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Moving From Punishing Students Who Misbehave To Understanding The Causes

Moving From Punishing Students Who Misbehave To Understanding The Causes

By Claudia Rowe The Seattle Times (TNS)

SEATTLE — For years, Franky Price terrified his teachers.

As a third-grader, he pantomimed killing other students by sliding his finger across his throat. In fourth grade, he swore at anyone who angered him. The worst moment came one month into fifth grade, after Franky wrote down his violent fantasies.

He never planned to act on any of them, but the behavior alarmed educators enough to get him suspended from elementary school, then expelled — placing him among the thousands of children statewide and across the country who are removed annually from elementary-school classrooms.

To Franky, the punishments barely registered. Raised in a family of drug users and dealers, he wandered with them from one dingy apartment to the next. Often, there was no bed to sleep on and nothing but plastic covering the windows.

Franky never told anyone. He knew it would mean foster care.

Instead, he acted out, finally scrawling his inner world onto a piece of notepaper that another student showed their teacher.

“He took one look at me and said, ‘You need to go,'” recalled Price, now a senior at Chief Sealth High School. “Honestly, I’m surprised [Child Protective Services] wasn’t called — how does a fifth-grader even know about the things I was writing? I wish someone would have pulled me aside and asked: ‘Why do you feel this way?’ I mean, I was only 10 years old. But it was just ‘Go, get out of here.'”

Franky’s experience is not uncommon. In Washington, school suspension starts with kids as young as 5 years old, often beginning a downward spiral. Data show that certain children are punished again and again — missing weeks of class without a noticeable change in behavior. A third-grader from Seattle’s Highland Park Elementary, for example, was suspended nine times last year.

Such trends, only recently tracked, are raising serious concerns among legal advocates, parents and others who say schools rely too often on punitive discipline, especially for the very young.
“They’re whole children and they have behaviors,” said Jennifer Harris, policy analyst for the Education Ombuds, a state agency that mediates between families and schools. “That’s what we’re supposed to be teaching them — that there are rules. But instead, we’re tossing them out of school. I’ve got a 5-year-old being written up as a sexual harasser. I know about 5- or 6-year-olds who’ve hit their teacher’s wrist and that’s cast as assault.”

In general, elementary-school suspensions follow the same pattern as discipline for older students: a surprising number of kids sent home for lesser offenses like disrespect, and black children suspended at rates that far outpace their enrollment.

Explanations for the latter fall, roughly, into two camps: those who say African-American kids, like Franky, more often flout schoolhouse norms; and those who insist that mostly-white educators frequently escalate misunderstandings into punishment.

But when it comes to suspensions, growing research suggests there is a less contentious — and more productive — way to handle students, one that views misbehavior not as a personal attack but as a language signaling children’s neurological state.

Teaching through this lens has given educators a powerful new tool for handling difficult outbursts, and it is getting results in schools from Boston to Los Angeles, including 12 in Washington state. Teachers in at least one Spokane school have watched suspensions drop by half.

Such an approach could have been transformational for Franky. Because for all the fear he caused in teachers, it is teachers he remembers most fondly. Compared with his life outside of school, they were the safest people he knew.

Put simply, certain experiences — including events as common as divorce — can be traumatic for children and harm their prefrontal cortexes, the part of the brain in charge of self-control and abstract reasoning. As a result, kids who grow up in chaotic or unstable homes may appear unfocused in class or react to off-the-cuff remarks as threats, precisely the sorts of behavior coded “disruptive” or “disrespectful” on school discipline spreadsheets.

“It’s as if their hair’s on fire, and you’re asking them to write their name,” said Kristy Wilkinson, who teaches third grade in Spokane, where research suggests at least 45 percent of students are growing up in homes riven by alcoholism, mental illness, domestic violence and other types of family dysfunction.

The light bulb came on for Wilkinson when she learned that kids from such households exist in a simmering state of emergency, which shows up in school as impulsivity, edginess and aggression.
“I realized that my students’ behavior wasn’t about me — it was about their story,” she said. “Taking that personal aspect out of the equation was huge.”

Wilkinson’s epiphany came not via feel-good theorists, but brain science spurred by the findings of two physicians who in 1997 discovered a link between what they called Adverse Childhood Experiences — or ACEs — and adult health problems.

