This relationship was built to last

DEVELOPING SKILLS: Nelson Garcia, fourth grader at the Carl G. Lauro School in Providence, works with Lynn McMahan, a Gilbane Development Co. employee. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
DEVELOPING SKILLS: Nelson Garcia, fourth grader at the Carl G. Lauro School in Providence, works with Lynn McMahan, a Gilbane Development Co. employee. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

More than 30 years ago, Gilbane Building Co. started sending volunteer mentors to Carl G. Lauro Elementary School in Providence.

Long after the original “adopt a school” program faded away, Gilbane and Lauro have stuck it out. The corporate partner program has evolved with the years, but Gilbane has maintained its commitment, sending employee volunteers every week to the elementary school to work directly with young students.

The program, overseen at Gilbane by Judi Baxter, the company’s accounts-payable administrator, includes weekly visits to the school by employees, monthly field trips to the corporate headquarters by “student of the month” designees, and opportunities throughout the year for all employees to help support the families and students.

With 970 children, the elementary school in the Federal Hill neighborhood is the largest in the state, and has one of the highest enrollments of students with limited English skills. Eighty-five percent of the children are of Hispanic descent, said the principal. Each of the grade levels has two bilingual classes, with instruction in Spanish and English.

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There is a great need for volunteers, but what makes the Gilbane partnership special is its endurance, said Lauro principal Chris Kennedy. “It has been enduring and predictable. We can count on Judi and her group every year.”

Every Wednesday, the Gilbane employees who travel to the school read with one or two third-graders who need extra help with comprehension. The volunteers are dropped off by the company’s mail truck. The 30-minute sessions in the library give the children undivided attention and nonjudgmental feedback on their reading, Kennedy said.

It is just one part of a yearlong commitment to the elementary school, beginning on the first day of the year, when the volunteers distribute school planners to the teachers and all students in the third through fifth grades, Baxter said.

Once a month during the school year, 42 children selected by their homeroom teachers as “students of the month” take a trip to the Providence headquarters for Gilbane, where they are feted in the company’s greenhouse-style meeting room.

Gilbane, a construction and real estate development company that does business internationally, had $4.8 billion in revenue in 2013. But at heart it remains a family company that values Providence, said Paul Choquette Jr., vice chairman of Gilbane Inc., parent company for both the development and construction companies.

He started the school partnership in the 1980s, when the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce wanted large corporations in Rhode Island to commit to “adopting” a public school.

Initially, it was structured as more of a mentoring model, he said, in which employee volunteers met regularly with students to expose them to a professional role model, and to broaden their experiences beyond their neighborhood.

For years, he mentored a young student, up until high school. “I read with him. We had lunch together. We played ball.” The former student is now 32, and a sales manager at an auto dealership outside Boston.

Choquette said the company’s commitment to the school’s needs hasn’t changed. There has to be a commitment, he said. “You can’t come and go. We adopted this school in the 1980s. Here it is 2015. We are still there. When we make a commitment, that’s it.”

The Providence public schools have several dozen corporate partnerships. Locke Lord, a law firm, is partnered with the Reservoir Avenue Elementary School. The Miriam Hospital has had a partnership with Martin Luther King Elementary School for at least 15 years. Bank of America and the hospitals in the Lifespan system also are sending volunteers into schools.

The Gilbane relationship with Lauro is thought to be the longest running. The one-on-one program in reading, called Power Lunch, is organized by Inspiring Minds, a nonprofit that prepares mentors and volunteer programs for the Providence schools.

For the children, the reading time might be the only undivided attention they get from an adult all day. The third graders selected for the program may be reading below their grade level, or they might just need some self-confidence in reading, to help them participate in class, said Irene Bates, special-events coordinator for Inspiring Minds.

“The children are building up a rapport, a relationship with this person,” she said. In surveys, teachers have reported that many of the one-on-one reading pairings last longer than one school year.

Kennedy, the school’s principal, said the children know that their reading partner will come back every week. The consistency matters.

“For this 8-year-old who sometimes is shuffled between households every other day, they get dedicated attention from someone assigned to them for the whole school year,” he said.

Reading with students is the best method for those who are not education professionals to help with academics. It allows the students to build vocabulary, practice pronunciation and build story comprehension.

For the corporate volunteers, and their employer, the program affords a direct connection with the community. “You’re giving back,” Choquette said. “One of the advantages we have is we are a family business. That sense of family permeates everything we do.”

The corporate partnership with Lauro is not aimed at encouraging students to enter the construction field. Gilbane does that through a national initiative it runs, the ACE program, in which students who are interested in architecture and construction are matched with Gilbane professionals. That program is focused on high schools from low-income areas within communities where Gilbane has offices, Choquette said.

Through it, students visit work sites and help to complete a project.

“We expose these kids to the work we’re doing,” he said. “They may not end up going into construction. But they’ll have an appreciation for what this industry is all about.” •

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