The State of Syracuse (Pt 3)

Last September, I also asked a question about education, wondering how our mayor would keep kids in school through graduation. I noted that graduation rates continued to be horrible even as we were making significant investments in facilities.

This, too, was addressed in Mayor Stephanie Miner's SOTC last week. Here's what she said:

There is perhaps no clearer pathway to opportunity than education, and Syracuse remains at the forefront of cities making unprecedented investments in our young people.  The groundbreaking Say Yes to Education program is in its sixth year, and the impact of Say Yes continues to grow.  It is well known that more than 2,000 graduations of our city high schools now attend college tuition free. There are 5,000 students in Say Yes after-school programs and another 4,000 attend tine Say Yes summer program. 

And she also pointed out that there are other services available to city families through a collaborative effort (city, school district, and county), with "school and family support specialists in all 35 city schools." They work on identifying and resolving issues with attendance and behavior, Miner noted, and they identify resources that can help these families.

Miner also noted that there will also be a phase two of the Joint School Construction Board (JSCB) program, after the first go-around let to significant renovations to several schools, as well as training programs for some 600 people.

Unfortunately, newly renovated schools and Say Yes programs are not enough to turn things around or, maybe we have to resign ourselves to having to wait longer for change to occur.  We have the new Common Core standards, and we have new evaluations in which a significant number of city teachers did not fare well, even though they may very well be fabulous teachers.

We have less than stellar results on the Report Card on file with the NYS education department (2011-2012 is the last available). We have issues with suspensions, which have drawn a lot of attention; over 23,000 hours of instruction were lost due to suspensions, according to reports, and over 55% of African-American students have been suspended at least once. These are horrible numbers, perhaps indicative of some kind of bias, and perhaps indicative of the reality faced in Syracuse city schools -- likely, some combination of both.

Statistics like this didn't happen overnight and the won't be changed overnight. These issues have to be addressed, not just by the Syracuse City School District, and the City itself, but most importantly by parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, whoever is the primary caregiver for city schoolkids.

The professionals can only do so much -- and I understand they're trying, with programs like the iZone, and Parent University, and the Great Expectations five year plan - but somehow, someone has to reach the parents, and the kids, and convince them that education is their best chance for the future.

And until we see some movement in graduation rates, I think it's going to be hard to say that we have a handle on this one. It may not be fair, but it's the primary metric of comparison between schools and school districts, and we're not faring well.

One more in this series - collaboration, and 'the one thing.'