The original study, by Drs. Robert Anda, with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Vincent Felitti, of Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, focused on 17,000 patients — most of them white, middle-class and educated, who reported rates of childhood trauma that surprised investigators: Nearly two-thirds had experienced at least one ACE (often, parental divorce), and 22 percent noted three or more, including substance abuse and domestic violence.

Those findings intrigued Chris Blodgett, a public-health researcher at Washington State University, who began examining school results through the ACEs lens, and believes racism could also be added to the child-trauma list. Poverty, too, is absent from the nine life events officially tracked. But it often exists alongside them.

Either way, the upshot was clear: Trauma interferes with brain systems essential to learning, and the more ACEs, the more trauma. In 2014, Johns Hopkins University published similar results.

“If this data was coming from middle-class white adults, we knew we had it in our schools,” said Wendy Bleeker, director of student support in Spokane. “It’s clear that kids are experiencing trauma. It’s clear that it’s affecting their attendance and learning. So it made sense for us to get ahead of it.”

The notion of Adverse Childhood Experiences resonated loudly at Bemiss Elementary, in Spokane, which is largely white and sits in one of the poorest ZIP codes in Washington. Until recently, Bemiss suspended more than 100 kids each year.

“Suspension was huge here,” said Jen Moore, a school psychologist. “It was just, ‘Get this kid out of my class.'”

In 2008, Bemiss became one of Blodgett’s early laboratories. First, his team educated teachers about the effects of early trauma, then helped them come up with ways to mitigate it.

Predictability, they learn, is helpful for kids with chaotic lives. At Bemiss, this shows up as daily schedules posted with large, colorful letters; student-behavior charts that progress from “super job” to “think about it” to “parent contact”; and secluded corners where children can sit and calm themselves.

You are more than your mistakes, says a poster in the quiet area just outside Wilkinson’s classroom.

Forging genuine relationships — among teachers, and between students and adults — also works. That may sound obvious, acknowledged Principal Jennifer Keck, but in many teacher-training programs it comes as an afterthought.

“So much is focused on instructional strategies — how to teach reading, how to teach math or science — but I firmly believe if we haven’t built the relationships, you won’t have instruction as rigorous as you want,” she said.

After five years of incorporating these and similar approaches, Keck watched suspensions drop by 33 percent in 2014, without forcing teachers to simply endure disruptive students. Indeed, school records show that defiance plummeted between September and April this school year.

That climate is evident in Bemiss Elementary’s cheery hallways, where teachers routinely throw an arm around students — even the most obstreperous. While test scores have bounced up and down, Bemiss is the first high-poverty school in Spokane to make it to the state finals in robotics last year.

Keck and her team walked a long road to get to this point. It took four years of monthly training and a team of teachers willing to collaborate on trauma-sensitive approaches.

“Early on, they used to ask: ˜Give us that silver bullet. Show us what to do.’ But it was not about me as a school leader deciding that,” Keck said. “It was about coming together as a staff and pooling what we knew about kids. It takes a while.”

That’s not to say that Bemiss students no longer challenge their teachers.

A fourth-grader sitting outside Keck’s office — arms crossed hard across his chest, hoodie zipped over his head and body pretzel-twisted into a tight little line — provided a recent example. He was a bottle-rocket about to explode, a live wire of rage.

Years ago the boy almost certainly would have been suspended. He had scribbled on another child’s work, thrown a marker at his teacher and stormed from the classroom.

Peggy Slotvig, who knew the child and happened to be on a break, did not immediately grill him about why he’d been sent out of class. Instead, she ushered the youth upstairs, away from front-office traffic and into an empty classroom where the two sat close together.

“We were just messing around,” he began in a high voice, describing his fight with the art teacher. “Then she said, ˜That’s no way to get a girlfriend,’ and it set me off.”

“Very good — it did set you off. Because it embarrassed you,” nodded Slotvig, aware that the student had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and no longer speaks to his mother.

“She started it,” the youth insisted, rocking slightly in his chair.

“You know what? I’m going to agree with you — she did start it,” Slotvig said. “But not to be mean. She was trying to be funny. She just didn’t know your triggers.”

It would be the boy’s responsibility to explain them, just as he had with the librarian and gym teacher, and to answer for losing his temper. Consequences are essential, notes Natalie Turner, a trainer on Blodgett’s team who worked with the Bemiss staff.

