The biggest hurdle for the Rochester School Board candidates
in the Democratic primary may be getting voters to see their differences. Both
are solid candidates, well-educated and well-informed.
Van Henri White is an attorney in private practice with a
law degree from GeorgetownUniversity.
Allen Williams is a TIAA-CREF financial manager with an MBA in finance from the
University of Chicago.
Both have children in city schools. Both are concerned about
the district’s low graduation and student performance rates. Both say they want
greater financial accountability.
The problem is, everyone already knows those are the issues.
Both White and Williams say they’ll bring new ideas to the board to help solve
the district’s problems. But it’s sometimes hard for non-incumbent candidates
to appreciate the complexity of the issues. It’s even harder to understand how
slowly improvements take place. New board members learn quickly that it takes
four votes to get anything accomplished, and it takes time to build alliances.
It’s hard for voters to assess first-time board candidates, since the
candidates often change their opinions and soften their criticism after they’ve
been on the board for a while.
In recent interviews with City, White and Williams discussed
what they see as strengths and weaknesses of the board, Superintendent Manuel
Rivera’s accomplishments, and initiatives they hope to introduce if elected.
While in many areas the candidates’ opinions overlap, there
are some differences. The biggest: how they view the district’s
responsibilities beyond the classroom. White’s vision is of a more outwardly
aggressive district, trying to bring about change outside the school walls.
Williams, whose style is more analytical, wants the district to focus on its
primary mission: educating students.
White is the better
known of the two, mostly for his civil-rights and school-safety cases.
Representing the family of Stephanie Givens, a student who was fatally stabbed
outside JeffersonHigh
School, White sued the school district for
wrongful death. He has also represented employees in discrimination cases.
If elected, he would no longer represent clients in cases
involving the district. He is running for School Board, he says, because he
felt he could be more effective on the board than through case-by-case
litigation.
White is a former MonroeCounty assistant district attorney
and later served as “crime czar” in the early years of former Mayor William
Johnson’s administration. He has his own talk-radio show on WDKX, and he has
received some important endorsements: from City Council President Lois Giess
and the Rochester Teacher’s Association.
School safety is a major focus of White’s campaign. The
district hasn’t taken security seriously enough, he says, and he charges that
it underreports the number of violent incidents in schools. (The state recently
designated two city schools, Charlotte and Jefferson, as “persistently
dangerous.”)
School violence, White says, is an indication of problems
outside of the classroom, and the district needs to be more involved in
supporting city neighborhoods, even if it means using some of the district’s
own funds.
For example, White says, lead inspection of city homes is
moving too slowly. The city should hire more inspectors, he says, and the
district should help pay for them.
“The district,” says White, “has the moral, legal,
strategic, and resource opportunity to take the leadership role.”
White says that the School Board hasn’t been able to
articulate a clear vision to the community and that he can help the board do
that.
He wants more intervention for students who are
under-performing, especially for those whose health and truancy problems cause
them to fall behind in reading and math. Poverty has made it harder to educate
students, he says, and the district must ensure that it focuses its resources
on the most troubled schools.
He supports the Children’s Zone, a program proposed by
Superintendent Manny Rivera that would provide intensive community support for
families in the city’s poorest neighborhoods: health care, parenting skills,
addiction counseling, and job training.
Allen Williams was
endorsed by the Monroe County Democratic Committee after School Board
member Jeff Henley announced in June that he would not seek re-election to his
seat.
His community involvement includes service on several local
boards, including ARC of Monroe County, the Landmark Society, and Friends of
the Rochester Public Library. Where White uses his professional background to
focus on school safety, Williams uses his to talk about fiscal oversight. “I
have a skill set in financial management,” he says, “and the district works
with a $600 million annual budget. Plus they will be spending an additional
$1.2 billion over the next 10 to 15 years [on modernizing schools]. No one has
the finance and accounting experience that I do to provide the additional
oversight.”
He charges that the district and the superintendent have
failed to establishing clear goals with benchmarks that measure progress. He
agrees that the district has been successful with schools like WilsonAcademy and School of the Arts —
but says it is having trouble duplicating that success in all schools.
He credits Superintendent Manny Rivera with getting more
funding for the district through private sources and grants, but he says the
low graduation rate continues to be the district’s most persistent problem, one
that begins as far back as first grade. To improve the graduation rate,
Williams says, the district should consider more alternative and vocational
education programs. Rochester-area companies have technical jobs with good
salaries, he notes, some of which are going unfilled.
Though he supports the Children’s Zone, Williams says the
district shouldn’t take the primary role in implementing it, and it shouldn’t
use its funds to support it. Assuming the community’s social-service
responsibilities is outside the district’s mission, he says.
But he does support alternatives to parent-teacher nights to
get more parents involved. “Maybe,” he says, “we have some type of liaison who
goes to the home and says to the parent: ‘We haven’t seen you in a while. Is
everything okay? Is there something we can do to get you more involved?’ That’s
one thing we know for sure: that kids do better in school when they know there
is someone who really cares about them. That’s one thing that we as parents —
not as teachers or administrators — but as parents, we have failed to do.
We’ve got to be more involved.”
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2006.
