School 41, a pre-kindergarten through sixth grade school at 279 West Ridge Road in the Kodak Park neighborhood, will close at the end of this school year, and the district will re-open it as a new school with a different focus.
That was the Rochester school board’s decision last week as a result of the school’s persistent failure to improve. New York State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia notified the district earlier this year that she was designating School 41 as a receivership school. Schools with that designation are typically schools that have been among the persistently lowest performing in the state, and their students’ academic achievement hasn’t improved as much as the state requires.
Elia’s decision gave the school board a limited set of options. It could choose an independent entity like a university to assume management of the school, which it has done with East High School. It could close the school and disperse its students to other city schools. Or it could close the school and reopen it as a different school. The board decided that the latter was the most appealing, board President Van White said.
School 41 has about 510 students, and a majority are black and Hispanic. In 2016, just 4 percent of students were proficient in English and 5 percent were proficient in math, according to state test results. In 2017, only 4 percent were proficient in English and 6 percent in math.
The school has already added programs to help boost students’ achievement. It is one of the Rochester schools that has extended the length of the school day, for instance, and according to the district’s website, it has a variety of other special programs to help low-performing students. But that hasn’t been enough.
As part of the change, district officials will have to develop an entirely different approach to instruction that addresses the needs of students and families. “We can’t just reopen under a different name,” White said. “It has to be an entirely different school.”
Elia has to approve whatever the district comes up with, and White says the goal is to have a plan ready to submit to Elia in March 2018 so the new school can open in the fall of 2018.
“It’s a very short window,” White said.
It’s not clear whether that will mean staff and faculty will have to reapply for their positions similar to what happened when the University of Rochester took over management of East High School, White said.
This article has been updated to match the version that appears in the December 13, 2017 print edition.
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2017.
Crossing my fingers it turns in to the military school that was discussed last year. I know Van White reads City and posts comments sometimes, so crossing my fingers he sees this and can add some info to the story.
If Rochester is serious about trying to make this school a success for the students, why dont they try something that is actually different, such as asking a charter school to take it over. There is no guarantee of success of course, but charter schools in Rochester, NYC, and many other cities are outperforming traditional public schools, so why not give it a try. You know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I am surprised, or maybe not, that City has not written anything about a study that was issued this week that measured how students progressed over five years in various cities around the country. Chicago did very well. With their students progressing six years in five,although they started out scoring below grade. Rochester scored the worst in the nation, progressing 2.9 years in 5.
Opening school 41A is simply not going to do it.
So what exactly does it mean for the school to close and then re-open as a different school? Will the students be totally different? The teachers? The administration of the school? Clearly the building will be the same (but who thinks the building is at fault …). I’m truly curious as to what it means to re-open as a different. school.
How much longer will Rochester residents put up with this? We are the worst in the nation for our schools. This in a city that has —in the past—- had the highest number of patens per population. We are toast. Thank you City News, liberals, and all of the city of Rochester voters who have killed the goose and the golden egg. We had it made. Those that came before us made Rochester a Beacon amongst cities in the WORLD. That is all gone now.
Rochester Musician, your question regarding what the State Education Department means by opening a different school is a good one. The commissioner is basically saying the school is a receivership school because attempts to improve achievement hasn’t progressed quickly enough. Teachers and administrators met some goals for improvement, but not enough to avoid her intervention. The new school would be located in the same building, but school officials will have to propose a different teaching model. For instance, maybe they will propose creating another School of Inquiry. Or maybe they will propose adding more reading and math teachers. And yes, there could be staffing changes, but that hasn’t been determined yet, according to board President Van White.
The concept closing a non-performing school and opening a “new” school on the same premises (presumably with many of the same “educators”) is the rough equivalent of what some ill-performing hotels have done to avoid negative reviews on websites like TripAdvisor. I was told by a cab driver in Chicago not too long ago that hotels sometimes escape the legacy of poor consumer reviews by closing and then reopening under a new name which is a technique for burying the old, negative reviews. It appears that the RCSD is also trying to adopt this deceptive practice. Just another way this garbage barge of a school district can escape any accountability.
This goes back to federal law (No Child Left Behind) and the rules governing schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress for five consecutive years. Under these circumstances, a district must close the current school and:
a) reopen the school as a charter school,
b) replace all or most of school staff,
c) turn over school operations to the state or a private company with a demonstrated record of effectiveness,
OR
d) pursue some other major governance restructuring.
This may taste like a scam, but if so it’s the usual scam, as sanctioned by the W administration back in 2002.
I believe that the RCSD is trying to comply with the State Education Department in this instance Mark. I believe that President Obama ended the 2002 requirements you referred to.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/educa…
The board will no doubt select some consulting group that has expertise at turning around schools. They will take every penny available and then some. After three years they will be gone. No emotional commitment, just a short fix. Throw it into the pot of 30 years of failure.
If the board was courageous they would give the school to the people who want to work in it and the parents who will send their kids to it. They would also make sure the school operators have autonomy from the Superintendent and her constraining tentacles. Lastly, they would guarantee that any confining union expectations were loosened. This is all very unlikely. Courage is not embraced by those who are content with the status quo.
Neighborhood Schools.