By Sarah Garrecht Gassen
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Jim Davis / Staff
Flowing Wells coalition members, clockwise from left: Ellie Towne, Kevin Daily, Wilma Ferry and Helen Throp, got a traffic light installed at North La Cholla Boulevard and West Curtis Road.
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Schools need more than teachers, principals, librarians, lunch ladies and custodians to successfully educate students - they need you.
That's the message local educators want the Tucson community to hear, as schools struggle to make their resources stretch and prepare their students to meet the new state academic standards.
"Our education system is at the core of a community and reflects what our community is," said June Webb-Vignery, director of the local Metropolitan Education Commission, which has 34 members including educators, administrators, students and teachers, and makes recommendations on school issues.
"There is no way we could provide quality education without community volunteers and parents," said Linda Jehle, principal of Homer Davis Elementary School in the Flowing Wells School District.
"We in the schools need you, we want you on our campuses," Jehle said. "The benefits are a lot more than just academic growth - people can make a difference just being here with the students."
Schools are grateful for donations of resources, but Flowing Wells Superintendent John Pedicone says real community involvement - and real improvement - takes personal commitment.
"Many would argue with me, but I don't want the money without the relationship," Pedicone said. "With money, you use it and it will be gone.
"Give me money, and that's great, but we'll probably say goodbye," he said. "Let's talk about how the resources will be put to good use, and we'll grow and be together for a long time."
Community involvement can help education indirectly, by giving students a glimpse of life after school, said Joy Barr, who coordinates internships for students at Presidio High School, a midtown charter school.
"If I have a student who is learning to build, they're going to make the connection between geometry and building, and learn that geometry really does carry over to the workplace," Barr said. "This is very valuable, because students can see that what they're learning is not just in school, but it's in their future - they make that connection."
Community members help in classrooms and libraries, tutor students, mentor kids, raise money and provide internships in schools across Tucson.
Examples range from individuals donating their time or resources, to businesses helping out, to neighbors banding together to improve the quality of life in their community and, in turn, inside the schoolhouse.
Here are a few ways Tucsonans are pitching in to help education:
Flowing Wells coalition
* Flowing Wells residents have grown a loose organization of Neighborhood Watch leaders into the Flowing Wells Neighborhood Association and Community Coalition. The group, which is now applying for nonprofit status, has gotten speed bumps, street lights and a traffic signal; reduced graffiti; and organized block and alley cleanups since its inception in 1995.
About 80 percent of the members are people who have children or grandchildren in Flowing Wells schools, said Kevin Daily, a Flowing Wells High School graduate who helped start the coalition and is now a member of the district Governing Board.
HERE ARE A FEW TIPS ON GETTING INVOLVED IN EDUCATION:
* Call or visit your local school and ask what it needs - chances are it won't take a lot of time or money.
* Volunteer your talents and time to a school. Read to kids, help with costumes for student plays, talk to classes about your profession.
* If you're over 50, you can also volunteer to tutor pupils through OASIS, 322-5627.
* Donate your business' services, your expertise or products that teachers can give as incentives to students.
* Employers can make it easier for workers to volunteer in schools by being flexible with scheduling and making education help part of the business culture.
* Pick up a few extra school supplies at the store and drop them off at a school for students who need them.
* Listen to kids, teachers and parents talk about schools and ask what they need.
SOURCE: Staff reports
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Improving neighborhoods improves education, Daily said.
"If kids don't have a safe environment to live in, they're going to be more concerned about surviving than they are about their education," Daily said.
Kids in the Palmdale neighborhood near North La Cholla Boulevard and West Curtis Road know that if they're up to no good, chances are Ellie Towne will see them. She heads the Neighborhood Watch and patrols her mobile home park on a golf cart during the day and by car after dark.
Her community activism began in 1994 after she survived ovarian cancer. "After I made it through the cancer I thought there must be something left for me to do, and I chose my community.
"When I see the young people it helps keep me motivated," Towne said. "That's why I'm doing this, to make it easier for them."
Flowing Wells School District reaches into the community with services as a way to involve neighbors in the schools; families can turn to the Family Resource Centers for emergency help. Schools host senior citizen brown bags, food pantries, clothing banks and other services.
Flowing Wells resident and coalition leader Helen Throp - whose great-granddaughter is the third generation of her family in the district - combs garage sales for children's clothing that she fixes up and delivers to district schools to give out to kids who need it. Once she tells the sellers what she's doing, she often gets the clothing for free.
"I try to be effective for kids in my own way," Throp said. She also bought a bunch of notebooks and dropped them off at Flowing Wells High School for kids who can't afford school supplies.
Students visit nearby nursing homes, and Davis Elementary pupils raised $1,200 last year for the American Red Cross.
"It's good for kids to feel like they're giving to the community, making a difference," Jehle said. "Kids can learn how good that feels."
Reading volunteer
* Second-grader Miranda Taggert likes to read, but she gets frustrated struggling over the big words.
Fortunately, she has volunteer tutor Dolores Houser to help her sort out tricky words like "beyond" and "cumbersome."
Miranda, who attends Desert Willow Elementary School in Vail, spends an hour every week with Houser. The pair sit at a table and Miranda slowly reads, following Houser's thumbnail as she guides the girl along the sentences.
Houser volunteers through the OASIS organization, which pairs people 50 and older with elementary pupils for tutoring. The program, which provides free training, has 620 tutors helping more than 1,200 kids in Pima County, said tutoring coordinator Stacy Moore.
Last week Miranda sounded out the difference between "sheep" and "steep" while reading "Buford the Little Bighorn," about a sheep whose horns grew too quickly.
"I just wish I could read better. It's hard," Miranda said. "It's just too boring to sound it out."
Houser nods. "But that's how you learn, by sounding it out until you recognize the word."
"It makes me feel good because I know I'm helping," Houser said later.
TUSD's helpful recruits
* Tucson Unified School District recruits businesses and community volunteers to help in the classroom, said Shirley Kiser, director of TUSD's 4th R program.
As of last spring TUSD had about 1,800 documented partners, business people who go to a school to speak to students or assist in classroom projects.
That's up 261 percent from 1994.
Local employees offer their expertise to bring schoolwork beyond the classroom. For example, airline employees taught geography lessons to students in an after-school program. Fast-food restaurant owners taught students about job skills and expectations, and the importance of graduating from high school.
Kiser said she cannot make a direct link between business involvement at school and increased student performance. However, she said letters she collects from students show they appreciate knowing more about the types of jobs available in the community and what they have to do to get them.
Kiser tries to keep volunteers returning to schools by sending them recognition letters and student evaluations of their presentations and making sure exactly how long they will be on campus.
"We try to have the business community know they don't have to spend a whole day or even a half-day at school," she said.
* Reporter Hipolito R. Corella contributed to this report.
* Contact Sarah Garrecht Gassen at 573-4117 or at sgassen@azstarnet.com
