For
Domingo Garcia, his presence in the upcoming Democratic primary for school
board is something of a surprise. At 64, he’s become an elder statesman for Rochester’s
Hispanic community and boasts an impeccable activist resume — involvement
with organizations like the Ibero American Action League (which he helped
found), the National Puerto Rican Coalition, and Action for a Better Community.
But elected office wasn’t in the cards, he thought, until last year, when he
unsuccessfully sought his party’s backing for a school board run.
“I
decided that I would run for the school board because I thought I could make a
contribution just based on my experience and expertise,” Garcia says of the
decision. He lost, but when the opportunity to fill a vacancy arose this year,
he accepted.
The
experience and expertise he’s talking about come from his top-level management
positions in the non-profit and business worlds.
“When
you run companies, you deal with critical issues such as budgeting, and
redistribution of resources, personnel matters, management, policy setting, the
relationship between a board and a chief executive,” says Garcia, who works as
the president and chief executive officer of the Ibero American Investors.
“That’s what I’ve done for the past 35 years. I always worked for a board of
directors.”
Like
other board candidates past and present, Garcia sees himself as both a reformer
and an advocate on behalf of the disenfranchised.
“I’m
sensitive to the needs of black and Hispanic children. I have advocated on
their behalf all my life, at different levels, both at the national level and
at the local level,” he says. “You know I was a pain in the behind to the school
board whenever there were issues that affected our kids. So I’m fairly
conscious of what our kids need in terms of educational services.”
Most
of those needs — especially for minority children, he says — stem from a
single problem: poverty.
“Poverty
has a lot do [with] why they don’t do so well,” he says. “When people are more
conscious of putting bread on the table than sitting down and reading a book
with their children, you have to acknowledge the realities of life. Getting
people to stay in school and graduate has always been a challenge for blacks
and Hispanics. Hispanics in the Rochester district have had the highest dropout
rates of any group. And black children follow. I’m hoping we can put the
mechanisms in place where we can change that trend, or at least begin to make a
dent on that trend.”
Garcia
intends to fight his war on high drop-out rates by targeting programs at the
elementary level.
“I
know that in order to accomplish that you need to concentrate on kids at their
earliest age, so I’m a proponent of early childhood education,” he says.ย ย ย ย ย But Garcia is quick to point out that the
district needs money to carry out any of the programs — like the recently
slashed “Dare to Care” — he considers likely to reverse drop-out rates. In
fact, he says, money is the issue that most affects the quality of education in
the district, despite claims to the contrary from critics like Mayor Bill
Johnson and Assemblyman David Gantt.
“Money
has everything to do with it,” he claims. For example, he says, the school
might launch a pilot program to boost student achievement, then have to drop it
as soon as it proves fruitful because of funding cuts. “So I don’t understand
how people perceive that you can improve a system if you’re constantly cutting
out the resources you need to be able to implement the kinds of programs that
are really successful.”
Garcia
places most of the blame on state government, and the legislature in
particular.
“If
the [state] budget was approved in May like it’s supposed to be, when the
school district prepares its budget to submit it to the city, we already would
have known how much money we were going to get from the state,” Garcia says.
That
would have given the district time to create a balanced budget, he says.
Instead the district had to rely on guesswork: “Because the state legislature
decides that the budget’s going to be 138 days late we have no idea what the
state allocation’s going to be,” Garcia says. “We are blamed for things that
are out of our control.”
Two
major changes, Garcia says, could help the district live within its means.
“We
would like to go into multi-year budgeting,” he says. “That gives stability to
the system, and it allows [the district] to put programs into place that we
know are going to be funded for three to five years and we can then evaluate
those programs appropriately.” But without reliable revenue streams from the
city, he says, “we can’t do multi-year funding because we never know” how much
money is available.
Another
change that would at least grant the district financial independence, says
Garcia, is the ability to levy taxes.
“We
can’t do that,” he says. “The city does it, but then they want to keep the
money for other things, because other things are more important. What’s more
important than your future? I asked Bill Johnson that. ‘No the school district
has to take the burden too, of not having enough resources.’ Well, bullshit.
You’re either committed to providing a sound basic education for your children
or you’re not. And if you’re not than say so. Let people vote you in or out
based on your stand on educational policy.”
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.
