For the past seven years, Haynes Boone’s Dallas office has been heavily involved in diversity pipeline work with students at L.G. Pinkston High School — hosting career days, interview preparation, mock negotiations, courtroom visits and more.
This week, the corporate law firm announced a new partnership with nonprofit United to Learn that will support one of Pinkston’s feeder schools, C.F. Carr Elementary School — closing a gap in the pipeline loop, in a sense.
The new volunteer effort is a partnership of mutual benefit. On one level, it will better equip a segment of the Dallas Independent School District with the tools needed to provide its students the best education possible and set them up for future academic success. On another level, it will connect Haynes Boone with underprivileged students at the start of their educational journey, providing an opportunity to add more diverse lawyers to the legal industry should any students take an interest in the law as a result of exposure to corporate lawyers at an earlier age.
Haynes Boone kicked off the Carr Elementary partnership with several interactive student and teacher events, including a teacher appreciation lunch, a hot chocolate and movie party for students and a campus visit from Santa Claus and Olaf, the beloved snowman from Disney’s Frozen. The firm also did a service project with United Way and packaged “spas in a jar”— candles, lotion, lip balm, holiday room spray and sugar scrub — to give to Carr teachers and staff as a holiday gift this Friday, the last day of school before the holiday break.
United to Learn (U2L) works with 75 Dallas ISD elementary schools to help support student achievement and erase systemic inequities through volunteering partnerships with private and public high schools, businesses and faith-based organizations. U2L’s focus areas for carrying out its mission include improving students’ and teachers’ social and emotional health through teacher wellness initiatives and other efforts, bolstering schools’ learning environments through campus updates and accelerating students’ literacy achievement through tutoring services. U2L also fosters community activation between the schools and the volunteer partners so that the participating organizations, including law firms, can better understand the needs and main challenges of the elementary schools and can in turn better advocate for them as informed community stewards.
Like most Dallas ISD schools, Carr Elementary is located in an underserved community. According to Texas Education Agency data, nearly 98 percent of the school’s students are economically disadvantaged — in educational lingo, free or reduced lunch students. Ninety-eight percent of Carr students are also students of color.
The partnership between U2L and Haynes Boone began with a liaison: Laura Whitley, a finance partner in Haynes Boone’s Dallas office who also serves as the secretary on U2L’s board of directors. Whitley has been on U2L’s board since 2019 and has previously served as campus liaison for other DISD elementary schools, including the Charles Rice Learning Center.
Whitley said the Carr Elementary partnership was particularly attractive to Haynes Boone for three reasons: the firm’s longstanding dedication to education initiatives, the desire to expand that work to the elementary level and the partnership’s compatibility with its existing program with Pinkston. Working with Carr Elementary students means Haynes Boone will reach future Pinkston High students.
“If we’re really serious about [creating] a pipeline into the legal field, we need to start thinking about the early pre-K and elementary years,” Whitley said. “In order to have those successful high school students in the pipeline, they need to have strong reading and math fundamentals in the pre-K and elementary years.”
The focus for the first year of the Carr Elementary partnership, dubbed the “get to know you” year, will be on supporting Carr’s teachers, Whitley said. In determining that focus, Whitley said the firm met with Carr principal Carlotta Hooks to hear about the school’s biggest current needs.
“[The school’s] big need was supporting the teachers because so much is being asked of [them] on a daily basis,” Whitley said. “They’re putting so much into the students so [Principal Hooks] wants to make sure they’re getting the support they need.”
“The best way to describe what we do in this partnership is we act like a parent-teacher association or a booster club for schools,” Whitley said.
The new partnership comes at a particularly challenging time in the world of public education as teachers across the nation continue to experience burnout as they navigate the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic — often in underresourced and understaffed schools with salaries that have not kept up with inflation. According to a survey published last year by the Texas AFT union, 66 percent of educators across the state had recently considered leaving their jobs. And a Texas Education Agency report released this spring revealed that a historic number of Texas teachers — 13 percent — left their jobs between the fall of 2021 and the fall of 2022.
Specific ways Whitley envisions the firm supporting the teachers throughout the school year include providing decorations, snacks and other supplies needed for parties that the teachers hold for their students each grading period (since teachers often purchase the supplies out of their own pockets); providing nutritious snacks for students during STAAR testing; and supervising certain activities (such as last Friday’s hot cocoa/movie party) so that the teachers can enjoy some more downtime.
Whitley said future student-facing support could include having a presence at career day so firm lawyers and staff can explain their day-to-day jobs and spending time with kids during recess, lunch or other downtime to serve in a mentor capacity.
What does Whitley hope that her colleagues get out of the program?
“What I’m most excited about … is getting our attorneys and staff members in Dallas on campus to see public education at work and see how we can support the schools, and through that grow and learn ourselves,” Whitley said. “I usually make it in about 12 minutes door-to-door, so [the school] is literally in our backyard. The impact that we can have if we take an hour out of our day to go talk with the kids and help give the teacher some relief is important for seeing the opportunities to impact our community and drive the future of the city.”
Plus: “There’s also the feel-good component needed to balance the life of a lawyer,” she added.
“I can think of no happier place than an elementary school; it’s just a mood lifter being in them,” she said. “It’s hard not to leave smiling. It’s a good balance to the stress that can come with the practice of law.”