Business, Instead of Griping, Turns to Helping Schools

Entrepreneur Kevin Pickett and attorneys Dwight Bolden and Winston McKesson are helping St. Raphael’s elementary school in South-Central Los Angeles, where all three successful men graduated in 1971.

They are not alone. Also helping St. Raphael’s is the charitable foundation of A.C. Green of the Lakers plus lawyers and investment experts from Brentwood and local community counselors.

The effort at St. Raphael’s is mirrored at hundreds of other schools in the parochial system, in the Los Angeles Unified School District and in other school districts throughout Southern California.

It’s an attempt to turn the tide against dropout students, poorly prepared employees, severe costs to business and the threat of a declining economy.

Ask any group of businesspeople in Southern California what is their chief concern or complaint and invariably the answer will be the education received by the youngsters whom the businesses must someday employ.

That’s why businesspeople are trying to help schools and students with direct instruction, counseling and fund-raising. If some of the school districts would paid attention, they would pick up a few pointers on management and organization, too.

The scope of efforts to help schools is heartening. LAUSD has partnership and adopt-a-school programs with more than 500 businesses and institutions. Such firms as Edison International and the Los Angeles Times send their employees to help students with reading.

In Orange County, Irvine Co. and a local business foundation made headlines recently by pledging $3.9 million to help the Irvine schools retain teaching in music, art and science.

Among parochial schools, the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese has development councils at 12 of its inner-city schools, including St. Raphael’s, and local businesspeople serving on school boards at several dozen more of its 278 campuses.

There are broader efforts, too. Junior Achievement, an 81-year-old nationwide organization that teaches economics and business skills, has 6,000 volunteers going into schools in nine counties of Southern California--from San Luis Obispo to the Mexican border--to teach five- to 10-week economics-based courses.

“Anything that acquaints students with the world of work and the broader environment beyond their town or neighborhood is helpful,” says Ted Mitchell, president of Occidental College and a nationally recognized expert on education.

And yet the performance of schools in preparing students for participation in California’s advanced economy remains dismal. Dropout rates are high in poor districts; only 12% of minority students in Southern California take advanced mathematics and other courses required to qualify them for good jobs in the “new economy.”

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What does business have to say to that? Not a whole lot on teaching and curricula.

“Frankly, I don’t know that you can call education a business or run it like one,” concedes Liam McGee, president of Bank of America’s Southern California operations and a volunteer teacher in the Junior Achievement program.

But every business has knowledge and ideas about running complex organizations. The average school in Los Angeles is larger than the average business--reckoning that a school will have more than 1,000 students and a company fewer than 500 employees. Small companies get along by farming out such functions as accounting and purchasing. Outsourcing holds down on staffing, costs and bureaucracy.

Many school districts haven’t used such smart business methods, although matters could change with the decentralization of LAUSD into 11 separate districts.

Major business foundations stand ready to help with organizational reform. The Eli Broad Foundation is creating a $100-million fund to foster leadership in urban districts. The Milken Family Foundation of Santa Monica will hand out $4 million in cash awards to teachers next week at its annual conference on advances in education.

Such funding is important. But direct contact with students, in programs that provide summer jobs or internships, is invaluable. The Pep Boys auto parts chain hires students in collaboration with LAUSD. The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Hughes Space & Electronics and many other organizations and firms offer intern programs for high school students.

For elementary schools, the contact takes the form of setting a positive example and raising money.

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At St. Raphael’s, a school of about 250 students, the Rev. Tracy O’Sullivan, a veteran priest from Chicago, recruited skilled businesspeople from parishes on the Westside. Michael Iacampo of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, an investment advisor to A.C. Green’s foundation, is organizing a prayer breakfast and drawing up a formal fund-raising program for the school. “We can help with teacher salaries, building improvements and computer and phone systems,” Iacampo says.

Locally, entrepreneur Pickett, founder of the Palms Residential Care Facility for AIDS patients, has a new project that can assist teachers. Pickett has purchased an unused church rectory nearby and will turn it into a drug research facility at which some work can be done by St. Raphael’s teachers.

And other distinguished alumni set a powerful example. Bolden--a graduate of Harvard Law School and principal of Bolden & Martin in downtown Los Angeles--and McKesson, a Loyola Marymount and UCLA law graduate with a Beverly Hills practice--visit the school. They talk with students and give them a glimpse of the opportunities for life and achievement. “We studied where they’re studying now,” McKesson says. “They can see the possibilities.”

All schoolchildren should see the possibilities.