time, a little more money and a chance to prepare as much as wealthier districts do, Morningside could be a winner in the future, officials said. “The only difference is money,” Daniels said.

And money did help make the difference. Members of the Morningside team studied the 10 requisite subjects for the decathlon every morning before school, but about $11,000 in donated gifts and services provided weekend seminars and excursions to bolster their learning.

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William Cathers, a consultant with the U.S. Decathlon, based in Cerritos, contacted Morningside and asked if it would participate in the weekend sessions with five other urban schools: Inglewood, Manual Arts, Jefferson, Locke and Lynwood high schools.

Within weeks of developing the six-school project, Cathers had contacted dozens of sources for private money and received a grant from Motorola Corp. and support from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Carl’s Jr., Trader Joe’s, Little Caesar’s and Mrs. Gooch’s, all of which added up to about $11,000, he said.

Cathers arranged to take the students to the Los Angeles Philharmonic so they could hear the piece the decathlon required them to know, the suite from Igor Stravinsky’s ballet “The Firebird.”

“See, our kids don’t have the chance to go and hear this music the way kids in wealthy school districts do,” Daniels said.

Daniels does not have the staff to write grants, but through contacts she has gotten more than $200,000 for her school in the last three years in gifts and grants. A Century City law firm donated furniture. A golf club provided equipment for the high school team. A Hollywood screenwriter with several hit movies donated $10,000 last year, and because he was impressed with the school and with Daniels, sent another $10,000 last week. He also offered to purchase desperately needed computers for the school.

“My wife and I wanted to do something and we called RLA (formerly Rebuild L.A.) after the riots, which put us in touch with Morningside” said the writer, who asked not to be identified.

Such referrals are not generally made to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District. Located in a community that is wealthy in comparison to most others, the district is last on the list when it comes time to hand-out grants.

But although the district’s grant applications are routinely ignored, the Peninsula Education Foundation’s requests are not given such short shrift.

The foundation was formed in 1980 to help fill the monetary gap created by Proposition 13, declining enrollment and falling state aid. Since then, it has raised $4 million for the district’s eight elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school.

“In our district this kind of fund raising is absolutely necessary because the perception that we’re in an affluent area means that all we get is the basic funding from the state,” said Foundation Trustee Mary Jo Mock. “We don’t get all the grants that other school districts can get.”

The peninsula foundation makes up for it, however, by getting about five times the amount it spends to raise money. In 1994, the foundation spent $134,448 to raise $678,939.

With the money, the foundation has paid for classroom aides in every elementary school, aides for each school library, computer education specialists, writing advisers and other benefits that keep the district one of the best in the state. Also, 15% of every dollar is invested in an endowment fund that now has more than $658,000.

Education foundations make sense for middle-income or affluent communities, many educators say, but some doubt that auctions and dinner dances would be as successful in poorer districts.

In district’s such as Lennox, where 89% of the students qualify for free- or reduced-priced breakfast and lunch, forming a foundation is not even a consideration, Moffett said.

“We just don’t have the population that can support that,” he said. “Our parents are people who work very hard, but they’re already on a starvation diet. They’re trying to feed their families. In wealthier districts, parents can give $400, for example. Well, my gosh, $400 would feed some of our families for a month.”

But that doesn’t mean that the school district goes without. Through its corporate partnerships, Lennox also has computer laboratories, classroom and library aides, and many of the assets the foundation provides for peninsula schools.

“We have to do things differently, but we can still do it,” Moffett said. “For example, right now I need a four-day-a-week recreation program for our kids--they have nothing here in this community and if the school doesn’t provide it they won’t have it.

“So it may take me a little while to find the exact way to get it, but I will. It’s out there somewhere.”