EDUCATION SUMMIT TOUTS SCHOOL REFORM : TEACHERS, BUSINESS PEOPLE BROUGHT TOGETHER.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

Hoping to mobilize local business leaders behind the cause of school reform, the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley hosted an education summit Friday aimed at forging partnerships between companies and schools.

The meeting brought together at Universal Studios more than 250 teachers and business representatives to hear about successful partnerships already under way in places such as Silicon Valley and Houston.

Alliance President Bill Allen said he wanted to show Valley business leaders that they can help improve the performance of Los Angeles' troubled public schools.

``Everyone comes to this with, I think, a certain cynicism: My God, the problem is so huge,'' Allen said before the meeting. ``So we want to give them examples of business-school partnerships that work.''

California Secretary of Education Gary Hart told the group that business must become involved in school reform.

``Public education is everyone's business and is too important to leave entirely in the hands of public school officials,'' he said. ``If we're going to address these problems, we need everyone's involvement.''

To drive home the point, the summit piled on examples of cooperative projects between businesses and schools.

The head of a Houston-based reform effort called Project GRAD told the audience how his program boosted reading and math test scores in schools dominated by students still learning English as a second language. The program is scheduled to start in the San Fernando area this summer.

In addition to specific reading and math programs, Project GRAD offers $6,000 college scholarships to high school students who meet several academic requirements, scholarships paid for by donations from businesses and charitable foundations. Before Project GRAD, executive director Jim Ketelsen said, many lower-income parents and students in Houston didn't set their sights on college.

``Parents told us, We were afraid to talk about college because we knew we were too poor to afford it,'' said Ketelsen, the former CEO of the Tenneco, Inc. oil company.

Representatives of a school-business alliance in Silicon Valley discussed their efforts to boost the achievement of 43,000 students spread out among 14 school districts. Their effort, dubbed ``Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network,'' paired business and district leaders to find and pay for new educational programs and track their progress.

James Brown, former chief of Palo Alto schools and now Glendale's superintendent, advised the audience to work with a manageable handful of schools, not the entire 700,000-student Los Angeles district at once.

``Take a high school and a feeder middle school and work with them,'' he said. ``You can do it in L.A. . . . But you have to get something you can wrap your arms around.''

Other speakers discussed the partnership between the University of Southern California and its surrounding schools and a program to let corporate executives spend a day as a school principal.

Many business representatives in the crowd already perform some kind of charitable work with schools. But after listening to the presentations, several said their efforts needed more focus.

``What we've been doing up to this point has been pretty piecemeal,'' said Rick Miller, vice president of business development and public affairs at West Hills Hospital. The hospital, for example, has let high school students shadow its workers and doctors, he said.

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PHOTO Gary Hart, California's secretary of education, says business must be involved in reforming the public education system.

David Sprague/Daily News