Loss of mentor program sends shock waves

Devastating. Horrible. Crazy. Heartbroken.

That’s the way mentors for Mentor Rhode Island responded after hearing the Warwick School Committee cut all funding for the mentorship program, which pairs mentors and mentees across Warwick’s school system to provide support, advice, and friendship to 160 kids around the city.

“It would be horrible if the program were to end,” said Doug Schobel, a mentor of 10 different kids over 17 years through the Mentor RI program. “It’s crazy, and I’ve got three kids in the school system and I can tell you, even before having kids in the school system, the effect it’s had on the kids is enormous. In a mentor they have an unconditional friend.”

“I was heartbroken and devastated when I heard,” said Marcy Downey, a mentor for 22 years with six different kids via Mentor RI. “I’ve seen firsthand the positive impact this program has had on underserved children in the Warwick schools. A lot of these kids come from difficult backgrounds.” Mentor RI started in 1990 in Warwick, with a group of 10 students from Drum Rock Elementary school paired with 10 mentors from MetLife insurance. From there the program grew into the 160 mentor-mentee pairs that the organization helps maintain in Warwick today. Mentor RI helps recruit new mentors, trains them to support their mentees, matches them with a student who share similar interests, and then provides ongoing support to help the relationship between mentor and mentee run smoothly, be that alerting the school to a mentee who might need additional help, or helping to schedule better meeting times. On top of that, Mentor RI hosts gatherings in the beginning, middle, and end of the school year to celebrate the mentorship program and the benefits it provides to students, teachers, and the entire school community.

The Warwick School Committee cut the program after they received $1.5 million of the $8 million budget increase that they had requested from the city council. The School Committee ended up cutting $6.5 million from their budget, and the $102,000 Mentor RI program found its way to the chopping block.

“It hadn't even been discussed that the program may be cut, and we were surprised when it happened,” said Jo-Ann Schofield, the president and CEO of Mentor RI, on Wednesday. “We saw that the budget recommendations going in from the superintendent initially showed us at full funding.”

The $102,000 that the city puts toward Mentor RI every year only funds the Warwick mentoring program, even though many other cities and towns throughout Rhode Island have mentoring programs of their own through Mentor RI.

“To coordinate a mentoring program with 160 kids and 160 mentors is extremely labor intensive,” said Schofield, explaining where that $102,000 goes every year. “In disclosure, I don’t know how I’m going to make payroll in two weeks… As of right now I don’t know how we can run a mentor program without any funding.”

Mentor RI operates on a $720,000 budget, and the $102,000 cut represents a loss of about 15 percent of the total budget.

“We have an emergency board meeting coming up this Monday, July 30,” said Schofield. “I don’t know if we’ll come up with any other ideas at that point. I just don’t know what to do.”

Schobel’s been the mentor of Luke, now a senior at Pilgrim High School, since the second grade. While their mentoring relationship at first started in the classroom, with sessions organized by Mentor RI, over the years their relationship has become strong enough that now Luke and Schobald meet at the gym once or twice a week.

“‘Some of these kids are coming from backgrounds where the one role model they have in their life is their mentor,” said Schobel. “It’ll have a terrible effect on the kids in our community.”

Aside from being a mentor, Schobel was also a dancer at Mentor RI’s fundraiser, Dancing with the Stars of Mentoring, last year.

“I’m devastated,” said Gail Gavin, another long term mentor for Mentor RI. “I’ve reached out to my councilman, basically saying can you honestly say yourself [that] you’ve never had a mentor, and now you’re taking mentors from these kids.”

Gavin said the most rewarding part of the experience is “just to see them grow as a child, and to see them grow as a person.”

When asked about the Mentor RI program and if the department were to receive additional funding ,Philip Thornton, superintendent of Warwick schools, said “mentoring for me is right up there, it’s very high on the list.”

Mayor Joseph Solomon was disappointed with the cut, saying that because of the efforts of volunteers “it’s [the program] almost a freebie.”

“It’s not fair to our kids,” said Schofield. “We have mentors and mentees that have been meeting for five years. Like at our middle school program, more than 60 percent of those kids have been meeting with their mentors for five years or more. So these are ongoing relationships that the kids are counting on.”

Another path to continuing the program, and one that a number of School Committee members have brought up, is that mentors, since they are volunteers, could go on their own to meet their kids, without oversight from Mentor RI. But according to Schofield, that’s easier said than done.

“That’s a problem because parents need to sign off every year, and every volunteer in the school needs to get a background check every year,” said Schofield. “So if we have 160 people just showing up at the front offices of school I think it’s first, a safety issue, and second, the required documentation won’t be in place for that to happen.”

“Everyone’s heart is with their mentees and so anyway to continue that [relationship] is what [mentors] are going to do,” said Schobel. But, on the other hand, Schobel mentioned the current structure and “everyone in one room” format of the current middle school program being a major plus. As the program is currently structured in Warwick, in all middle schools with a mentoring program all the mentor and mentees meet in one room, once a week, providing a safe social structure for the kids to feel comfortable.

“It’s a great consistent structure, with all of the mentors and mentees in the same room,” said Schobel. That type of structure would disappear if Mentor RI was no longer there to organize the program.

About continuing the mentoring program with no oversight from Mentor RI, Downey, a long-time mentor said, “We can’t do that. We mentors go through workshops and training. I can’t just show up at a school. I have no right to be there. But walking in with the Mentor RI program behind me gives me that authority.”

Data backs up the positive benefits mentorship provides. According to results of an end-of-year survey done by Mentor RI for their Warwick mentees, 81 teacher respondents reported that 66 percent of mentees had improved attendance, 91 percent showed improvement in one core subject, and 95 percent showed greater self confidence.

“I wouldn’t want to be on the school committee, I wouldn’t want to be on the city council,” said Schofield. “I understand they have really difficult decisions which need to be made, but in the meantime what about the kids? The number of kids who have been touched by this program is literally in the thousands.”