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A college drop-out abandons a lucrative tech career for a life of inner-city poverty – and hopes to save an urban school district from oblivion

Continued from page 3

West also visits twice a month with a group of fifth-graders at Weeks Elementary School, a windowless building with bunkerlike rooms and no playground. West cringes at the expanse of patchy grass and mud. West helped get money for playgrounds at several other schools (then showed up and helped put them in the ground) back in 2005, when he served on the city's Public Improvement Advisory Committee, a citizen body that hands out money for neighborhood projects.

Sitting at a long table, mulling over the gray meat patties and the overripe bananas, the students at Weeks straighten up when West looks them in the eyes and shakes their hands like adults. Up in the classroom, they're eager to know if he'll be able to go on a skiing field trip to Weston with them. He tells them the most exciting thing in his life is that he's running for school board.

They walk through the organization of the education system — from teacher to principal to superintendent. With a mix of pride and embarrassment, one student says they've all heard that the superintendent called some women "the B word."

"Females don't like that," another says.

West indulges their laughter but takes them in a different direction.

"What are the biggest issues facing fifth-graders?" he asks, as if he's addressing a group of parents. At first, they don't understand the question. When they do, their litany of complaints — having to wear uniforms, being fed "nasty" food, not having recess on Tuesdays — keeps West at the front of the class, sitting on a kiddy chair that puts his knees nearly in line with his shoulders, for more than an hour.

The clock is ticking on filing his signatures to get on the ballot. But after lunch, he gets a call from a social-justice group called Communities Creating Opportunity. Its Internet connection is down. West does part-time tech support to make ends meet, and CCO is one of his clients. He breezes in, assuring the CCO employees and volunteers, "I'm here to hook you up."

The next destination is downtown. In a no-parking zone outside Kinko's, the two idle in Turner's Acura with a bank on speakerphone. She's transferring money to make a mortgage payment for Simply Equine Assisted Therapy, a program that uses horses to teach life skills to kids. West has been on the board for several years; he helped line up financing to buy a piece of land in Lee's Summit, where the group now stables its horses. Turner hangs up when the transaction is complete. They both sigh; one fire put out for the day.

At the Missouri State Office Building, Turner gets the signature sheets notarized in the Secretary of State's office. As Turner waits at the Board of Education to get the count from a district official, West darts across the street to a budget hearing in the Jackson County Courthouse. He's the chairman of the board for the University of Missouri Extension, and Jackson County legislators are about to reduce his group's appropriation. West is going to try to convince legislators not to cut those funds.

As he waits in the county chambers, Turner sends him a text message: "We got 869 signs!" West's name will appear on the school board ballot.

By the time the hearing is over, it's nearly 3 p.m. With more meetings this evening, West and Turner need to refuel.

When they walk into El Pulgarcito, a Salvadoran restaurant on Truman Road — in the 3rd District — the waitress speaks to them in Spanish. West has never studied the language, but he has picked it up well enough to talk about education with families in the Northeast and on the West Side.

"Como se dice crackers?" West asks when his soup calls for more saltines.

"Galletas," the waitress says with an appreciative smile.

After the meal, West goes back to the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council's brick-walled meeting room. The council has bought some abandoned lots and started a project called IvanHOME to oversee their sale and development. (This effort isn't to be confused with Ivanhoe House, a concept of West's in which college education majors live in kids' neighborhoods while tutoring them. UMKC and Swope Community Builders signed on, and the first round of student mentors now are living and teaching in Ivanhoe.)

At 5:15, West excuses himself to make it to a meeting of the Light Rail Task Force. Outside that meeting at the HNTB architecture and engineering firm, as task force members graze on a buffet table, West strikes up a conversation with Ed Ford, a Kansas City councilman from the 2nd District. West mentions that he's running for a seat on the school board. Ford stops West before he gets too far into his pitch.

"You had me at hello," Ford says.

At his off-the-hinges front door, West repeats the familiar chair-bucket-towel routine.

Turner says it's not that she and West are trying to live some bohemian lifestyle. They're just too busy to catch up on home repairs. But West does take pride in the fact that his life's possessions fit into the trunk of his car. "I've made a habit slowly of giving everything away," he says. "I see myself as a minimalist. I want to own as little as possible. That's one of the reasons the open-door policy has never backfired — there's nothing to take."

Last August, he decided he would live without locks. One day, West found a familiar 15-year-old rooting through a chest of drawers where Turner had once kept a digital camera. This teen was the one who broke down the front door, and he didn't want to talk. West had to call the police — something he tries to avoid.

He prefers more amicable approaches. His car has been sitting awkwardly on the front lawn since a few other neighborhood teens stole it, crashed it and brought it back with a big crack down the right side of the front bumper. West didn't call authorities. Instead, he brokered a deal with the kids and their parents. The car awaits repair until the teens' new jobs bring in the money necessary to fix it.

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