Smallscreen Reviews

NBC's School Pride Cheryl Hines and Denise Cramsey interview, review

By April MacIntyre Oct 15, 2010, 17:32 GMT

09/10/2010 - Cheryl Hines - 2010 Stand Up to Cancer Benefit - Arrivals - Sony Pictures Studios - Culver City, CA, USA © Amanda Meredith / PR Photos

"School Pride" is NBC's inspirational makeover for American schools, crumbling from lack of funds and neglect.

Enter funny pretty lady turned filmmaker Cheryl Hines and producer Denise Cramsey, who are both Executive Producers of "School Pride" which premiers this Friday night, 8:00 pm, 7:00 Central on NBC.

Decrepit public schools and the whys of how they became that way are the fodder for NBC’s new reality series that takes a gang of motivated angels to reinvent a run down campus.
 
It is interesting to note, that there are many American public schools which are well kept, clean and maintained on meager budgets because the local communities support them and fight to raise money and volunteer. 

Yet there are pockets of schools, mostly inner city areas, that are deconstructed by vandalism and zero involvement from the community and families of attending children.  These schools are now rat-infested hell holes where demoralized teachers are struggling to keep kids interested in curriculum.

What this series with good intentions reveals is that local school boards for many of these depressed areas need to be booted out of their jobs, as mismanaged funds and lack of real leadership is revealed. 

Case in point: Enterprise Middle School's hapless principal who is caught with his pants down over a treasure trove of aging supplies the teachers needed desperately in a secret room in the basement, but never know were available to them.  He appears incompetent.
 
The series, which premieres tonight at 8 p.m., is an “Extreme Makeover: School Edition.”

In each episode, a comely crew of do-gooders with some skills comes to a school at the behest of students who request the makeover.
 
Handsome Tom Stroup, is a “SWAT commander”; Susie Castillo is an interior designer and former Miss USA; Kym Whitley is former substitute teacher; and Jacob Soboroff, a journalist commit to a whirlwind 10 days as they secure community volunteers and contractors in refurbishing the run-down Enterprise middle school in Compton, Calif. for the first episode.
 
The show has lined up benefactors like Microsoft and People magazine, willing to sponsor and underwrite the cost of repairing the schools.  Quid pro quo, air time and free advertising for school pride bennies.
 
At Enterprise, Jacob interviews Omar, the city’s head of school maintenance, who says that he has a backlog of 1,000 requests for repairs.  What the plan of action is other than looking at all these piled up papers is a mystery.
 
The larger problems of misdirected taxpayer funds, school board incompetence, corruption and complete laziness on the communities part are not addressed.  Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is interviewed, and he throws the strudel at labor, special interests and uninvolved parents as the trifecta of fail for these schools.

The heart is in the right place by Hines and company, but the wrong questions are being asked.
 
Monsters and Critics spoke to Cheryl Hines and Denise Cramsey about this series with other online journalists.

The Deadbolt:   Now where did the original idea for School Pride come from?

Cheryl Hines:    Well it came from a very grassroots effort. It, you know, back in LA, I was feeling the need to reach out and help a school just because I'm a mom and I see my daughter go to school. I was just feeling the urge.

    So I picked up the phone and I called a school in Compton, Carver Elementary where I was volunteering in a reading program. And I talked to Dr. Jackie Jacqueline Sanderlin, the principal there. And I asked her if she needed any help at her school. And she said yes.

    So we joined forces. And we started renovating her school with the help of the community and the help of the school district. And it was so successful, we started another school. And at that time, one of my friends said, this should be a show so you guys can show the country what you're doing.

    And I met Denise Cramsey who's an expert at what she does. And we teamed up together and NBC loved the idea. And the rest is history.

The Deadbolt:    And Denise, aside from the school aspect, how is the show different from something like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition?

Denise Cramsey:    Well I think the biggest difference is that this is a makeover done by the people not to the people. Meaning that the teachers, and students, and parents actually do the work. They don't get sent away while we do it for them. So that's one difference which I think is different than any other makeover shows on television.

    And the other differences are the impact of these renovations. It's not just one family or even one neighborhood. It's literally sometimes 600 families and lasting for generations to come.

So we feel really good about how many people are able to be helped by what we can do at one school.

And then the last thing, there's a social mission attached to this. In that, the state of education right now is not good. There's lots of publicity about that. So we're trying to encourage people to take one little step to do the one thing that they can control which is make the environment good for the kids.

