Steven B. Chesser is Senior Manager, Community Relations, Boeing C-17 and 717 Programs

Education has been the number one community cause for The Boeing Company for several years. As I’ve pointed out in this space in previous years, education is singled out in our corporate vision statement: “We will work with our communities by volunteering and financially supporting education and other worthy causes”.

During 2003, we have been gratified to see several positive results of our efforts in promoting public K12 education. For example, Boeing has contributed $100,000 per year for the past three years to the Long Beach Unified School District, supporting reforms that promote student achievement. Our grants, made under the umbrella of the innovative Seamless Education Initiative, have emphasized literacy, writing skills, small group learning, the role of counselors and intervention for children at risk.

Long Beach Wins!

The District, with a well-deserved reputation for reducing the achievement gap among its students, leveraged our support and this year won the Broad Prize, emblematic of the best urban school district in the nation. In selecting Long Beach, Eli Broad, the philanthropist who funded the $500,000 prize, cited the very reforms Boeing has supported with our grants. In accepting the award, Superintendent Chris Steinhauser thanked The Boeing Company for our assistance and our role in helping Long Beach finish on top.

Collaboration between K12 and higher education is not only a key strategy for The Boeing Company; it also is State education policy. Boeing is represented, as the only corporate representative, on the policy board of the California Alliance of PreK-18 Partnerships. Our input helped shape the recently adopted Alliance policy that “Partnerships between schools and institutions of higher education are an effective way to boost student achievement and to close achievement gaps among groups of students. Partnerships also promote more efficient use of resources around shared institutional goals.”

We expanded our own collaboration efforts with a new partnership with the California State University (CSU). This year, we contributed $50,000 to the CSU to fund a “How To Get To College” poster. This poster, a “virtual guidance counselor”, advises students from the 6th grade through the 12th what classes they should be taking, what tests and exams they’ll have to complete, and where to find sources of financial assistance. With our contribution, the CSU is distributing 500,000 posters to every school in the State of California.

Building Relationships

The resources of The Boeing Company, while considerable, are nonetheless finite. Collaboration allows us to leverage those finite resources, achieve more with less, and works to our strengths as a systems integrator. We also believe that our funding can be a force multiplier -- the catalyst for organizations and systems without a history of cooperation to work together.

Last year, our funding helped establish a new partnership between the Compton Unified School District (CUSD) and Compton College to help raise the projected pass rate for Compton students taking the California High School Exit Exam. Based on the promise of the first year, CUSD has adopted the ambitious goal of increasing, by 100%, the pass rate for math. They also project that the number of students taking higher-level math and science classes will increase by 25% for grades 9 - 11.

Our support for higher education was by no means limited to K12 outreach. Another key element of Boeing education policy is access to higher education. This focus was behind the modification to our higher education contributions which mandated that 60% of contributions to every college and university was to be devoted to scholarships.

Working within that framework, we continued our strong support for California State University Long Beach, one of the top tier of universities for The Boeing Company. For the second year in a row, we provided a total of $100,000 to the University, funding scholarships and research grants in the Colleges of the Arts, Business Administration, Engineering, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Liberal Arts, and the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts.

Making a Difference

Our goal with all contributions is to try to make a difference, and often we are successful regardless of the size of the grant. One example we’re particularly proud of is a $5,000 grant to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood that expanded a mobile clinic and immunization outreach to the Compton Unified School District. After the grant was approved and presented, we learned that the program expansion included schools that had faced a halt in services because of budget cuts at the King/Drew County Hospital. Our grant ensured no interruption of service to a population of children with little other access to health care.

We also continue to be the principal corporate funder of Long Beach Midnight Basketball. While we typically do not sponsor sports programs, our support here fully-funds the education component of this highly effective program that offers positive alternatives to at-risk young men.

New Agencies and Recognition

Several new agencies were added this year, including Harbor Interfaith Services, a social service agency providing emergency housing and child care in San Pedro, Covenant Manor, a residence for seniors and the disabled, and International City Theater for an outreach program with the Long Beach Unified School District. It was our honor to be recognized for our corporate citizenship efforts by the Rick Rackers, D.A.R.E., National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence South Bay (parent organization of the Flossie Lewis Center in Long Beach) and Midnight Basketball.

All told, The Boeing Company in Long Beach contributed $897,200 to 47 educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

Boeing Employees Are Key

Another important aspect of corporate citizenship is the volunteer efforts of our employees. This year, more than 1,100 Long Beach Boeing employees worked more than 11,000 hours on 33 community projects. These projects included Special Olympics of Southern California, building facilities at YMCA Camp Oaks in Big Bear, California and participation in various fund-raising walks.

Our team also adopted 64 low-income families for the holidays and 75 angels, children being treated at Miller Children’s Hospital. Collection drives among our employees netted almost 400 backpacks filled with school supplies for the Rick Rackers to distribute to disadvantaged elementary school students and almost 14,000 pounds of food for the Foodbank of Southern California. Our Employee Community Fund, supported by voluntary employee payroll deductions, contributed more than $1.7 million in 2003 to Los Angeles County charities.

Looking Ahead

In 2004, we will begin a tightened focus on education, emphasizing teacher effectiveness in literacy, math and science. We will be supporting programs that provide professional development for teachers, leadership development for principals, administrators and board members, curriculum tools and student achievement programs focused at the classroom level.

As the City’s largest employer, we recognize and accept our obligation to the community to be a good corporate citizen. We are committed to improving the quality of life in the communities where our employees live and work. For information on how to be a part of our efforts, go to our website at www.boeing.com/companyoffices/aboutus/community/guidelines.htm.