Governor Andrew Cuomo made some encouraging comments about education in his State of the State speech yesterday, but there are also some glaring concerns. The centerpiece of the governor’s education proposals for 2014 is a $2 billion referendum that would go mainly toward a major upgrade of school technology: purchasing laptops, tablets, and wireless services. […]
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
Powering-up parents
Brenda Coleman says her son LaBronze, 10, is intelligent and has an impressive vocabulary. And there are times when he is extremely talkative, she says. But Coleman says she has to keep LaBronze on a tight, consistent schedule. Any unusual variations can trigger serious behavioral problems, she says. When that happens, she says, “this house […]
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Conservatives find opportunities in Common Core
It’s hard to find many areas in the current political climate where conservatives and progressives agree. But they seem to have found one in education. Many progressives reject the tougher standardized curriculum referred to as Common Core because they’re suspicious of how it was developed — largely absent of input from everyday teachers. They’ve also […]
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Cynthia Elliott to help lead board she once wanted to abolish
This blog has been edited from an earlier version. One of the best science-fiction films of the 1970’s is the remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” starring Donald Sutherland. Sutherland’s character, a city health inspector, starts to notice personality changes in the people around him. When Sutherland drops in on a Chinese couple who […]
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Schools leadership
Rochester school board members will meet this week to elect a leadership team. | Van White, currently vice president of the board, says he wants the presidency. But White may face a challenge from board member Cynthia Elliott, if the rumors are to be trusted. | Malik Evans, the current president, is not seeking the […]
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Mayor-elect de Blasio’s education decisions signal end to Bloomberg era
During much of the last decade, New York City’s school system became a fervent symbol of the education reform movement. The nation’s largest school system has operated under mayoral control since 2002, when the State Legislature gave Mayor Michael Bloomberg nearly complete authority over NYC’s schools. Bloomberg made Joel Klein chancellor of city schools and […]
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New York will be a drone research site
The Federal Aviation Administration says it wants to see drones sharing domestic airspace with commercial flights by 2015. And the FAA has designated six research sites around the country to help reach that goal, including one in New York. According to an article in USA Today, the sites will work on different aspects of drone use. […]
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Quack in A&E’s wall of integrity
Well, that didn’t take long. A week after the A&E network suspended production of Duck Dynasty due to show patriarch Phil Robertson’s homophobic remarks in GQ, A&E blinked. And Robertson is back. In its defense of ending the suspension, A&E officials say that Robertson expressed his personal beliefs, not the network’s, and that the show […]
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Schools overhaul ready for phase two
Some Rochester school officials travelled to Albany recently to meet lawmakers on several pressing issues, including phase two of the massive project to overhaul city schools. School officials gave legislators a brief overview of the roughly $1.2 billion construction project — one of the largest projects in Rochester’s history. The second phase of the multi-phase […]
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King seeks more power for Regents
Earlier this year, State Education Commissioner John King made the unprecedented decision to move two of Buffalo’s most troubled schools under the supervision of Johns Hopkins University and Erie 1 BOCES. The arrangement, which weakens the control of superintendents and school boards, is referred to as an educational partnership organization or EPO. He also had […]
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Silver says hold off on sharing student data
This can’t be an easy time for New York State Education Commissioner John King. The commissioner, who came into office not long ago with a bold reform agenda, is increasingly seeing those plans come under fire. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is the latest to question King. He sent a letter to the state Education Department […]
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Gay pride meets Putin
There are reasons why the LGBT community responds so strongly to athletes who come out publicly; it remains an extremely difficult decision to make and can lead to serious consequences, from career damage to physical and emotional harm. The LGBT community’s connection to the world of professional sports and athletics has a strange and sometimes […]
