DATE: Friday, October 31, 1997              TAG: 9710300654

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: Making a Differnce 

TYPE: Eduction 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   52 lines

NESTLE WORKERS PITCH IN TO PAINT SUFFOLK SCHOOL

It was no Sistine Chapel, this painting job. But volunteers from the Nestle Beverage Co. showed Michelangelo-like fervor in following through on what started out as a ``one-day project'' to paint battered hallway lockers at Forest Glen Middle School.

Some 600 of them.

Three shades of green were used - for the three different grade-level halls in the school.

Evenings. Weekends. Mornings for some third-shift employees who got off work at 7:30 a.m. and were wielding spray cans of ``forest green'' by 8.

Spanning most of the summer.

``They were just really committed to making it work,'' said Assistant Principal Sandra Witcher.

``I can paint my house without a problem,'' laughed now-experienced locker painter Okpum White, whose job is in the human resources office at Nestle. She coordinated the volunteer effort.

The Nestle folks, one of four community ``partners'' of Forest Glen Middle, last year asked the school how it could help. Told the lockers could use sprucing up, the company offered money for special paint and the time of some of its employees.

A school maintenance worker quickly dispelled the one-day estimate. ``He didn't think I knew what I was getting into,'' White said. He was right.

So the project was rescheduled for the summer, and about five employees started showing up when they could, a few hours here and there, on their own time. They protected walls and floors with tape and paper. They sprayed and sprayed - gray inside, one of the greens on the outside. Tape, paint. Tape, paint. Locker after locker.

They began before school let out in June, working whatever days they could, and finished up just before students returned in September. School officials singled out the efforts of White and David Green, a maintenance mechanic at Nestle. Both have seventh-graders at the school.

``We want our children to be proud of our work,'' White said. Their kids also helped - by taping, not painting. ``We weren't that brave,'' White said.

She, in turn, gave special credit to Green, who often showed up after his midnight shift. Green kept reminding the others that they had to keep their company's promise.

``They were very dedicated,'' White said. ``They said, `We started - we've got to finish this.' It wasn't me saying we had to finish.''

Whoever said it, it got done.

``It made it brighter,'' Assistant Principal Witcher said. ``It just transformed the physical climate of the school. And that improves student performance.''

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