“There is a place for suspension,” she said. “There has to be accountability. But too often, that response is purely reactive. It’s not about problem-solving.”

Photo: Teacher Lauralee Klingler’s third-grade class at Bemiss Elementary School in Spokane, Wash., can be relaxed enough for a student to read lying down. Teachers have been using a trauma-informed approach to school discipline for years. (Ken Lambert/Seattle Times/TNS)

In Booming Seattle, You Have To Dig A Little Deeper To Get To The Grunge

In Booming Seattle, You Have To Dig A Little Deeper To Get To The Grunge

By Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Grunge was the soundtrack of my Gen X college life. We knew every word to Nirvana’s 1991 album, “Nevermind.” “I’m so happy ’cause today I found my friends.” And the day we found out that Kurt Cobain had died, April 8, 1994, there was a candlelight vigil in the quad.

Twenty years later, I’m feeling nostalgic for the raw alt-rock style that got its start in Seattle with bands such as Mudhoney, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, many of which were first signed by local record label Sub Pop.

Indeed, grunge seems to be making a comeback, and not just because everyone is wearing flannel shirts and combat boots. Brett Morgen’s documentary “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will be shown May fourth on HBO. Seminal L.A. girl grunge band L7 is planning a reunion this spring. And the Montclair Art Museum, in New Jersey of all places, has mounted a survey of art from the 1990s titled “Come As You Are,” after the Nirvana song.

It seemed like an interesting time to revisit Seattle, ground zero of grunge, so I booked a weekend trip with my husband. What I discovered is that the end-of-the-continent isolation and blue-collar attitude that laid the groundwork for grunge in the 1980s, according to Justin Henderson’s 2010 book, “Grunge Seattle,” are now distant memories. For the last 20 years, Seattle has been booming.

The influx of money from Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, and other Seattle-area corporations has led to a proliferation of luxury condos, high-rise office buildings, farm-to-table restaurants, and craft cocktail bars. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has a new visitor center, and the sparkling Chihuly Garden and Glass museum, which opened in 2012 at the foot of the Space Needle, have enhanced the city’s sheen.

One of Bon Appetit’s best new restaurants of 2014, Westward, is here, as is Canon, the sixth best bar in the world, according to Drinks International magazine’s ranking of the top 50. And the Ballard and Fremont neighborhoods rival Brooklyn, N.Y., and Los Angeles’ Silver Lake for cool shops and eats. Even Starbucks has upped its game with a new high-end Roastery & Tasting Room, which sells artisanal mugs, brews exclusive beans and has a line out the door.

In search of what’s left of the grunge experience, we checked into the boutique Hotel Max, which is in the thick of downtown, and in 2013 opened a floor of rooms dedicated to Sub Pop Records. The lobby decor is industrial chic with Pop Art prints by Andy Warhol, John Baldessari, and others adding color. There is also free local beer for guests during happy hour (Seattle’s Stoup Brewing was featured).

Upstairs, the Sub Pop floor has cheery, striped carpeting, and large-scale black-and-white images on the guest room doors, the work of photographer Charles Peterson, who helped define the Sub Pop aesthetic on the label’s record covers. The images are action-packed shots of Nirvana, Hole, and other grunge bands — dirty Converse high-tops, crushed Budweiser cans, swinging hair and all — in the years before they hit it big and were signed by L.A.-based record labels to multimillion-dollar contracts.

We stayed in a Max King room, which was about 250 square feet. The furnishings were modern and spare, but with fun touches, including a Crosley record player, a collection of vinyl Sub Pop records for listening and a special TV channel that plays current and classic Sub Pop videos.

The hotel is a short walk from the famous Pike Place Market. It was a nice afternoon when we arrived, so we headed there. Before hitting the food stands, we stopped in Post Alley to take selfies in front of the drips and dots on Gum Wall. (We didn’t contribute to the collective artwork, though there is a gum-ball machine in the lobby at Hotel Max with a sign that suggests that visitors do just that.) We snacked on macaroni and cheese from Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, sampled Cabernet chocolate cherries from Chukar, and ginger pepper pickles from Britt’s. Then we settled in for happy hour upstairs at Radiator Whiskey, which serves barrel-aged, smoked maple Old-Fashioneds.

