Rochester mayor seeks school takeover

On Board Online • January 25, 2010

By Brian M. Butry
Communications Coordinator 

Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy is seeking control of the city’s school district and Syracuse’s mayor says she is also considering a takeover of schools.

Duffy has launched an all-out campaign to wrest control of the 34,000 student district from the school board citing a low graduation rate, poor test scores and a lack of financial control of $119 million in city tax dollars.

In an opinion piece that appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Duffy outlined his reasoning and detailed the issues he says need to be addressed.

“I want to save the next generation of our children,” the mayor wrote. “Instead of a seven-person, highly contentious school board, I welcome the buck stopping with me.”

“I pledge to improve student attendance, test scores and graduation rates significantly within a five-year period, or discontinue mayoral control,” he continued.

Interestingly, the mayor pledged his support for district superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard calling him “an excellent academic leader” and said under mayoral control, “I will let him loose to be as bold and innovative” as he wants to be.

Malik Evans, Rochester’s school board president, has called for community meetings on the topic. He is worried legislation could be fast-tracked in Albany with no input from parents and residents.

“The mayor was adamantly against mayoral control from 2005 up until last year,” Evans said. “Now it comes out that this has been something he’s been lobbying for all along. So this is something that started moving without (the community) knowing about it.”

“It’s like a thief in the night,” he told On Board. “You go to sleep Monday and on Tuesday you wake up and like a thief in the night, your rights for electing a school board were stolen, taken away. That’s the way they want it. People want this to be done quietly.”

Evans believes if the public is allowed to debate this openly, residents of Rochester will quickly learn that mayoral control is not all it’s cracked up to be.

First, student achievement on National Assessment of Educational Progress tests has been no better in cities with mayoral control than in urban areas with a traditional public school structure, according to Evans. Moreover, he believes Rochester’s graduation rate is no worse than other cities in the state.

That is why he believes the conversation is really about control of the district’s purse strings.

“It’s very rarely about academic achievement,” he said of mayoral takeovers. “Money is definitely a driving factor in this. I would be naïve to say it’s not.”

Meanwhile, recently sworn-in Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner announced that she is considering the move after she met with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

“The results we are getting from our school system are unacceptable,” Miner told the Syracuse Post-Standard. “We need to focus on changing those results. I will look at all options.”

The first female mayor of Syracuse said the decision was about making the district more “efficient”  and more “collaborative.”

The state Legislature gave control of New York City schools to Bloomberg in 2002. The city educates 39 percent of New York’s students. If Rochester and Syracuse moved to mayoral control, nearly 43 percent of students would be in schools under a mayor’s control.

“Mayoral control eliminates the fundamental principle of checks and balances,” said NYSSBA President Florence Johnson of Buffalo. “An elected school board minimizes the chance of undue political influence, patronage or reduction of education’s standing amid other municipal priorities.”