Friday, Nov. 9, 2001 | 3:40 a.m.
Employees at Nevada Title Co. don't exchange gifts at Christmas time. They have good reason.
Three years ago the company made it a policy to have its workers purchase toys for the most needy children of Ira J. Earl Elementary School, rather than buy gifts for their colleagues.
Since then, employees celebrate the holiday by getting together and wrapping the 50 toys they will later deliver to the school.
This decision was only one of many the company has taken to help the school during the past few years.
Nevada Title Co. is one of the more than 70 local businesses in the Las Vegas Valley that participate in Clark County School District's Focus School Project.
Created in 1989, Focus School Project matches companies with at-risk schools.
"The purpose of the Focus School Project is to bring human resources of our business community into schools where we have children in need," said Joyce Woodhouse, director of the School Community Partnership program, of which Focus School Project is part. "It shows these children and their teachers that their community cares for them."
Through the project, schools receive additional tutors for their children, money for new books or for school supplies, among other things.
Some companies provide funding for transportation to bring classes to cultural events or grants for students excelling in music, arts and sports.
Businesses also develop incentives such as pizza parties or gift certificates in an effort to improve students' attendance, academic achievement or sense of citizenship.
What makes the Focus School Project so unique, however, is the dedication of participants' employees.
No official statistics are available, but Woodhouse estimates that several thousand workers from across the Las Vegas Valley volunteer their time to help the schools.
Station Casinos Inc., for instance, recently sent Texas Station's maintenance staff to C.P Squires Elementary school to revamp the schoolyard.
Likewise, Nevada Title employees, including Chief Executive Officer Terry Wright and President Robbie Graham, regularly read with Earl Elementary students.
That personal involvement, Principal Joy Leavitt said, is as important as the physical resources the project offers.
"One of the ways the school benefits from its relationship with Nevada Title is that we have lots of role models," she said. "Besides providing things, they have been very involved personally."
Companies' employees consider that personal involvement necessary, too. They say that interacting with children is the best way to raise their confidence level and make them understand that they can accomplish anything they want.
"You can tell them that they can be successful," said Lisa Morrison, supervisor of the training department at Nevada Title, "but when you show them that they can be successful by investing yourself in them, that's much more powerful."
The Focus School Project has proved effective, Woodhouse said. In 12 years the number of participating businesses has increased from two to several dozen and has served more than 50,000 students.
Such positive results have convinced some companies to do more than the project asks them to. Station Casinos, for example, recently started providing support to schools that are not part of the Focus School Project.
The company provides all of the needy schools in the county -- there are 51, including the eight partnered with the firm -- with $5,000 a year.
"We want to do what we can," Lesley Pittman, director of corporate and government relations at Station Casinos, said. "The most important is the sense that this business community becomes a part of (addressing) the huge needs for education resources."
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