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While reading yesterday's Democrat and Chronicle newspaper, I screamed at statements made about the Rochester City School District suspension statistics:
"An equivalent to one out of three city school students was suspended last year"
"The suspensions that we have in this district is astounding...We have schools that had more suspensions than they had kids"
"Last year, the City School District of more than 33,000 students logged more than 11,000 suspensions as the result of actions taken against about 5,500 students"
This is crazy!
As a citizen of Rochester, I am angry that we have all of these children suspended from school, staying at home, not getting an education and God knows what else. This is the perfect storm - Kick the already troubled kids out of school so the teachers don't have to deal with them. They have nothing but time on their hands. Can you say, crime, drugs, pregnancy? Now I understand why I see so many young people standing on the corners of Rochester's city streets during the day.
Now I'm not placing all the blame on the teachers. I know many teachers and we talk about the problems in their classrooms. They feel that there are only a handfull of students who prevent the other students from learning, so they remove them from the picture. If I was a teacher, I'd probably do the same thing. But, is this the right thing to do? And if I hear one more person say, "the parents need to do their jobs better", I'll scream again. It's obvious that's not happening and we can't control that. Many of these parents are kids themselves and don't know how or don't care to raise their children in the correct manner.
The D&C article said that Dr. Brizard, the new Superintendant, has begun to review requests for long-term suspensions and is finding many requests are frivolous for simple misbehavior. Instead of having their suspension requests approved, teachers are having their requests rejected by Brizard's administration.
Dr. Brizard is proposing changes to the suspension policy. He wants to create "in-school" suspension classrooms so children that are suspended can still get their lesson. He also wants to hold Principals more accountable for the success of their students through job evaluations. I've been saying it for years - even though I know it would be a hard process to measure the performance of educator's, it something that must be done! Some people are not made to teach children. The only way to ensure that they are is to do annual evaluations.
Another option would be to create another "Josh Lofton" type facility. This school could house the "bad seeds" for lack of a better term and provide special services to help them - Social Workers, Psychiatry Services, Job Counselors, Mentors, Clergy, Law Enforcement, Legal, etc. We must offer these students as many services as we can if there is any hope they can lead productive and successful lives.
We always hear "there is no money in the budget to do something like this". If we take funds from the hundreds of agencies located in Rochester to help the youth of Rochester, streamline the staffs and house them all in one location, they may be able to do what they were put in place to do in the first place. Many of these agencies pay rent on buildings that very few people even know about. State and local money pays the salaries of people who may not see a child during the course of a month. It's time to hold them accountable too. Make them earn their salaries. The program would pay for itself by being housed in one location by:
**Eliminating rent, energy and administration costs
**Downsizing under-utilized staff members
Something needs to be done now! This cannot continue. Good luck Dr. Brizzard!
You can write to The Dean's List with your thoughts and comments at: TheDeansList1@gmail.com.