For dinner, we called Uber and headed to Canlis, one of Seattle’s old-school dining institutions, open since 1950. Located in a Northwest-style, Midcentury Modern structure with cavernous rooms and stone walls, it looks like a lair for a James Bond villain. The bar was a draw, with a pianist who can play anything from Cole Porter to Coldplay. The food was nothing special (salad prepared table-side, oversalted steak and predictably delicious truffle fries). But the to-die-for views of Lake Union were worth the pricey tab. And the peanut-butter-and-jelly chocolates to take home were a nice touch.

On the way back to the hotel, we hit Bathtub Gin & Co., one of Seattle’s secret bars. Open since 2009, it’s a speak-easy in the basement of what was once an old brick hotel, now the Humphrey Apartments, that you enter through a back alley. (Hint: Look for the silver plaque near the entrance — and the line of people waiting to get in.) Suprisingly, the place was cool without trying too hard, with cozy tables and friendly service. My husband ordered the Dealer’s Choice. Not only did the bartender make him a bespoke cocktail based on his preference for a savory drink, but he also wrote down the ingredients on a piece of paper delivered to our table.

The next morning, we decided to drive by the house where Cobain died. The lush, green Denny-Blaine neighborhood with views of Lake Washington is one of the most beautiful urban areas I’ve ever seen (if you can even call it urban). Cobain’s century-old, four-bedroom house looks small compared with most of the other mansions now occupied by tech chief executives and other masters of the universe. Two benches in nearby Viretta Park serve as de facto memorials, with graffiti messages carved into the wood and love notes tucked between the slats. With a light rain falling, the place seemed peaceful.

The drizzle put us in the mood for something warm, so we headed to Ba Bar, a Vietnamese noodle shop and bakery. The oxtail pho, chicken wings and Vietnamese coffee fortified us for the afternoon. But before we turned our attention to sightseeing at Seattle Center, we wanted to check out one of the city’s newly legal recreational pot shops — merely for research purposes. Washington state legalized marijuana in 2012, and since July 2014, a handful of licensed shops have opened in Seattle, each with a different vibe. Uncle Ike’s, in the Central District, is the most slickly merchandised, with a security guard and velvet rope out front, and TV monitors inside displaying the day’s flavors. There’s even an Uncle Ike’s goods-and-glass store next door that sells knockoff Starbucks-themed vapes and pot leaf socks. Altogether, it was quite an operation, with a clientele that was upscale, and with a variety of ages.

It was a strange leap from Uncle Ike’s to the new visitor center at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but we did it, moving from self-indulgence to boundless generosity. Launched in 2000 by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, and reporting an endowment of more than $42 billion, the organization aims to reduce poverty and improve heath care, education, and access to information technology globally.

The five-gallery visitor center explains the foundation’s work through a series of interactive exhibitions that delve into its history and explore the partnerships and innovations that its funds support. There are heavy buckets to lift, so visitors can get a sense of how hard it is for people in developing countries to walk miles every day for clean water, and new inventions to explore, such as coolers that keep vaccines cold for 30 days. And don’t miss the bathrooms, which may be the best part. The door to each stall is disguised to look like a latrine in Africa, India or elsewhere, to highlight the need for sanitary facilities around the world.

Afterward, we walked to the nearby Chihuly Garden and Glass, which showcases to spectacular effect the colorful glass sculptures of Northwest artist Dale Chihuly. I’m so glad we saw it after dark; walking through the electric-looking installations, inspired by Native American blankets, hothouse flowers and the ocean, was like falling down the rabbit hole. The views of the Space Needle through the suspended sculpture in the greenhouse-style Glass House space were unforgettable.

It was still drizzling when we arrived for dinner at Westward, chef Zoi Antonitsas’ Mediterranean seafood restaurant. It is on the north shore of Lake Union, with a dock and outdoor seating for better weather, and campy seafaring-themed decor inside. We were ushered past a wall of portraits of popular seamen to our seats at the bar, which has a 25-foot boat hull for a backdrop. The oysters, all from Washington, were delicious, as were the wood-fired trout and Greek white wine.

We skipped the olive oil cake in favor of liquid dessert at Canon on Capitol Hill. The sixth best bar in the world must be one of the most exacting too. But it was worth the 45-minute wait in the rain (I’ve never seen more lines than I did in Seattle) for the Milk N’ Cookies cocktail in a ceramic milk carton filled with Cognac Landy, Ardbeg, chocolate, milk, Angostura bitters and Fernet-Branca. It was served in a Betty Boop lunch box, with a straw, a cookie and a comic book.

