Cynthia
Elliott’s fed up. And she’s not the only one, she says. A look at the Rochester
City School district’s graduation rates frustrates most parents and community
leaders, she says. For Elliott, it was enough to get her into the race for a
seat on the school board.
“I’m
disappointed in the graduation rate of our students, and I’m so concerned
because these kids are not going to be prepared for the current work
environment,” says the Assistant to the Executive Director at the Baden Street
Settlement. “When you have an approximately 30-percent graduation rate, that’s
just unacceptable for today’s economy. The Rochester area needs to have an
educated workforce, a workforce that is also educable, and if we don’t do that
overall in this community, it’s not going to be the community that we’ve known
that has thrived, that has flourished economically.”
The
school could be an important catalyst for positive change in Rochester, Elliott
believes: “I want to see our children and our families thrive. I want to see them
contribute positively to this community,” she says. Instead, she says, many
wind up as statistics, victims of teen pregnancy, drugs, crime or gang
violence. “That’s a lot of wasted talent that our community could benefit from
and I think that in some way — and I don’t have all the answers — our
school system has failed the 70 percent. I want to be able to participate in
the solutions.”
Elliott
points to her experience with organizational management and staff development
as a strength that would allow her to “help frame policies that would help to
make efficient some of the systems.” She also says her current job gives her an
advantage “in terms of my ability to work with the population — the same
population that the school district works with, and I’ve had success with that.
Baden Street has had success.”
Though
Elliott says she’s reluctant to criticize the school board, she does take issue
with some of its actions.
“I
think that the board has to take more of an aggressive approach in assuring the
community that it’s doing all that it can do in terms of student achievement
and graduation rates,” she says. “If they’re not doing it, they need to say
‘It’s not getting done and we need some help and some outside support in order
to help us get that done.'”
And
while Elliott applauds a recent call for an audit of the district’s finances by
the state comptroller’s office, she doesn’t think that’s enough. “Something is
awry in there and it doesn’t seem that the board or the administration
themselves can solve those issues,” she says. “So maybe a collaboration —
community, the churches, community-based organizations, other government
entities and the business community can help to do that.”
Elliott
describes such an effort — one of several fixes she proposes for the district
— as “a global process.” “It just can’t be piecemeal. I think you have to
have community-based organizations that have actually had success in providing
services to this population,” she says.
On
paper, Elliott says, the district has good plans and a good mission statement,
but something’s keeping that from being put into practice. She hopes an
independent task force will help the district discover why that’s happening:
“That’s going to require an outside panel in order to understand that,” she
says. “I’m not sure because I’m not in the system. I just know something needs
to be done. Once we identify what that is then we need to do it.”
Like
her opponent, Elliott identifies poverty as a primary obstacle to education in
Rochester. “When you are having financial issues its very difficult for a
family to be as supportive of their children’s academic achievement as they
perhaps should be,” she says. But that’s no excuse for accepting poor
performance, Elliott says. “Poverty’s not going to go away in this community,
but we still need to be responsible as the leaders of this community to be
aggressive in trying to put systems in place that will help students overcome
those issues of poverty, so that they can achieve academically.”
And
despite poverty in the district, she says more money isn’t necessarily the
answer. “Money in and of itself is not the issue,” she says. “If the district
needs more money, I’m sure the district won’t have a problem in lobbying it
from the city or lobbying it from the state.” Money hasn’t come recently, she
says, because “the community just does not feel confident that [the district]
is utilizing its resources in as efficient a manner as it could, based on some
of the decisions that it’s made in the past.”
Elliott
says poor performance is also hampering the district’s credibility. “That’s
what I’ve been hearing in this community: ‘How can we ask for all this money
and our children are not graduating?'” she says.
Elliott
also charges that the district hasn’t done enough to involve parents. Some
parents, she says “have not been embraced by the district, by teachers. And
that shouldn’t be.” Parental involvement is the key weapon in fighting high
dropout rates, she claims, and a place where the district can’t afford to fail.
“We have to have parent involvement,” she says. “We have to make sure the
parents are persuaded that education is the equal opportunity for success in
life.”
Primary info
Registered Democrats living in the Rochester City School
District can vote in the school board seat primary election between Garcia and
Elliott at their usual polling places between noon and 9 p.m. September 14.
Info: Monroe County Board of Elections, 428-4550.
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2004.
