Minutes of the July 10th, 2018 meeting of
The 19th Ward Community Association Schools Committee

Attendees: John Boutet, John Laing, Sarah Yaworski, Joe Baldino, Moiet James, Julie Philipp (D&C), Benny Calderon (D&C),

June minutes
Approved

New Business
Julie and Benny of the D&C joined us to discuss approaches to improving Rochester City Schools. Their project is called Time to Educate. This project, developed by their incredible team of editors, journalists, image makers, producers, technical wizards and support staff, is their answer to the challenge of improving Rochester schools.

This week, the Democrat and Chronicle is launching what they hope will become one of their most important reporting, engagement and advocacy efforts ever. But it is not theirs alone. Parents, students and other community members are going to be essential partners, guiding the project in critical and unprecedented ways.

We provided feedback on a number of areas, with a focus on our efforts to assure that school 16 will evolve into a community school as it returns to Post Avenue. We gave Julie a copy of our position paper which we summarizes our rationale for a community school. We believe that a key enabler is a change in busing policy to one that doesn’t require people to live more than 1.5 miles from a school if they want to be bused. This in turn means that the parent is further away from the school and thus less likely to attend parent teacher meetings. The change in busing requires action by the state legislature and senate. Getting the same bill through both houses has been not been achieved and needs a concerted lobbying effort.

The next committee meeting will be Tuesday August 14th at 7 pm in the 19th Ward Community Association office.

Submitted by John Laing