Not ready to call it a night, we strolled up East Pike Street, which was quite a scene with revelers hopping from one hotspot to another.

The next day, I wanted to check out the Ballard and Fremont neighborhoods before we left. Ballard, once the center of Seattle’s Norwegian seafaring community, is now hipster central. Strolling along Ballard Avenue, we stopped into the Anchored Ship Coffee Bar for locally brewed Herkimer coffee and salted Rice Krispies treats. Women’s boutique Horseshoe has clothing and accessories with a nod to Americana style (dresses by Prairie Underground, earmuffs by Pendleton, boots by Frye). Lucca Great Finds has just that (ceramics by Astier de Villatte; embroidered pillows and accessories by Brooklyn’s Coral & Tusk; teas from Mariage Freres, as well as custom cards). And Prism has modern arty jewelry, clothing, and objets (marble necklaces by Rill Rill, Wonders of Washington patches, Herbivore Botanicals beard tonic, and the like).

A wedge-shaped building on Leary Way in Ballard once was home to music producer Jack Endino’s Reciprocal Recording studio, where he recorded Nirvana’s first demos and “Bleach,” the band’s debut album on Sub Pop. Fremont used to be the center of Seattle’s counterculture but now is filled with vintage stores and high-end boutiques such as Les Amis and Essenza. Both are owned by Becky Buford and have a French country vibe, with Isabel Marant, Rachel Comey, and Giada Forte clothing, delicate earrings by RockStella and Tai, fragrances by Parfums DelRae and others.

I wished I’d had more time to explore Ballard, Fremont, and the rest of Seattle. I had a flight to catch, but not before visiting the Sub Pop store at Sea-Tac Airport. Opened in May, it’s one part record store, one part upscale Northwest gift shop. Not only are there albums for sale by Sub Pop’s indie bands of old (Nirvana, Soundgarden) and new (Sleater-Kinney, the Shins), there are also cool Sub Pop logo T-shirts, knit caps, Lighthouse Roasters Sub Pop coffee beans and more.

I left with a sweatshirt — and memories of a Seattle that’s about grunge and so much more.
___
IF YOU GO

EAT

  • Anchored Ship Coffee Bar, 5306 Ballard Ave. N.W.; (206) 484-5143
  • Ba Bar, 550 12th Ave.; (206) 328-2030, babarseattle.com
  • Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, 1600 Pike Place; (206) 956-1964, beechershandmadecheese.com
  • Britt’s Pickles, 1500 Pike Place No. 15; (253) 666-6686, brittsliveculturefoods.com
  • Canlis, 2576 Aurora Ave. N.; (206) 283-3313, canlis.com
  • Chukar Cherries, 1529-B Pike Place; (206) 623-8043, chukar.com
  • Westward, 2501 N. Northlake Way; (206) 552-8215, westwardseattle.com

DRINK

  • Bathtub Gin & Co., 2205 2nd Ave.; (206) 728-6069, bathtubginseattle.com
  • Canon, 928 12th Ave., canonseattle.com
  • Radiator Whiskey, 94 Pike St., Suite 30; (206) 467-4268, radiatorwhiskey.com

SHOP

  • Essenza, 615 N. 35th St.; (206) 547-4895, essenza-inc.com
  • Horseshoe, 5344 Ballard Ave. N.W.; (206) 547-9639, shophorseshoe.com
  • Les Amis, 3420 Evanston Ave. N.; (206) 632-2877, lesamis-inc.com
  • Lucca Great Finds, 5332 Ballard Ave. N.W.; (206) 782-7337, luccagreatfinds.com
  • Prism, 5208 Ballard Ave. N.W.; templeofcairo.com/prism
  • Sub Pop at Sea-Tac, Central Terminal, 17801 International Blvd.
  • Uncle Ike’s, 2310 E. Union St.; (844) 420-4537, uncleikespotshop.com

STAY

  • Hotel Max, 620 Stewart St.; (206) 728-6299, hotelmaxseattle.com. Doubles from $129.

