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A helping hand for young moms

The Plain Dealer - Monday, September 18, 2006

Eleven girls sit around a large, rectangular table; two have to push back from the edge to accommodate their giant, protruding bellies.

Willa Walker, a woman with a storyteller's lilt to her voice, surveys her students. "What's going on?" she asks brightly.

"My son's got pinkeye," offers a small girl in a neon fuchsia hoodie. One of her classmates, a dark redhead in cool black frames, shoots her arm into the air. "My son got pinkeye when he was a newborn!" she says. "I know this sounds weird, but try mom's breast milk it's no substitute for a doctor, but the lactic acid in the milk brings down the inflammation."

It's the first week of school at the Old Stone Center for Education, a scrubbed, cheerily lit space attached to the Old Stone Church, the hulking Romanesque Revival landmark on Cleveland's Public Square.

The center, a happy marriage between the Old Stone Foundation and the struggling Cleveland School District, caters to girls 16 to 22 who dropped out of high school after becoming pregnant.

Their reasons are frustrat ingly simple they couldn't find anyone to watch their babies; they had no cash for day care; they couldn't handle the stress of parenting while trying to pass the proficiencies. Every available statistic tells the same story: Teen moms who don't graduate spend their lives in an economic ghetto. The same studies say education is the way to move themselves and their children into a better ZIP code.

Walker leads the parenting class, part of a curriculum designed to help girls earn their GEDs, find good jobs or move onto college. Enrollment is open throughout the year, but the school can accommodate about 40 students at a time, and there's always a waiting list. Judging by the successes of some alumnae, it's worth sitting out a few semesters. One recent grad is preparing to attend medical school. Others have gone on to become registered nurses, pharmacists and teachers.

But the girls in Walker's classroom aren't ready to apply to Cuyahoga Community College and Ursuline College just yet. For now, they are learning to make hand puppets using gardening gloves, plastic googly eyes and yarn. Some dive right in, others scoff, but the point is to encourage them to read to their children. Animated visual aides keep peripatetic toddlers interested. Literacy begins early and at home, Walker preaches, but it's also a way for moms to bond with their children.

"We are trying to establish closeness just being together is important," she says. It's not enough to pop in a Wiggles DVD and walk away.

Biggest friend is an eternal optimist

A man old enough to be the girls' grandfather hustles into the room the executive director of the Old Stone Foundation doesn't move unless he's hustling. They look up with mild interest. "I'm Art Mayers," he says. "I'm your friend and your biggest booster."

He warns them that they might see lots of suits roaming the halls the next day because the president of the Alcoa Foundation "the largest aluminum corporation in the world!" is coming for a visit and to deliver a $30,000 check. The money will go toward the education of six outstanding scholars chosen by the center's teaching staff.

They'll all get a chance to shake the hand of Alcoa's Meg McDonald herself if they want to. "I think meeting these kinds of people might be helpful because one day," he says, his voice rising to a cheerleader's shout, "you might be them!" The girls look unconvinced, and who can blame them? They hail from the most blighted neighborhoods of the poorest big city in the nation. But to Mayers, a self-described eternal optimist, anything is possible. "Optimists make things happen!" he likes to say. Mayers has made it his business to root for girls so many others have given up on.

Since opening in 1994, the school in downtown Cleveland has served more than 1,500 students. The dearth of safe, affordable child care is one of the chief reasons girls with babies quit school. Moms arrive at Old Stone for their 9 a.m. classes, their infants, toddlers and preschoolers in tow. They deposit their offspring with one of three full-time day-care workers, and the kids bounce and squeal and color in three rooms on the ground floor while, upstairs, their mothers learn how to do percentages and write resumes.

The school, its day-care center and its aggressive internship program thrive thanks to the rainmaking abilities of Arthur Mayers. He refuses to divulge his age, though his penchant for phrases such as "thanks a million" and the fact that retired Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, an octogenarian, was his tennis partner for more than two decades offer some clues.

Younger men on his board of trustees marvel at his bottomless energy. "The best thing about being on the board is that you don't have to say anything you just plug Art in and let him go," says president Charles Berkey.

Mayers, a Joseph Wharton scholar and former marketing guru for Campus Sportswear Co., took the helm of the Old Stone Foundation in 1995. He has amassed an enviable list of donors, a who's who of Cleveland's business elite, from the Fedeli Group to KeyBank to Forest City Enterprises.

He is allergic to the word "no" and impossible to refuse. Corporate Cleveland has been generous, Mayers says, but "not all the corporations do what they could be doing. They should be doing more."

He's tired of people whining about the crumbling schools and wringing their hands over the decay of downtown. Here's something you can do to make things better, he says visit us and see how we're changing lives. Then pull out your checkbook.

"Shaker Heights, Rocky River, Bay Village, that's where the money is, and that's where the power is," Mayers says. "Most of the people on our board live in the suburbs, and I always tell them, 'one of the reasons I want you on this board is because I want the people who have the money, who have the clout, to reach into the inner city and really do something meaningful.'

"That's a very important message in Cleveland, because we've flown to the suburbs and we've always wondered why the inner city is decaying. Well, if we want to be able to go to theater, if we want to be able to go to Jacobs Field, if we want to see the Cleveland Browns, we better start taking care of the inner city."

One girl at a time.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY C.H. PETE COPELAND THE PLAIN DEALER

While young moms study, their children visit a playroom at the Old Stone Center for Education where they are supervised by on-site day-care workers.

During breaks between classes, moms can check on their kids in a playroom covered with mats the color of Skittles. Yanelly Montanez, 3, swims though the ball pool as day-care teacher Valorie Hempstead hangs out with 6-month-old Zyiontae Davis, nattily dressed in his munchkin Nikes and teeny snap-up jeans.

Parenting and literacy specialist Willa Walker meets with mom Denise Silva, 20, and her daughter, 3-year-old Yanelly, at the Old Stone Center for Education. Walker is teaching Denise educational games she can play with her child that will build her fine motor skills and help her learn shapes and colors.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: asimakis@plaind.com, 216- 999-4565

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