Regional schools:
Are they the answer? Do we have the will?
Bill Cala: The real obstacle is the fear of the unknown. PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
iane Cooke was a senior at East High School in 1958. Under her photo in the school yearbook, it says that her nickname is “Cookie” and that she’s planning to go to college. Cooke was one of about a dozen black teens in her class of more than 200 students. Almost all of the other students were white. By 1980, East’s yearbook shows a much more integrated senior class. By 2000, however, the school’s demographics had completely changed and most of East’s students were black and Latino. Something else occurred at East that isn’t so apparent in the pages of its yearbooks; not only did the school become more segregated, its students became poorer and economically isolated. White families left the city in large numbers for the suburbs. And the area’s once seemingly endless supply of good paying manufacturing jobs for low-skilled workers all but disappeared. Economic and social instability hit minority families especially hard, putting unprecedented stress on Rochester’s schools. All this and more has led to where we are today: city school officials staring down an ultimatum from the State Education Department to either improve student achievement at East High School, or close the school. The development doesn’t surprise at least one group of Rochester educators and community leaders. In their view,
district and state education officials have repeatedly taken the wrong approach to improving Rochester’s schools. Millions of dollars have been spent on failing city schools only to get the same disappointing graduation rates. An integrated regional school is needed, they say. And now more than ever. Former Rochester interim Superintendent Bill Cala; former State Assembly member Tom Frey; and Bryan Hetherington, chief counsel for the Empire Justice Center have been trying to open a regional school in Rochester for years. The school is as much about closing the socioeconomic gap between the city and the suburbs as it is about closing academic gaps, they say. As the Rochester region became increasingly segregated and poverty became more concentrated in the city, student achievement in city schools has steadily declined. And though they don’t blame suburban schools for the academic challenges facing city schools, they do say that suburban students are part of the solution. “We’ve had too many conversations about it,” Cala says. “We’ve put the plan for the school together and it’s a good one. The question now is do we have the political will to do this?” The short answer to that question would have to be no, since the Regional Academy, as they’re calling it, has yet to open its doors and enroll a single student.
EDUCATION | BY TIM LOUIS MACALUSO 8 CITY
MAY 21-27, 2014