By Michaela Bishop
Northeast News
July 15, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — This August, students of Alta Vista High School will walk into a new school with many new changes.

This past Saturday, roughly 50 volunteers gathered at the new Alta Vista High School building, 1524 Paseo Blvd., to work on basic landscaping outside the building. After rehabilitation work is complete on the building— which was recently acquired by the Guadalupe Centers Inc., — the high school will hold up to 350 students.

Area AT&T employees, and members of their AT&T Pioneers retirement group, donated their time to shovel and spread mulch around plants and bushes surrounding the building, plant new trees and pulled weeds. Chris Lester, Senior Public Relations Manager for AT&T Media Relations, said they planned the “Day of Service” to coincide with the National Council of La Raza Conference, which is sponsored in part by AT&T, to help highlight the work that the Guadalupe Center is doing to serve the Latino community in Kansas City.

Jean Paul Chaurand, Chief Operations Officer of the Guadalupe Centers Inc., kicked off the event by giving a short speech, thanking all volunteers. Ivelisse Fairchild, the Vice President of Resource Development for NCLR, said the Guadalupe Centers were the NCLR’s first affiliates.

“The Guadalupe Centers is doing great work in Kansas City,” Fairchild said. “How can we not come out and support it?”

Lester explained the importance of AT&T employees to give back to the community and volunteer for a project at least once a year.

“This project is a huge priority for AT&T,” Lester said. “It is a major priority to be involved and not just being a business.”

Chaurand added that the Guadalupe Centers have had a long standing relationship with AT&T and how proud the Guadalupe Centers was when AT&T offered their services.

Al Dimmitt, Superintendent of the soon-to-open Alta Vista High School, expressed his thoughts in the opening speech thanking all the volunteers and mentioning how they all have played a role to getting where the high school is today.

“Our mission of providing a world class education to the students of our community is taken very seriously,” Dimmitt said. “But there is no way that could have happened without the partnership of the help of folks like you, our collaboration with businesses like AT&T, our collaboration with NCLR and their support of our educational program has been huge.”