SEE

  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center, 440 5th Ave. N.; (206) 709-3100, gatesfoundation.com/Visitor-Center
  • Chihuly Garden and Glass museum, 305 Harrison St.; (206) 753-4940, chihulygardenandglass.com

Photo: Don Bartletti via Los Angeles Times/TNS

Starbucks As Citizen: CEO Schultz Acts Boldly On Social, Political Issues

Starbucks As Citizen: CEO Schultz Acts Boldly On Social, Political Issues

By Angel Gonzalez, The Seattle Times (TNS)

SEATTLE — When Starbucks hosted the cream of Wall Street analysts and investors at the coffee giant’s headquarters here in December, the company did not kick off the gathering by highlighting its growing profits or its strategy for global conquest. It chose instead a video about the woes faced by the returning veterans of America’s Middle Eastern wars.

“I realize that the video you just saw and the expression and our involvement in this issue is probably an unconventional way to begin an investor conference,” CEO Howard Schultz told the audience. “But in fact, for all of us at Starbucks, it’s who we are and what we believe in.”

Such displays of social and political concerns are becoming increasingly common at Starbucks. Driving that is Schultz, a registered Democrat whose office is decorated with photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

As one of the largest and most profitable employers in the world of food retail, says Schultz, Starbucks has the heft to make its views carry influence.

“The size and the scale of the company and the platform that we have allows us, I think, to project a voice into the debate, and hopefully that’s for good,” Schultz said in an interview.

“We are leading (Starbucks) to try to redefine the role and responsibility of a public company,” he said.

While many companies talk extensively about issues that directly affect them — some energy companies, for example, like to dwell on the environment and global warming — Starbucks stands out because many of the causes it’s addressing have nothing directly to do with its core business.

In December, amid widespread angst about racial tension in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, Schultz held an impromptu forum with staffers in Seattle to talk about race relations and followed up with a letter to all employees encouraging similar dialogues across the company. Since then open forums about race have taken place at Starbucks locations in Oakland, California, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. On Sunday, the company took out a full-page ad on the back of the front section of The New York Times that asked readers “Shall we overcome?” — a reference to an emblematic song of the civil-rights movement. Schultz is expected to devote a portion of his remarks at the annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday to race relations in the U.S. Similarly, in recent years the company has come out in favor of same-sex marriage and against political gridlock in Congress, and has dipped its toe into the red-hot gun-ownership debate by asking people not to openly carry guns into its stores. It also has sought to attract attention to growing income inequality.

So much for free-market economist Milton Friedman’s maxim, embraced by corporate America in the 1980s, that a company’s sole social responsibility is to make money for its owners without breaking the law.

Schultz acknowledged that the causes he takes on sometimes stress Starbucks staffers.

“I can tell you the organization is not thrilled when I walk into a room and say we’re now going to take on veterans (issues),” just a month after decreeing that “we’re going to do something no company has ever done before, we’re going to create college education for people,” Schultz said.

Of course, many of those political stands are easy to support and hard to oppose, running little risk of alienating most customers.

Republicans and Democrats alike can rally behind veterans, and most people hate political gridlock too. The same can be said for racism.

In many cases, too, Schultz’s pleas — such as asking politicians to set aside their differences, or asking staffers to openly discuss race — fall short of proposing concrete solutions.

“I don’t know where this will go,” Schultz said during the employee forum on race relations in Seattle. “But I don’t feel, candidly, that just staying quiet as a company and staying quiet in this building is who we are and who I want us to be.”

Starbucks’ engagement does draw considerable attention to these issues and helps position the company in the eyes of customers and actual or potential employees.

It also prompts questions about whether Schultz’s ambitions go beyond the corporate sphere. In early February, Schultz was on the cover of Time magazine, which asked whether he intends to run for office. “I don’t think that is a solution,” Schultz told Time.

Devoting considerable CEO time and company resources to societal issues that have no direct bearing on earnings goes against decades of American corporate history and Wall Street’s clamor for ever-improving quarterly earnings.

Schultz, however, says Starbucks can do both. Its size and enormous visibility make it a particularly noticeable player in what experts say is a growing trend. Some even say it may influence others to follow and give American capitalism a new flavor.

“At Whole Foods we call it conscious capitalism,” says Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb, a friend of Schultz’s for more than a decade. “Government has shown its limits, and its inability to act in many cases; it’s really incumbent on business to step up to a broader view of responsibility.”

