STANDING UP FOR
CITY SCHOOLS
EDUCATION | BY TIM LOUIS MACALUSO
M
ichael Lopez dashed around the soccer field at East High School. At one point, he stood on an overturned trash can in the goal area to show about a dozen teens where to aim their kick so that the ball clears the goalkeeper without sailing over the net. Lopez’s two sons, who attend World of Inquiry School 58, were on the field, too, and a track team practiced at the opposite end. A large group of parents and siblings were gathered at the bleachers, and East’s security guards turned on the field’s flood lights so that the students could continue practicing into dusk. Lopez, a volunteer coach, says that sports are huge for Rochester City School District students. The Griffins, School 58’s boys’ varsity soccer team, for instance, won the Section V title last year. The team’s success was cause for celebration, and one of many examples, Lopez says, of excellent activities and programs at city schools. He says that he wouldn’t dream of moving out of the city and enrolling his children in a suburban school district, even though suburban districts perform better academically. “Having gone through a rural, mostly white district where I was called names like Spic and taco and other stuff, I did not want my kids to go through an environment like that,” he says. 8 CITY
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Lopez’s sons spent their elementary years at School 12, and he says that both are doing well at School 58. “To me, it’s less about grades, not to say that grades aren’t important,” he says. “It’s more about the work ethic and learning to respect other people.” Lopez is by no means alone in his allegiance. Despite a fairly common parable about young couples who live in the city: couple has their first child, school anxiety sets in, and up goes the For Sale sign, Lopez is part of a battalion of devoted city school district parents. Many are two-parent professional households that could easily afford a comfortable, middle-income lifestyle in the suburbs. Some could even afford to send their children to a pricey private school. But they see themselves as urban dwellers and they want their children to have the same experience, and that includes the city’s public schools. While they’re not blind to the harsh realities of the city school district, they don’t speak about them in what they say are too-often catastrophic terms. And they say that the Rochester school system should be seen as the city’s most important asset rather than its worst detriment. Lopez works in the county public defender’s office as a special assistant public defender, and says that young
Lopez frequently assists parents who have language barriers in completing
“You never hear about the great things happening in these schools. All you hear about is all the stuff that goes on in central office.” MEGHAN REDDINGTON people from both the city and the suburbs get into trouble. But people tend to think that only city schools and city families have problems, he says. “Things aren’t always so great in all of those suburban schools,” he says. “Money often brings more access to things like narcotics, and I’m not just talking about herb. Suburban schools and families, they have their problems, too.”
applications for city schools. Many parents, especially those with language issues, don’t know what questions to ask or who to turn to for information about the schools, he says. Harriet Fisher is mother to two children in the city school district and says that the district has long suffered from a communications problem. Her daughter attends School of the Arts and likes the school. But Fisher had second thoughts about the district when it came to enrolling her son. Fisher and her husband were considering moving out of the city, she says, though it wasn’t something she looked forward to. “All my very best friends have already left,” Fisher says. Their concerns weighed heavily on her and she says that she doubted her decision to enroll her son in a city school. But then, at the advice of her sister, who is an administrator in the city school district, she visited Montessori Academy School 53. “People to this day think it’s a charter school,” Fisher says. “They don’t believe the district offers parents something like this.” Montessori Academy has an active parent group, she says. “Parents played a big role in hiring the principal,” she says. “We’re very involved.”