Last spring, CAA — as part of its 9-month-old pro bono partnership with Los Angeles Unified School District — supported the launch of the L.A. Students Most in Need Fund to raise crisis-relief money for meals and supplies for families impacted by the pandemic.
Now, the CAA Foundation is launching a further initiative, Ready Set Learn, a multi-pronged effort to help students, parents and teachers as the fall semester starts with remote learning on Aug. 18. The effort encompasses donations, volunteerism and partnerships. The support comes as distance learning presents ongoing challenges for the educational system.
“One of the gaps we’ve seen since March is that it’s more difficult to provide individualized attention in a Zoom class of 20 or 30 students,” LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner tells The Hollywood Reporter.
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To help those most in need of one-on-one attention, Ready Set Learn is helping recruit tutors for a pilot program, the Step Up Tutoring platform, that will connect volunteers with students, chosen by teachers and principals. “One of the biggest needs right now is tutoring,” says the CAA Foundation’s Deborah Marcus. Some CAA agents will be among the volunteers, and Mattel, a corporate supporter of Ready Set Learn, will also promote the volunteer opportunity to their employees. The volunteer commitment involves two hours a week and the pilot program will first roll out for 500 fifth and sixth grade students from the Huntington Park, Fremont and Taft school communities. Beutner points out that, since the tutoring will be done virtually, it’s likely more practicable for many people. “If before an individual wanted to tutor, they had to be somewhere at a very specific time. Now it’s much more flexible,” says Beutner. “We have to support individual students.” To volunteer, go to caa.com/readysetlearn.
The CAA Foundation and LAUSD are also working with the platform Donors Choose to help get teachers the technology they need for distanced education. While LAUSD has been able to provide digital devices to students who need them in the district — “we’ve made a considerable effort since March to make sure we’ve connected every student,” says Beutner — many teachers do not have adequate computers to teach remotely. “Historically on Donors Choose,” says Marcus “teachers have posted to fund projects for their classrooms that are more in the realm of school supplies but not computers for themselves to be able to deliver a lesson. This is now an allowable use.” For students, one of the other most requested tech supplies right now on Donors Choose is headphones. “Because students are sitting in their homes with their brothers and sisters and parents working from home,” says Marcus. Ready, Set, Learn will also promote and support efforts on Donors Choose to provide racial equity materials for classrooms.
L.A. Unified, which announced on Aug. 16 a coronavirus testing and contact tracing program for students, staff and families, is the second-largest school district in the nation, and more than 80 percent of families in LAUSD live in poverty and 82 percent of students are Black or Latino. A survey district found earlier this year that 57 percent of families include at least one parent who lost a job during the COVID pandemic. To respond to the overwhelming economic need in L.A., the district launched and has run 63 Grab n Go food centers, distributing more than 50 million meals since schools closed. “We’re the largest food relief effort in the nation,” says Beutner. As part of the launch of Ready, Set, Learn, the CAA Foundation is announcing that 1st Century Bank is making a $25,000 donation to the L.A. Students Most in Need fund to further support the food centers.
That donation to the fund is one of the latest to date in an effort that has so far raised $22 million. The fund launched with a personal donation by CAA president Richard Lovett of $250,000, which was matched by the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation and the Ballmer Group. Others who have donated include Matthew McConaughey’s just keep livin foundation, J.J. and Katie Abrams, Ali Larter, and the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation, which donated $250,000 and also committed a $250,000 challenge grant. The CAA Foundation, which has long made support of public education a core mission, is reaching out to other corporations to join in the effort. It encourages companies who want to become involved to also go to caa.com/readysetlearn. “They can submit information on how they would like to help. We want to invite people to support L.A. Unified,” says Marcus.
Beutner notes other programs and offerings that have come about thanks to the partnership with CAA. The agency helped connect LAUSD with director James Cameron who created a summer-school science class called Voyage of the Titanic. “James participated in the culminating class from New Zealand where he’s busy filming Avatar,” says Beutner. And, with the support of CAA, LAUSD created a series with Snapchat called “The A-List Book Club” in which four stars talked about books that they love, including Alicia Keys (who choose Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming) and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’s Noah Centineo (Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist.) Students in the district are eligible to receive a digital copy of each book for free.
“Richard [Lovett] believes as I do that public education is the foundation on which our community is built,” says Beutner. “The children need us.”
