Mayor Tom Richards just issued a press release addressing what he calls “unannounced charges to city taxpayers” in the proposed 2014 county budget.
City of Rochester
Posted inNews & Opinion
Fewer city students will catch transfer buses downtown
New bus passes will greatly restrict the thousands of city school students who have been using the RTS system to travel freely throughout the city, said school and city officials today. Most students will only be allowed to travel to and from school. Beginning this Friday, more city students will be required to use the […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Old tree reaches the end of its life
Sometime within the next few weeks, the City of Rochester will take down the oldest and largest black oak in Washington Grove, a stand of old-growth trees adjacent to Cobbs Hill Park. The tree is actually one of the largest black oaks in the country. When a tree like this gets cut down, it can […]
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Tim Mains lands schools superintendent job in Jamestown
The Jamestown school board has appointed Tim Mains – a longtime educator, politician, LGBT activist – as superintendent of that city’s public schools. Jamestown’s gain is a loss for Rochester. He’ll oversee a much smaller school district than Rochester’s, and one that isn’t facing nearly the same level of difficulties. But the move could be […]
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Rochester school board passes $734 million budget
Last night, the Rochester school board unanimously approved a $734 million budget for the coming school year. The budget is about $6 million more than what Superintendent Bolgen Vargas proposed several months ago, and it will fund longer school days in as many as 10 schools this fall. The budget closes a $50.2 million gap […]
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Latino Rochester: pride and power
Don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t remember, but the City of Rochester has already had its first Latino mayor. City Commissioner Carlos Carballada filled the office for a blink-and-you-missed-it period of time in 2011, when everyone was arguing over the legal process to replace former Mayor Bob Duffy. (Duffy won election as […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Vargas: Success is still possible
Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas told parents, teachers, and community leaders in his State of our Schools speech last night that the district can be turned around. But he simultaneously lowered expectations, saying that it will take years, and test scores and the district’s graduation rate could get worse before they improve. “I want you […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Vargas’s grand plan for the RCSD
Rochester school district Superintendent Bolgen Vargas rarely talks about increasing the district’s graduation rate or raising test scores, the standard promises of most new superintendents. From his first days in office as interim superintendent, Vargas has instead approached the district’s many problems from the outside in: unabashedly declaring that nothing will get fixed if the […]
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Truancy tests RCSD’s resolve
The Rochester school district kicked off the new school year with what officials say is a serious crackdown on attendance and truancy. The new effort, which is loosely based on a program used successfully in other New York school districts, will involve the broader community. Officials say that poor attendance and high truancy rates are […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Lessons from the Johnson loss
A few weeks before the election, I was talking to a prominent Democrat about the county-executive race. The Democrat was supporting Johnson but didn’t think he was his party’s strongest candidate. Johnson’s biggest handicap, said this Democrat, was the city. The Republicans, he said, would hang the city’s problems — crime, schools — around […]
