PENCIL pairs busy professionals with city schools

By Albert Amateau

A year ago, Chris Hayward, senior vice president and global treasurer for Merrill Lynch, got in touch with Robert Bender, principal of P.S. 11 on W. 21st St. in Chelsea, about introducing elementary school students to the world of finance. Accompanied by their teacher and a P.S. 11 assistant principal, a class visited Hayward’s World Financial Center office, toured the trading floor and heard Merrill Lynch employees talk about their education, first jobs and career paths. This year, Hayward and Bender are exploring other career awareness events for students.

The publisher of Crain’s New York Business had a lunchtime meeting in the magazine’s offices last fall for students in the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women on E. 12th St. Crain’s publisher, Jill Kaplan, and the school principal, Patricia Minaya, are planning more partnership projects this year.

June Beckstead, vice president of apparel design at Sears Holdings, began a volunteer partnership last fall with Hilda Nieto, principal of Chelsea’s High School of Fashion Industries on W. 24th St., that provided students with a real-life context for their academic focus. This year, Nieto and Beckstead plan to expand the program to more Fashion Industries students.

Those partnerships are among about 400 throughout the five boroughs, sponsored by PENCIL—Public Education Needs Civic Involvement—organized in 1995 to get private businesses involved in public education.

“Education is everybody’s business,” said Michael Haberman, PENCIL’s president since January. “Our mission is to transform New York City Public Schools by creating and supporting customized school-based partnerships,” added Haberman, whose own experience includes having been president of the Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce and director of government and community affairs for New York University.

PENCIL’s annual Principal for a Day (the 2007 event is Oct. 18) pairs thousands of New Yorkers from the private sector with city schools and their principals. Principal for a Day is something of a misnomer because the goal is to get people permanently involved in public education.

At the High School of Fashion Industries, in addition to arranging field trips to expose students to various facets of the fashion industry, Beckstead was able to involve Shannon Ambrosio, senior technical designer of accessories for Sears Holdings, who helped students organize the school’s first accessories club, which has become a growing activity at the school.

Mary Pisarkiewicz, a founder of Pisarkiewicz & Mazur, a marketing and communications consulting firm, became a partner of Greenwich Village Middle School, at 490 Hudson St., two years ago as a result of a Principal for a Day event.

“I talked to then-principal Isora Bailey, and she said, ‘We don’t need money. We need help with our computer set-up, and mostly we need people to know more about the school,’” Pisarkiewicz recalled.

It was a good fit with Pisarkiewicz’s expertise in branding and corporate identity. With Greenwich Village Middle School’s theme, “community involvement,” in mind, Pisarkiewicz and the school staff created a distinctive logo, school stationary and a new school Website. “We had a Save Darfur Day that involved students, teachers and parents,” she recalled.

Kelly McGuire, Greenwich Village Middle School’s current principal, credits the partnership with significantly increasing the number of applicants for admission to the school.

“I think city schools have improved very much in the past several years,” Pisarkiewicz said. Her two sons, one in college and the other graduated from college, went to private schools when the family lived in the city when they were young.

“If I were bringing up children today I’d definitely send them to the public schools,” said Pisarkiewicz. “I think Bloomberg and Joel Klein have done a wonderful job.

“I became involved with Principal for a Day because children are the future of our country and parents have to be involve —no matter how good or how bad the school is,” she said.