We Need More Like Granny Lewis : Hard-core volunteer, both loved and feared, keeps children safe at Granada Hills High

The example of Lillian Lewis is a reminder of how important adult helpers can be to kids in school, and how many more are needed.

Lewis, an octogenarian, is a fixture at Granada Hills High School. Staff and pupils call her Granny. Reporter Timothy Williams last week described how she sits at the door checking student IDs and sending visitors to the right places. She gets up at 2:30 a.m. and commutes from South-Central Los Angeles. She is paid for three hours a day but works all of it. Popular and intimidating, she has a stentorian voice and a pinch of drill instructor in her makeup.

Granada Hills High School and the Los Angeles public schools could use more people like Granny Lewis.

No paid school jobs are going begging, but Granada Hills Principal Mary Kathleen Rattay says that the schools are short on unpaid adult volunteers.

“There are a lot of unsung heroes,” says Lawrence H. Moore, school cluster leader in the northwest Valley, “and a great deal of need.”

That need takes on a special urgency these days, with so many parents working long hours and so many schools looking for help to guard against strangers on campus.

Getting involved only takes a few hours a week and the willingness, upon signing up, to undergo a tuberculosis test and routine employee-type processing by school headquarters. You needn’t have a big, booming voice like Lewis’. Volunteers are needed to supervise kids at lunch, help in the library, do secretarial work and help staff the attendance office, where bilingualism is helpful. Granada Hills has two Korean-speaking volunteers whose help is invaluable, Rattay says. Classroom volunteers are welcome, too.

But the biggest need is in keeping schools secure. Guarding the door may not sound glamorous, but it’s vital--just ask the teachers and pupils at Granada Hills.