The Rochester school board committee charged with screening a proposal regarding East High School will hold a special meeting at 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 1, at the district’s central office, 131 West Broad Street.Â
The committee will review the proposal submitted by School Turnaround, an organization that specializes in improving failing schools. Turnaround was the only organization to respond to the district’s request for someone to take over operation of East to hopefully improve students’ academic performance.Â
Turnaround has been invited to tomorrow’s meeting, but it’s unknown at this time if the organization will attend. The committee has received answers to the many questions they sent to Turnaround about its proposal, and will review those answers at Thursday’s meeting. Turnaround’s claim that it can boost East’s graduation rate from an abysmal 34 percent, approximately, to 100 percent in a relatively short period of time is being met with some skepticism.Â
Tomorrow’s meeting will be open to the public, but there will not be an opportunity for comments.Â
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2014.
It is amazing that the board is not only wasting their own time but also the time of parents, students and teachers who have been asked to participate in this. They all know that this has no chance. It may be politically correct to cry that “due diligence” is needed but not in this case. The proposal is laughable and everyone knows it. SED requires that the district consider multiple proposals. Any single one, no matter how good or bad id DOA. Adam Urbanski was right about this.
Why not spend your time on real alternatives? There is no time for this. Incredible, just incredible. If they had received a dozen, would they be spending this much time on each one? If so it would be June before a decision was made.