And that's our little way of contributing to what we hope will become a national effort to fix up our schools.

Monsters and Critics:  It was a very emotional moment when Omar went into the Enterprise Middle School gym and saw what had been done, and collapsed on Jacob.

Cheryl Hines:    It's one of my favorite moments. I know.

M&C:    My questions for you are, how did you get Microsoft and People Magazine to sponsor specific nooks in the school? How did those meetings go down?  And how did you approach these corporate benefactors to partner with you on this reality series?

Denise Cramsey:    What we did is it sounds really simplistic to say we picked up the phone and we asked them if they wanted to help. But that is in fact what we did.

We sat down and did some research about what companies already had education initiatives and already put money towards those things. And we came up with our list. And then we just started calling people and asking them to partner with us.

We thought the cleanest sort of way, the most organic way for a sponsor to get involved is for them to take over a room that fit in with what their brand was. So hence, People gets a reading room. And Microsoft gets a computer lab or a science and technology center.

And what we found when we picked up the phone was people were so glad that we called. And, you know, wanted to do even more than what we were asking them to do. It is an easy sell as they say.

Because so many corporations already have money earmarked for education. And because it is a way to get across both a pro social message for the company as well as something that fits so nicely to their brands.

M&C:    Cheryl,  I was a huge fan of your Hollywood Residential series on Starz. I just thought it was brilliant. Your comedy instincts are really spot on.  Are you going to straddle and do things that are more altruistic like this series? Or are you going to go back into comedy?

Cheryl Hines:    Well this project came about just from a personal passion of mine. So I'm not really veering off my comedy path. I feel like I'm branching out.

So, yes, I'm still have an acting career and on the comedy path. But this project just felt like it needed to happen. So we made it happen.

M&C:    Well, you directed a film. You're producing.

Cheryl Hines:    Yes.

M&C:    You're an actress. You're a writer. What discipline is your favorite?

Cheryl Hines:    That's really tough. Because of course I love acting. You know, I've spent .the better part of my life wishing and hoping I can have an acting career and studying and preparing myself for that. So I really love it and appreciate that part of my life.

And then with producing School Pride, I have found a completely different satisfaction that comes from producing a show like School Pride.  I mean I have produced other shows before which has been a lot of fun and I have a great time with my friends and we make comedies.

But School Pride is it's difficult to explain but it's been such an important part of my life. And it has touched me in such a way just to be at these different schools and meet these different kids and different parents and teachers, it really has I don't know.

Somehow it really added to my life in a lot of major ways. Whereas it's not, it wasn't just yeah, I got the part. Now I get to go, you know, have a great time with whoever, Larry David which is great.

But this was something bigger than that. It feels bigger to me somehow.

TV America:  Cheryl, I wanted to ask you to continue the story you were telling a little while ago that it started when you were interested in helping a Compton school.

Now as it happens because there's a Compton School first here in the series, I assume that was a different Compton School that you helped at first, before the series? Is that right?

Cheryl Hines:    Yes. I actually worked on two different schools in Compton before we started working on Enterprise Middle School which turned out to be our first episode of School Pride.  But it was a great place...Yes go ahead?

TV America:      Were the other two elementary or middle or high schools? The two you'd worked on?

Cheryl Hines:    The other two were elementary. Yes, the other two were elementary schools. And then we felt like Compton was such a great place to start School Pride because we knew the community well. We knew that they were excited to help us.

Compton is great community and the people there are hard workers. They're great parents. They're people that really are interested in the children and wanted to help and do something.

So the school board as well, was very helpful and supportive.  So we just felt like it was the perfect place to start.

TV America:      Okay then speaking of hard-working communities, and it's a question for either you or Denise, the Detroit one stands out from the others in some ways. First of all, most of them are in California and that's in Detroit.  And it's kind of like a magnet school. I can think of only one other schools in there. So kind of tell us how you picked the Detroit school and what the impressions were of that one as you got to work with it?

Denise Cramsey:    The way that we picked all of our schools is the kids themselves submit tapes to us. That they work with their teachers or parents and they actually create a video tour of the school and they interview their teachers.

And then what spoke to us about this school in Detroit is that they are a small high school, very much a neighborhood-oriented high school. And they have a 97% graduation rate and 97% of those kids go onto secondary education.

Which those numbers are striking in any community in the country but certainly in Detroit where the average high school graduation rate is 54%. So these kids were excelling and that's the combination that we needed. We needed a school that needed physical help and a community that was passionate enough to help us execute our plans.
So the idea of charter school versus magnet school versus public school hasn't really come into it for us. It's more about what schools need our help and what communities are willing to do the work to get things done.

