The Rochester City School District this week suspended proposals to close or reconfigure 11 schools, including the recently named Alice Holloway Young School of Excellence and the Rochester International Academy.
The district will, however, close the Leadership Academy for Young Men at the end of the academic year.
Board of Education President Cynthia Elliott said it’s a good thing that the other schools slated to be shut down or reorganized will instead remain open. She acknowledged, though, that more schools eventually will have to be closed.
“We've got to have some closures because enrollment is going down.," Elliott said. “ But at the same time, we have to do it more thoughtfully.”
Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association, said he’s glad that the proposals were called off for the sake of students who have already been enduring instability within the district even before the pandemic.
“The last thing they needed was more disruptions, more chaos, more uncertainty, more interrupting the relationships that they have formed with their peers, and there's their teachers,” Urbanski said.
He added that the school closures also would have caused disruptions within those communities and signaled to residents that they are in a downward spiral.
In a letter to families, Superintendent Lesli Myers-Small said the district will begin working with Leadership Academy students and families in the coming weeks to discuss placement options at other schools.
Urbanski said it’s “unwise” to close the all-boys school.
“Especially since the faculty and many of the families and students are opposed to it,” he said. “Because as soon as you close it, you’re really inviting a charter school to open up to fill that void.”
Elliott said while she has seen great things from the academy, the school’s leadership has underperformed recently.
Ultimately, the decision of whether a school will close is in the superintendent’s hands, Elliott said.
Myers-Small said in a letter to families that final determinations on which other schools will close will be put to a vote in October after more community input.
