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Businesses Helping Schools: A Report Card
Right now, a ‘B' — not bad,
but not quite what the relationships could be
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Business New Haven
11/29/1999
By: Susan Banfield
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The role businesses play in area schools has been on the ascendant over the last decade or so.
New Haven's Partners in Education Program, currently functioning under the auspices of the New Haven Public Education Fund, has been around since the late 1980s. Bridgeport's Adopt-a-School Program is two decades old.
Today, about 63 New Haven public schools are paired with local business partners, which provide assistance in a variety of ways. In Bridgeport, nearly every school has a business partner. In both cities, businesses are extensively involved at
the high-school level, providing career exploration and mentoring opportunities.
While most businesses which have become involved with public schools are reasonably satisfied with the results they have been able to achieve, officials of some feel there are ways in which the business community could be more helpful than it is at present.
The ways in which businesses work with their school partners are many and varied. Most provide at least some financial help, both monetary and in kind. The Bridgeport-based Southern Connecticut Gas Co. awards mini-grants to both teachers and students at its partner, the Roberto Clemente Middle School.
The New Haven Register provided substantial start-up funds to help Troup Junior High School make the transition to Troup Magnet Academy of Sciences, and has financed the school's class trips, an after-school enrichment program, and motivational hallway posters. It also publishes the school's paper at no cost.
Yale-New Haven Hospital has furnished elementary schools in the Hill neighborhood with a special fitness program and cardiovascular equipment. Many businesses have provided their partner schools with computer equipment.
The value of this basic financial help should not be underestimated. “It's difficult for educators to get funding for things beyond the basics,” says Jennifer Pomichter, promotions director for the Register. “We find that throughout the New Haven area, teachers want to bring inventive new ways of learning to their students. Budgetary constraints prevent them.”
Most businesses which partner with schools view their relationship with their school as more than just financial, however. One commonplace way in which companies often help is by providing innovative programs.
“We try to do programs that wouldn't get done if we didn't do them,” says Kathryn Hanley-Gregory, manager of education and volunteer services for Southern Connecticut Gas. An example is SCG's new program created in collaboration with the Connecticut Chamber Orchestra. Orchestra members work with music students at Roberto Clemente and rehearse with them, and then perform a joint concert for parents.
“We try to give people opportunities that might not be there otherwise,” says Roberta Burns-Howard, vice president of corporate communications for People's Bank. People's has partnered with New Haven's East Rock School for the past ten years. For several of those years they have run an eight-week “philanthropy class” for the school's upper-grade students (East Rock is a K-8 school).
Bank personnel taught the students all about non-profits in the New Haven area, taking the class on field trips to such places as the Ronald McDonald House and a local soup kitchen. The bank also came up with $1,000 for students to use as a donation. At the end of the eight weeks, the class decided how they would donate the money - whether all to one charity, or divided among several.
Often, the focus of the special programs businesses introduce to schools is demonstrating to students the relevance of what they study in the classroom. Yale-New Haven Hospital, for example, partners with Washington Magnet School in West Haven and with the Sheridan Academy for Excellence in New Haven. The hospital links each grade in these schools with a different department in the hospital.
When the students come to the hospital to visit “their” department, the emphasis, says Dee Ann Melio, YNHH's program coordinator for community and government relations, is on “connecting to the curriculum - showing them what they can do with math, why they need to learn to write.”
A new “Science Makes Sense” pilot program at Troup, sponsored by Bayer Corp., teaches students how things they learn in microbiology pertain to everyday life. For example, special equipment enables them to “swipe” common objects such as door knobs and drawer pulls and “see” all the germs living on them. It's an important lesson which drives home the relevance of washing one's hands.
One of the most common objectives of school-business partnerships is to expose students to the real-life world of work and careers, and to help them prepare to take their place in that world.
Yale-New Haven exposes students at its partner schools to the many career opportunities available in the health care field. The Register tries to expose interested Troup students to the newspaper industry.
Bridgeport schools are particularly career-oriented. Each of the Park City's three high schools is partnered with several major corporations, related to its particular area of concentration.
Bassick High School, for example, is the city's business magnet; one of its business partners is the Bodine Corp. Bodine has established a comprehensive manufacturing preparation program at Bassick, encompassing everything from new shops to a specially designed curriculum.
All Bridgeport sophomores spend three days “shadowing” at three different places of employment, which can range from a dentist's office to Unilever to City Hall. Many juniors and seniors have corporate internships at which they work half a day and go to school the other half.
Closely related to the role of preparing students for the world of work is another very important function performed by most schools' business partners - that of providing mentors and role models for students.
“Putting adult role models in kids' lives is what I like most about the Partners in Education Program,” says Roberto Clemente Principal Leroy Williams. “Kids need as many positive role models in their lives as they can get.”
