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Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Cindy Lee, left, and her fellow Project H.E.L.P. students are quizzed on their spelling words.

Project H.E.L.P. students start

By Justin Berton

More than 80 Sunnyvale school children began their school year last week in a unique, yearlong study program for underachieving students.

Now in its eighth year, the High Expectations Learning Program, also known as Project H.E.L.P., is collecting a record number of corporate sponsors to privately fund the program designed to reach out to children at an early age.

"The time to go in is early," said the program's creator and chief fundraiser, Mike Goltzer. "Elementary level is the time to go in and fix the problem, when it's still easy to fix, when they are not that far behind. If you try and do that in high school, that's a tougher nut to crack."

Students start their school year in July and remain with the same schoolteacher during the regular school year. The summer session gives the students and their teachers a head start on the material to bring them up to par with other students.

This year, the nonprofit program is enjoying its largest budget, topping $425,000. But Project H.E.L.P. hasn't always had it so good, Goltzer said.

The program began after Goltzer attended a Sunnyvale city forum in 1990, where he listened to representative Tom Campbell answer questions from residents. Many residents, Goltzer said, only complained and gave few ideas to change what they felt was wrong with government and public education. Inspired to do precisely the opposite, Goltzer wrote Campbell a letter where he outlined his plans for a new educational program that would rely on donations from corporations.

As a fifth-grade teacher at Ponderosa Elementary, Goltzer became frustrated with the fiscally strapped public education system. He created a program based on his thesis of "If you could insure that every child worked toward their full academic and social potential, what would you change?"

The answer Goltzer came up with is one some educators have been pushing for years: create a year-long school schedule, force parent involvement, and give teacher evaluations based on the performance of their students.

As a result, children who are identified by their regular school-year teachers as "underachieving" are notified by the Project H.E.L.P. staff.

Parents pay $450 of the estimated $2,000 cost per child for the program.

When parents sign their kids up for the program, Goltzer makes it clear that weekly parent-teacher conferences during the summer session are mandatory.

"Parental involvement is perhaps the most important thing, and it doesn't even cost you anything," Goltzer said.

During the regular school year, students remain with their summer-session teacher and stay after school for additional help.

To help get the project off the ground, Campbell championed the cause by signing close to 700 letters of support for the program.

With the letters in hand, Goltzer went to private corporations looking for funding. To date, he has raised $1.3 million.

"Once one company comes on, it creates a comfort zone for others," Goltzer said.

The Sunnyvale Educational Foundation presented the initial $69,000, and soon after, private corporations joined in. Beginning with Advanced Micro Devices, a list of sponsors including Hewlett-Packard and the Sunnyvale Lumber Company have kept the program afloat.

"Business people are results-oriented people," Goltzer said. "And we gave them results."

In a math and reading test given last summer, Project H.E.L.P. students began their school year testing below the national average in math and reading. By the end of the summer, scores were at the national average, and by the mid-school year break, scores were up by as many as 20 percentile points.

Stacy Joslin, a first-grade teacher from Cumberland Elementary, said being a Project H.E.L.P. teacher for the past three years has been a rewarding experience.

"Words can't describe the feeling when a parent looks at you and says, 'Thank you. I can't believe my child is doing that.' It makes it all worth it."

Goltzer said even though the program is currently enjoying success, he is aware that the private funding could come to a quick halt, if the private sponsors have lackluster years. But it doesn't stop him from continuing.

"My dream is to see this worked into the regular way of educating," he said.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, July 15, 1998.
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