Last week, about 60 city students got a preview of recommendations to improve city schools. And as anyone who was there can tell you, the students responded with incredible enthusiasm and insight. The recommendations are the culmination of more than a month’s work by committees of teachers, parents, and community leaders. Rochester school board President Van […]
Tim Louis Macaluso
I was born and raised in the Rochester area, but I lived in California and Florida before returning home about 12 years ago. I'm a vegetarian and live with my husband and our three pugs. I cover education, health care, and local politics for City.
Posted inNews & Opinion
Anne Kress and the reinvention of MCC
It’s hard to think of another local institution that has more successfully reinvented itself than Monroe Community College. Not long ago, if you were going to MCC, it was often cynically assumed it was because you couldn’t get into a “real” school. MCC has successfully jettisoned that image, and a good deal of the credit […]
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City students speak out about improving schools
Rochester school board President Van White began a town hall-style meeting yesterday with this message: the district is the lowest performing in the state. And he asked the adults in the room to give the nearly 60 students in attendance the front seats because he wanted to hear from the young people. The students, mostly […]
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Refusing Arizona: What’s Brewer waiting for?
Updated Thursday, February 27 at 12:10 p.m. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have permitted business owners to use religious beliefs as a reason to refuse service to gay couples. In defense of her decision, Brewer said she hasn’t heard of a single instance in Arizona where a business owner’s religious liberty […]
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Mental illness: Roads to wellness
This is the second installment of a two-part series on mental health attitudes, research, and available services in the Rochester region. The first part appeared in our December 11-17 issue. Jim Eckberg spent much of the 90’s in and out of hospitals. Sometimes hospital personnel strapped him with a belt in a chair in his […]
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Vargas seeking discipline plan
Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas is seeking a new community-wide effort to improve school safety and student behavior. Vargas says he wants to increase efforts to prevent fights like the one that recently broke out on the Frederick Douglass campus. In that incident, police used pepper spray to quell the melee between students at Northeast […]
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School improvement committees will report recommendations on Wednesday
Tomorrow afternoon, the public will get to hear the results of more than a month’s brainstorming concerning the Rochester City School District. Shortly after school board President Van White took office, he formed four committees that were charged with coming up with ideas to improve city schools. The four committees – improving student achievement, increasing […]
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High schools stuck in the last century
Early childhood development and reading proficiency by third grade have all but dominated education policy making for the last 10 years. High schools, other than handwringing over increasing graduation rates, have taken a back seat. How US high schools operate hasn’t changed in 50 years, writes Maria Ferguson, executive director of the Center on Education […]
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Fights: Vargas’s latest challenge
The last few weeks have seen Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas dealing with one troubling incident after another. First, there was the vote of no confidence against him by the Association of Supervisors and Administrators, the union that represents school administrators. That was followed by an envelope sent to the Democrat and Chronicle containing personal […]
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Study challenges charter schools’ superiority
A new study seems to confirm what many traditional public school officials have been saying for years about student performance in charter schools: when all things are equal, traditional public schools and charters perform about the same. Forward Institute, a Wisconsin public policy organization, compared the Milwaukee school district’s state accountability report cards to those […]
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Students’ fights may be Vargas’s biggest challenge
The last few weeks haven’t been good for Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas and the city schools; one troubling incident has followed another. First, there was the vote of no confidence against Vargas by the Association of Supervisors and Administrators, the union that represents school administrators. That was followed by a disturbing incident involving a […]
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The district’s ‘Who done it?’
City school officials and school board members say they’re taking seriously a package sent to the Democrat and Chronicle containing personal information about school board President Van White. Though the package’s contents were meant to discredit White, the situation has instead become a serious test of leadership for both Superintendent Bolgen Vargas and the board. […]
