Every year on the first day of school, I like to walk over to the elementary school a block from our house and watch the children as they arrive. I used to get a little lift – a feeling of freshness and new beginnings as the school year started. All that potential, and all that hope – theirs and mine.
My worry about the Rochester school district has put a damper on things, though. I want to feel hopeful, and I don’t. This has just gone on too long. And we need to do so much.
More pre-school programs are essential, but they have to be of the highest quality. We need to fund them fully – and permanently – and the money can’t come from the City of Rochester or its school district. They don’t have it. And more important, it’s not a city problem.
We need adequate funding for quality day care. We need more funding for programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership, which helps low-income, first-time mothers from pregnancy through the baby’s first year.
And we need to put muscle behind the commitment to have children reading competently by third grade. Right now, that’s true of only 3 percent of Rochester third-graders. It is no surprise, then, that so few of them do well in upper grades. And yet we pass them through the system, whether they’re ready or not.
We’re expecting magic to happen in those upper grades, when what we need is to identify every single thing that keeps children from doing well in first, second, and third grade – and then remove those obstacles.
We need screening and help to address health and family problems that get in the way of children’s education. We need to compensate for the educational deficiency that some parents have. We need nothing less than high-quality teachers in elementary schools. And we need high expectations – of everybody, from everybody.
That will be expensive. And it will be hard.
We also need to recognize that there are likely many paths to success. We need to embrace those paths – to try things like teacher-operated schools, magnet schools, and yes, charter schools, everything – and measure the outcome.
And we need to do two more things.
First: We need to recognize that it really will take the entire community – suburban taxpayers, suburban school districts as well as city residents and their government and school district – to solve this problem. It will take suburban political and community leaders gutsy enough to lead on this issue – gutsy enough, for instance, to explain the threads that run between our community-imposed concentration of poverty, unemployment, poor education, and the culture of violence that is festering in some inner city areas. And gusty enough to insist that we all bear a responsibility for the creation of that concentrated poverty and for dealing with its consequences.
Second: Everybody in the Rochester school district community needs to stop pointing fingers. Teachers, administrators, parents, and activists: everybody should declare a ceasefire, stop blaming everybody else, and pledge to first clean up their own act.
I urged that several months ago, and the only positive response I got was from Rochester Superintendent Bolgen Vargas. From everybody else, there has been more finger pointing.
And of course, from the larger community, from outside the city, there has been silence or, worse, more piling on: “the parents are bad,” “the teachers are bad,” “the school board members are idiots.”
Thus my lack of hope in this school-opening week. Hundreds of little children are starting kindergarten and first grade in Rochester. Far too few of them will end up with a good education and prospects for a good job and a strong future.
It is our responsibility to deal with this. But given our mindset, collective and individual, I worry that the job is just bigger than the Greater Rochester community is willing to tackle.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2014.
You would have to be a monster not to get a lift from School 23.
I want to commend Mary Anna Towler for her advice in her article in City
(September 3-9) to focus on a broad community effort, and especially to cease pointing fingers.
Being the daughter of an Elementary School headmaster, and the good fortune of being read to by him every night before bed, I can’t say enough for the power of books.
We have wonderful public libraries! The programs offered in our public libraries are usually free and certainly the books are.
The important part of literacy is to discover the joy of books through the pictures and stories that can be read aloud. One picture I have of my 2 year old daughter, is her very carefully constructed “book street” she made in her room for her favorite stuffed animal to inspect, making up stories as she looked at the pictures.
Another opportunity will be the family day November 9, from noon to five at the Memorial Art Gallery in conjunction with the exhibit “Golden Legacy”. It will open with an opening lecture, Sunday October 19, 2 PM by Diane Muldrow, Golden Books editorial director, “Everything I Need to Know in Life I learned from a Little Golden Book”. If you haven’t read Robert Fulghum’s “Everything I Needed to Learn, I learned in Kindergarten”, you might want to read it.
In terms of healthy habits, another advantage of books: when you read a book, hands are clean, and ideally it’s a time that you don’t snack, unlike eating food in front of a TV.
Finally, let’s remind young mothers we meet of the importance of reading aloud . Why not “book parties” as play dates, where each child brings a book to share (for grown-ups to read to them). The child can look forward to the power of being the one to read.
Books, unlike videos and TV, ask you to pay mindful attention to them, and so by sharing them, you demonstrate how to pay attention to the world and people around you.
— Kitty Jospé
How can we improve the schools when the students don’t even show up? And why should they? They know that the taxpayer will provide them with free housing, free heat and free food anyway for the rest of their life, as they teach the next generation how to do the same. The democrats don’t have and don’t want a solution. This is just a game they’ve played with other people’s lives to gain political power. SHAMEFUL!
The parents are bad. First day attendance at RCSD schools was collectively 83.64%. That means over 16% of students were absent from school – on the first day. This is before any flu bugs and other illnesses work their way through the school population.
Why is not sending your child to school not considered to be a form of child abuse? And why are these parents not denied financial benefits if their children are not attending school? If you have a child that is “chronically absent” from school, SNAP benefits, rent assistance, the Earned Income Credit and other forms of social assistance should be cut. It’s the only way to make the point that school matters. Begging kids to go to school does not work. This might.
Students by law in NYS are REQUIRED to attend school from ages 6-16. Education Law 3210 section 2b. :
“Absence from required attendance shall be permitted only for causes allowed by the general rules and practices of the public schools.” If students don’t have a legal excuse to be absent (family emergency, religious observation, court attendance, etc.), even if the parent gives permission, the absence is still illegal under NYS law. Since the children are under the care of their parents or guardians, the parents/guardians are responsible for any of their illegal actions and should be prosecuted for not observing educational law. No need for child endangerment, neglect or other trumped -up charges (though I do personally consider it a type of child abuse), use the existing law on the books and prosecute them. Believe me, attendance will go WAY up when parents start going to jail.
“Students by law in NYS are REQUIRED to attend school from ages 6-16. Education Law 3210 section 2b. :
“Absence from required attendance shall be permitted only for causes allowed by the general rules and practices of the public schools.” If students don’t have a legal excuse to be absent (family emergency, religious observation, court attendance, etc.), even if the parent gives permission, the absence is still illegal under NYS law. Since the children are under the care of their parents or guardians, the parents/guardians are responsible for any of their illegal actions and should be prosecuted for not observing educational law. No need for child endangerment, neglect or other trumped -up charges (though I do personally consider it a type of child abuse), use the existing law on the books and prosecute them. Believe me, attendance will go WAY up when parents start going to jail. “
Obviously the law is not enforced. WHY?