And Detroit was on both counts.

TV America:    I was really struck when they found out that all those paper and teaching supplies were sitting in a warehouse in Compton and nobody was using them. Could either of you kind of describe to me how you felt when you found that out?

Denise Cramsey:    I think what I felt most of all and what all of us felt was sad. That the system of American education not just in Compton but everywhere is not really working. I mean those supplies were there because they were afraid to use them up.

    Because they didn't know when they were going to get another batch of supplies. So it's tricky. There is something broken in the distribution system of American education with supplies, with money, with communication.

    We had another school where, you know, money for carpet came in before money for a new roof. So they put in the carpet and then it rained and the carpet got ruined. We need to fix the distribution system.

    So when we saw that warehouse I think I mostly just felt sad that we can't find a way to get teachers what they need.

US Townhall.com:  I'm just curious to know since you really are kind of going into a community and basically knocking down a public building, can you just sort of walk us through the whole process of doing that?

Denise Cramsey:    Well one thing to say just to correct, we aren't actually knocking down and rebuilding.
We are working within the existing structure and renovating areas of it. So that makes your question a little bit easier to undertake. It is mostly aesthetic work that we're doing and then some basic repairs.

    But having said that, it does require the school board to be behind us 100%. It requires the mayor's office and the city code office to be behind us 100%. And luckily what we found is when we went out there and said, we want to do this and we're going to mobilize; people moved a lot quicker than they were used to moving.

    And I think we certainly in the first meeting and people would say, when do you want to do this? And I would say two weeks from now and they would start laughing. But somehow everybody rolled up their sleeves and we got it done in two weeks.

    So it can happen. And I think, you know, it helps to have the power of the TV show asking you to hurry up and get it done. But it was really just cooperation across the board that helped us get there.

US Townhall.com:  Have you ever tried to go into a community or to a particular school where they said no?

Denise Cramsey:    We did have that happen to us. Where a school district did not want to do it. And really what it is is it's fear. It's fear that what are we going to do? It's fear that we're not going to be able to do it properly and take care of the kids.

    So what we were able to do was to pull the students and parents together and say, call in. Tell them how much you want this. And the public pressure built so that we actually got the school district to change its mind.

    So in the end, everywhere we went allowed us to be there. There were some doubters at first. But once the community made its voice heard, we were able to get in and do what we wanted to do.

    So I think that's a lesson for communities everywhere. If you organize and use your voice, use your power you can make things happen.

US Townhall.com    Are there are any upcoming projects that you're going to be acting in that we should be made aware?

Cheryl Hines:    Well we're shooting another season of Curb Your Enthusiasms right now.  So I'm just working on that. And I have been spending a lot of time with School Pride. So that's it for right now.

EDUinreview.com: I want to know what it is that repairing these schools and reviving the environment is ultimately doing for the kids and even the teachers?

Cheryl Hines:    Well it sends a very loud message that we care about them. And when kids and teachers are showing up at school every day and ceiling tiles are falling on their heads and they can't use a water fountain it feels like nobody cares about them. And that's how they feel and understandably so.

    So when we go in and listen to what they want and work with them. And make big changes, they feel like someone cares. And I think it gives them a sense of pride and it gives them a sense of school pride.

Denise Cramsey:    If I could just add to that. Of the seven schools we did, we've done follow-ups with them. Every single one reports that attendance is up. And that the classes are actively engaged more in learning because of the space.

    And all of the principals say that's because the kids feel good now about coming to their school.

EDUinreview.com:    What can people do in their own communities to try and do these revitalization efforts for their own schools?

Cheryl Hines:    Well I think they need to engage the principal of the school. They need to just like Denise was talking about, come up with a very organized plan. What they want to accomplish and how they're going to accomplish it.

    I know that there are lots of schools across the country that have websites which is a great way to communicate with the students, and the teachers, and the community members. So I think that's a good jumping off point.

Denise Cramsey:    The other thing is to go to their alumni directory, to go to their own students and find out , oh, this one has a construction business. This one owns a paint store. This one, you know, works with computers.

    And to call those people and say is there anyway you can support your school? Because really in the end and understanding that we're a TV show and that brings different things with it. But in the end, what we did is pick up the phone and call people and ask for help. And they came through.

    And I think the school spirit is alive and well in this country. And schools just have to not be afraid to pick up the phone and ask for help.