Bryant: Urban-Suburban doesn't change the game
Anyone who has followed Spencerport's debate over the Urban-Suburban program won't be surprised that Van White's Opportunity Districts remain strictly theoretical.
A couple of years ago, the Rochester school board president proposed that suburban districts welcome a few kindergartners and first-graders from Rochester's poorest ZIP codes. His reasoning was that it's not fair or possible for the city to shoulder the burden of educating nearly all of Monroe County's most disadvantaged kids.
White was hoping to have an Opportunity District up and running by 2013. He shopped the idea at meetings with local education leaders and reformers. The response was tepid at best. "I have never gotten 'oh yeah, that's a great idea,' " White said last week, though he still believes that suburban districts ought to help the city by educating small groups of students with high needs.
Meanwhile, next week the Spencerport school district plans to continue its contentious debate over whether to accept about 12 city students who have been carefully screened to have as few needs as possible. The Urban-Suburban application process is designed to let principals weed out any children who are below grade level for math and reading. It allows principals to reject kids who show any signs of learning disabilities. It even allows them to avoid kids who come from single-parent homes.
In a University of Rochester study "Interdistrict Choice as a Policy Solution: Examining Rochester's Urban Suburban Interdistrict Transfer Program" principals anonymously described the way they pick students to come out to the suburbs. "I look for a stable family," one principal said. "Is there a husband and a wife and do they live together?" Another principal said he "tried to avoid putting kids into our district that, and this is brutally honest, that are going to require special education services or extensive academic intervention services." Some districts employ reading specialists, school counselors and speech pathologists to ensure that the students they select will "fit in."
This is an argument for why Spencerport, and other districts that are considering the Urban-Suburban program, should have no worries. It is also an argument for why, 50 years after the Urban-Suburban program began, something else is needed. As constituted, the program does nothing to help districts with the most resources help the kids who are most in need.
"It makes people feel better because they are doing something," said White. "But you have to explore your heart and mind and the research. It does not change the game."
Principals expressed as much in the 2009 UR study, which was conducted by Kara Finnigan and Tricia Stewart.
"We have this wonderful opportunity to skim the crème de la crème and we bring them out here," one principal said. "It's a win-win for this district and any other participating district because we get a chance to inflate, artificially so, our minority numbers. We get good quality kids coming from supportive family backgrounds that value education and the people that lose are the city of Rochester ... I will admit about having pangs of guilt about that."
At least one principal said the Urban-Suburban program would be better if kids were admitted randomly but said that wasn't viable in his district. It won't be until the voices of people who want to see socio-economic integration in schools become louder than the voices of those who don't. A few weeks ago I wrote about the local Great Schools for All coalition, a group of people who are working to find ways to deconcentrate poverty in our schools. Efforts to create at least one regional school are still in the works. The City School District recently got a state grant to attract suburban students to city schools. These kinds of efforts deserve more support.
While White still believes in the Opportunity District concept, he isn't holding his breath. "I am not spending a lot of time trying to engage suburban communities in accepting our kids," he said. "We have to make our own schools better."
The city shouldn't have to do it alone. Monroe County needs some mechanism to allow the districts with the most resources to help educate the county's neediest students, not just those who can pass a rigorous application process.
Chat about this topic
Erica Bryant will host a live chat with Rochester school board President Van Henri White on the Democrat and Chronicle's Facebook page. The discussion will be Monday, Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m. Topics will include Opportunity Zones, deconcentrating poverty and other education issues. Readers can send questions in advance to ebryant@DemocratandChronicle.com.
To participate go to www.facebook.com/DemocratandChronicle