Bob Mellette of Troup feels that one of the most important by-products of his school's newer partnership with Bayer is that it puts his students into contact with real-life scientists. Mellette, who himself had a career in science before transforming Troup into a science magnet, says what changed his life was a field trip to IBM he took as a kid. There he saw real scientists at work for the first time.
Darrell Draughn is CEO of Draughn Communications, a local, mostly-minority network systems-integration firm that provides a wide variety of IT solutions and services. Draughn is partnered with Hillhouse High School.
Hillhouse invited the company to come on board as its business partner, in part because it needed a company to help in a technical advisory capacity - but also to provide role models for the school's mostly minority student population.
Darrell Draughn says this is the most important part of what his firm does for the school. He has established a mentorship program which involves one or two students each semester. He hopes in the near future to be able to take students to a variety of technology job sites to expose them to the different opportunities there are in the field.
Finally, all business partners perform a host of small services for their partner schools. They judge science fairs, take honors students out to special luncheons, send in volunteers for Read-Aloud Days, and use their corporate connections to get students tickets for performances at the Shubert and Long Wharf Theatre. “The little things add up to a bigger relationship,” says Tom Griggs, vice president and branch manager for People's Bank in New Haven. Griggs is People's liaison with East Rock School.
Most businesses seem on balance pleased with the relationship they have forged with their partner school(s). “I absolutely feel we're making a difference,” says Burns-Howard of People's.
Part of what makes for a satisfying relationship is that many companies monitor their involvement carefully for effectiveness. Says Burns-Howard, for example: “We want to know what the outcomes are. We stay involved. When the schools have suggestions for improvement, we listen.”
Southern Connecticut Gas' Hanley-Gregory personally checks up on her company's programs to make sure students are benefiting, and that the programs are viable.
Realistic expectations and an appreciation for more subtle benefits can also be a factor in business satisfaction. “It's not that we solve their problems,” People's Griggs says of his bank's relationship with East Rock School. He can, however, point to a number of perhaps unexpected positive results.
“A lot of people have an unrealistically negative view of city schools,” he says. “We send in employees and they see the hard work teachers are doing, students are doing. It turns around a lot of negative New Haven perceptions.”
Griggs also points out that teachers benefit tremendously from the business partnership. “They get a sense of validation seeing people in suits and ties working with them.”
Some businesses do offer suggestions for ways to improve business-to-school partnership programs. A number feel more businesses can and should be involved.
“There's an incredible wealth of gifted business people in this community who are never asked to become involved,” says Dick Fitzgerald, president of Crest Auto Group.
“I think more businesses should be involved,” says the Register's Pomichter. “It would be great to see that all schools had at least one partner, and good to have a variety of businesses partnered with a school.”
The Register's partner school, Troup, has reaped rich benefits from multiple business partnerships. In addition to the newspaper, Bayer and Olin also work with the school. In the past, New Haven's Hospital of Saint Raphael was a partner. “Each partner enriches our school in ways that we don't have the funds or the expertise to accomplish,” says Mellette.
Darrell Draughn feels that a in order for more businesses to become involved with the schools, the city of New Haven first needs to take more action to attract businesses - particularly technology businesses - to the area.
“If business is not going well, they're not going to give to the schools. If the mayor [John DeStefano Jr.] could offer businesses more incentives to come to New haven, they would feel a civic duty to give back.”
Finally, at least one local businessman has pointed out that the partnership program itself is in need of new, dynamic leadership.
Dick Fitzgerald and Crest Auto Group partnered with Davis Street School back when the Partners in Education Program was first created under the direction of then-superintendent John Dowd. Fitzgerald feels that in recent years, under the New Haven Public Education Fund, the program has lacked direction. “I frankly lost interest,” Fitzgerald says.
Instead Fitzgerald, along with several other local business people, has independently channeled his energies and funds into a struggling parochial school on the Hill: Sacred Heart/St. Peter's.
In addition to some fairly conventional modes of assistance - providing uniforms for the girls' basketball team, sponsoring an eighth-grade field trip to Washington, D.C., taking students to the Shubert and Long Wharf - Crest has experimented with a more unusual and daring approach to change. The group has brought in a talented youth minister who has developed programs to build self-esteem and teach conflict management.
“There has been an incredible change in terms of the non-violence,” Fitzgerald says. “There used to be fights all the time.” He describes his involvement with the school and the changes he has been able to help bring about as “very invigorating to me.”
Currently the Partners in Education program is in need of a new executive director, the previous director having left a month ago. As the Public Education Fund conducts its search for candidates, one hopes it will take to heart Fitzgerald's feedback and hold out for a deeply talented, passionate leader who can galvanize the program and help to raise its mark in the next century from B to A-plus. BNH
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