Helpers Spruce Up Valley Schools

It wasn’t Cari Butler’s ideal way to spend a Saturday, but she figured something good would come out of it.

Bleary-eyed after getting home at 4 a.m. from a party, the 15-year-old arrived at Monroe High School in North Hills at 8 o’clock Saturday morning to dutifully help brighten up her school.

She and her mother joined more than 1,000 volunteers who descended on eight public schools in the San Fernando Valley to prune bushes, pull weeds, plant trees and flowers, create murals and paint buildings, doors and classrooms.

The Valley helpers were part of the nearly 4,000 volunteers from Pacoima to San Pedro who marshaled their forces to beautify 27 schools and seven youth centers. It was the fourth annual Help-A-Thon organized by L.A. Works, a nonprofit group founded in 1991 by entertainment executives and other corporate leaders to boost local volunteerism. At Exposition Park, participants were cheered on by actor Richard Dreyfuss and Los Angeles School Supt. Sid Thompson.

For the past two years, the nonprofit group has focused its efforts on refurbishing campuses within the Los Angeles Unified School District. By day’s end, the volunteers had painted 680 walls and murals and planted more than 18,000 trees, flowers and shrubs at 34 facilities countywide.

“The public schools have been so deprived financially for such a long time,” said Tanner Methvin, executive director of L.A. Works. “What we can do to brighten them up will help kids feel better about going to school and may even help them learn better.”

Another goal is to increase volunteerism, Methvin said.

“It’s very rare that people have the opportunity to go out for four hours and see the immediate results of what they’ve done to improve a situation,” he said. “So we want to use this day to demonstrate the power of volunteerism. People have to understand the power of what it feels like to be part of a solution.”

People participated in the daylong event for myriad reasons. Students were urged by teachers, encouraged by friends or bribed with extra credit. Parents got the satisfaction of improving some eyesores, and people in the community could be do-gooders.

Alain Mesropian), 26, of Burbank missed his volunteering days as an Explorer in high school. So he signed up for the cleanup event after reading a newspaper article about it.

“I don’t even do this at my own house,” said Mesropian, on his hands and knees, as he plucked weeds from the grounds at Cohasset Elementary School in Van Nuys. “It’s a nice feeling to do something. Now every time I drive by I can say ‘Hey, I did that.’ ”

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For Christina Isham, 16, a sophomore at Monroe who uses a wheelchair because of spina bifida, the event was a chance to get out of the house and use her hands. She spent the day pulling up weeds and planting petunias around Monroe’s campus.

Harold Varner, a professional painter based in Northridge, showed up at Monroe with his wife, Leticia, and all 13 of his employees along with a hefty supply of materials.

“What you give you get back in return,” Varner said. “It doesn’t cost me anything to do things like this and we heard [Monroe] needed a lot of help, and we can give it, so why not.”

Larger businesses also pitched in, such as Sumitomo Bank, Kodak and Home Depot, all of which sponsored teams of volunteers. Later, Ben & Jerry’s, Ralphs Grocery Co. and Taco Bell hosted a huge picnic.

Cari, a Monroe sophomore, hadn’t volunteered for many things before she signed up for the event through a school club that requires four hours of community service.

Her mother, Carol Ross, came along to make sure Monroe’s bathrooms got a thorough cleaning and a new paint job.

“She won’t even use the bathrooms here because they’re so filthy,” Ross said of her daughter. Within an hour of the event’s start, Ross had rallied three students and another parent to join her crusade.

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Most of the volunteers at the Valley schools came from the immediate community or nearby neighborhoods. But there were also people like Michael Sano of Westchester and Reggie Owens from Santa Monica who took a 30-minute bus ride to the Valley to help spruce up the needy schools.

“It’s not the best way to spend a weekend, but it’s something for the community,” said Michael, 13, an eighth-grader at the private Windward School in Mar Vista who helped with painting at Cohasset Elementary. About 60 Windward students were dispatched to various schools in the Valley.

Michael--to his adolescent embarrassment--was joined by his mother, Marilyn Sano, who added a coat of bright golden paint to the school’s drab-looking doors.

“It’s not enough to put your kid on the bus for them to volunteer,” Marilyn Sano said. “You should be ready to roll up your sleeves and join in even if your son is horrified to be seen with you.”

Nine-year-old Gregorio Saldate of Canoga Park had no trouble working alongside his parents to transform a weed-choked section of his schoolyard at Fullbright Avenue Elementary School in Canoga Park into the beginnings of a student-run vegetable garden.

“It’s fun because we got to cut wood and do stuff that we don’t get to normally do,” said Gregorio, a third-grader. “I cut a 3 by 2,” he said haltingly. “No, I mean a 2 by 3. Wait. Wait a second. No, it was a 2 by 4. But I cut it and then we used it to put in the ground and help separate the sections for the garden.”

Gregorio, along with his friends, 11-year-olds William Gallagher and Eric Medina, said they will eventually plant radishes, carrots and lettuce.

But what was even better than the garden was the makeover at the boys’ school, they said.

“It was all ugly before, with weeds and things. And it looked all gloomy ‘cause of the chipping paint and stuff,” said fifth-grader William. “And now, it’s real bright and clean.”