To be sure, Starbucks’ well-developed sense of righteousness is a double-edged sword. It creates expectations that companies can’t always meet, says Nancy Kahn, a Harvard Business School professor who has long studied Starbucks.

“You’re going to open the door to all kinds of people holding you up to all kinds of different standards,” she said. “Very small things can trigger great rage.”

Starbucks often draws fire for not meeting various critics’ standards: not using organic milk, crowding out independent coffee shops, not paying its baristas enough. (Starbucks recently increased starting pay across the board for store staffers and contends that it offers benefits that are rare in the retail industry, such as health care for part-time employees, 401(k) plans and stock options.)

The company got a real zinger last August when a New York Times story described the stressful life of a Starbucks barista harried by unpredictable work schedules that were created with the help of software.

That story triggered quite a bit of embarrassed soul-searching at Starbucks, Schultz said. “We are better than that, and we care more.”

As the story was hitting the newsstands, the company announced it would change its scheduling system to give workers more advance notice of their hours. “We are not perfect, we have a lot going on, and that was an area of weakness,” Schultz said.

Schultz, whose father held unsteady, poorly paying jobs, has always contended that businesses’ concerns should extend beyond the bottom line.

But Starbucks’ political and social activism intensified after Schultz, who had stepped down as CEO in 2000, retook the helm of the company in 2008 in the midst of the global financial crisis.

In a few cases, the company’s activist initiatives have shown some quantifiable results.

In 2011 the company helped launch an initiative to create and retain jobs threatened by the financial crisis — which yielded $105 million in loans to small businesses that saved 5,000 jobs, according to the company.

That summer, as bipartisan bickering about the federal budget deficit raged in Washington, D.C., Schultz urged his fellow captains of industry to stop campaign donations in order to pressure lawmakers into reaching a debt deal and get the American economy out of “a cycle of fear and uncertainty.”

The move drew the support of more than 100 business leaders, according to Schultz, who listed 25 of them — including the CEOs of AOL and J.C. Penney — in an open letter. It didn’t redraw the political landscape — but it brought attention to the role corporate money plays in politics, and to the frustration of businessmen with the D.C. stalemate.

Some other initiatives undoubtedly generate more press than pressure.

In December 2012, as congressional bickering went on, Starbucks launched another campaign — with baristas writing “come together” on customers’ cups in Washington, D.C.

Sometimes a measure intended to strengthen Starbucks’ own workforce is also a very public broadside on a charged social issue — such as when it decided last year to subsidize college for its U.S. baristas, in a well-publicized deal with Arizona State University.

The move served as a vehicle for Schultz to air concerns about growing inequality of opportunities and what he called the “fracturing of the American dream.”

ASU President Michael Crow said he worked hard to vet Schultz in order to make sure it was not a self-serving scheme.

“In his case it comes from a very, very deep interest in making sure every person has an equal chance of success,” Crow said. “Most corporate leaders, they believe the path to success is the narrowing of their calculus. Howard takes the opposite view.”

Perhaps no issue has been embraced more tightly by Starbucks in the past two years than the well-being of the returning U.S. veterans.

Schultz says he first began thinking about the issue when giving a speech at West Point a few years ago, and his interest grew as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates joined the Starbucks board.

Last March, Schultz committed $30 million of his personal fortune to research on post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, as well as initiatives to help veterans transition to civilian life, such as Team Rubicon.

Starbucks has vowed to hire 10,000 veterans and military spouses by 2018. So far, it says, it has hired 3,300.

Schultz also wrote “For Love of Country,” a book about veterans with Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, published last year. Last month Chandrasekaran announced he would quit The Washington Post to found a media company in Seattle that would partner with Starbucks in order to tell stories about social issues, starting with veterans.

“If you can tell me somebody else has done more, I don’t know who they are,” said General Peter Chiarelli, the former Army Vice Chief of Staff, who took Schultz to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, last year.

Schultz is not the only CEO of a huge publicly traded company to dedicate a considerable amount of personal time — and company resources — to social responsibility. Unilever CEO Paul Polman is also an outspoken advocate for corporations standing for something other than profit.

Former Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, who has weighed in on the side of Democrats on issues such as economic inequality, said being a CEO “doesn’t mean you have to abdicate your citizenship. You still have a right to voice your opinion on things. As a matter of fact, you have an obligation to voice your opinion on things.”

