The Rochester school board has until its June meeting to handle an issue that has been festering for years: how to work with misbehaving students and their parents. Board members have received a draft proposal of a new code of conduct policy that aims to replace punitive approaches to discipline with restorative justice practices. For […]
suspensions
Posted inNews & Opinion
RTA prez: ‘Where is the outrage?’
Rochester city school teachers are not happy with the proposed changes to the district’s code of conduct or with recommendations to improve school climate, says Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Union. The Community Task Force on School Climate released a 65-page proposal last month. The group worked for months on a code that […]
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Report: City school district needs anti-racism training
This article has been corrected. Mandatory and ongoing anti-racism training for all school personnel tops a list of recommendations from the Rochester Community Task Force. The training should begin with district leaders, the report says, and the task force should help pick who does the training. The task force, which is made up of about […]
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DiNapoli’s report on school safety raises serious questions
A recent report from State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office offered a sobering look at safety in some of New York’s public schools. A random audit of seven schools during the 2011-2012 school year showed that the schools failed to correctly report instances such as student violence, weapons possession, and sexual offenses. Rochester’s East High School […]
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Feedback 11/26
We welcome your comments. Send them to themail@rochester-citynews.com, or post them on our website, rochestercitynewspaper.com, our Facebook page, or our Twitter feed, @roccitynews. Comments of fewer than 350 words have a greater chance of being published, and we do edit selections for publication in print. We don’t publish comments sent to other media. Anthony was […]
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City schools’ suspensions challenged
A new report examining student conduct and discipline shows that suspensions continue to be alarmingly high in the Rochester school district. More than 54,600 days of instruction were lost due to suspensions during the 2012-2013 school year, the report says. And most of the suspensions were for minor offenses. A second finding is equally disturbing: […]
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Climate change: Lowering temperatures at RCSD
Stephne Givens, then 13, stepped off the bus in front of Jefferson Middle School on the morning of September 21, 1995. Within minutes, an argument broke out, and Givens was fatally stabbed in the neck by a 12-year-old school mate. Givens’ brutal death shocked the country. And some Rochester school officials say that the killing […]
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Rethinking school discipline
A recent New York Times editorial looked at the growing intolerance toward “zero tolerance” school disciplinary policies. Since the 1990’s, school districts across the country have been ratcheting up the punishment, including suspensions for what are often minor infractions. A three-year-old Texas study showed that nearly six in 10 public school students were suspended at […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Praising attendance, appealing suspensions
Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas has adopted another strategy to address the problem of chronic truancy in the district: recognizing students who are models of good attendance. Vargas and Mayor Tom Richards personally visited the homes of four district families, chosen because those students and their siblings had exceptional attendance records in schools where attendance […]