What gives Starbucks, Costco Wholesale, and other companies the leeway to be outspoken is above-par results. Starbucks shares have outperformed the S&P 500 index by a factor of six since early 2009.

Schultz calls that performance “the price of admission” to be able to tackle policy issues and to pay for above-average perks.

Wall Street so far seems to accept that a Starbucks investment comes with a dose of political agitation.

“Everyone knows Howard Schultz has a view on a lot of things,” says Andy Barish, an analyst with Jefferies who was present at the investor meeting in Seattle. The company has been doing well, said Barish, and “at the end of the day that’s the most important part.”
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HOWARD SCHULTZ SPEAKS OUT

  • On taking stands:
    “The divide between profitability and doing the right thing is collapsing…I also think there’s a seismic shift in what an employee wants from a company today.”
  • On Rudy Giuliani:
    “I find Rudy Giuliani’s vicious comments about President Obama ‘not loving America’ to be profoundly offensive to both the president and the office, and yet another example of the extreme rhetoric that continues to divide our country.”
  • On gay marriage:
    To a shareholder critical of the company’s support for same-sex marriage: “Sell your shares.”

Photo: Ken Lambert via Seattle Times/TNS

Lower Fares No Substitute For Higher Wages

Lower Fares No Substitute For Higher Wages

The idea of helping low-income people by subsidizing their fares on public transportation sounds noble. It truly does. But as a means of confronting the national problem of meager paychecks, it’s rather misdirected.

All eyes are now on Seattle, which has started offering discount fares to riders whose household income does not exceed twice the federal poverty level. The growing gap in wealth between the affluent and the working poor is a national woe — especially in boom cities like Seattle, where rising real estate values are forcing lower-paid workers to commute from the suburbs.

“It’s people doing really well and people making espresso for people who are doing really well” is how King County Executive Dow Constantine, also head of Sound Transit, described the situation.

But one might then ask, Why aren’t the people making espresso doing better?

Public transportation is typically funded through the fares users pay and considerable government subsidies. So the Seattle area’s reduced-fare ORCA Lift program is being supported by the taxpayers and the better-off passengers.

On one level, that sounds reasonable. But on another, it amounts to an accommodation of inadequate pay. The public is easing the market pressure on the employers to boost pay.

Walmart has never been shy about connecting its low-paid workers with Medicaid or food stamps — in effect asking the taxpayers to subsidize its labor force and its bottom line. Four of Sam Walton’s heirs currently sit in the top 10 on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans, with a combined net worth of close to $160 billion.

There’s been much heralding of Walmart’s recent decision to raise its entry-level wage to $10 an hour (because of a tightening labor market). That’s still less than the federal minimum wage in 1968, which would be $10.58 in today’s dollars.

Back in Seattle, Basro Jama, a Somali immigrant supporting two children, earns less than $25,000 a year after taxes working a full-time job, according to The New York Times. She commutes from her home in Tukwila to her assignment in downtown Seattle cleaning offices. Thanks to her new reduced-fare card, she saves $10 a week, or nearly 2.5 percent of her paycheck.

Why in heaven’s name is a full-time worker in an expensive part of the country taking home only $25,000? The real estate barons charging sky-high rents to top-paid professionals can darn well hand their workers another $10 a week so they can travel to the job. They’re the ones who should be giving Jama a 2.5 percent raise.

Or perhaps they’d like to vacuum and clean the office tower toilets themselves.

San Francisco has long run a reduced-fare program for the poor, but few people have signed up for it. That’s largely because the means-testing adds a messy layer of bureaucracy to what should be a simple transaction of buying a ticket or fare card.

Obviously, the applicants must provide documentation of their low income. The ORCA Lift program requires different income verification documents — if you are in certain benefits programs, if you have no income, if you are employed — plus basic identification. And other people must be hired to oversee the process of issuing the cards.

A higher minimum wage makes so much more sense than means-testing for certain public services. Seattle has been a national leader in raising its minimum, currently $15 an hour. That way, the beneficiaries of the workers’ labor are paying for it.

There’s been an unfortunate mindset across the land that employers of low-skilled workers have a right to labor at a fixed low price. Let’s not validate it.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: Lee LeFever via Flickr