Four seats will be up for grabs in this year's race for Rochester city school board, and the list of candidates is growing, with some familiar faces in the running.
Incumbent school board member Ricardo Adams’s seat is up for election this year, and until recently, he said he was ready to throw in the towel.
“I tore up my signs and everything. I planned to not even run again,” Adams said, adding that he was frustrated with the board’s frequent infighting.
He said he changed his mind when he attended a meeting with other school board members from around the country.
“I had jumped up and said, ‘Yeah, I'm a part of the worst school board in the world.’ They all told me to ‘sit your butt down,’” he said. “So I also found out that ... there are issues in all the districts.”
Adams said he’s refocusing on a mission to help students and has set one of his priorities to be improving student achievement – and not in a conventional way.
“If you know a student is in his senior year and he’s only got four or five credits, he's not graduating," he said. “Let's quit playing games and let them go ahead and take the GED so they can move on to whatever other skills they might be trying to pursue. Be an electrician, carpentry, day care, whatever.”
School board member Amy Maloy is also running for re-election. She said student achievement is high on her list of priorities as well, and she wants to address it by providing them with the essentials.
“Just taking care of kids’ most basic needs has to be our focus,” Maloy said “Taking care of social-emotional needs. Kids can't learn if they're hungry. Kids can't learn if they don't feel safe. Kids can't learn if they have housing insecurity. So we have to worry about all of that as a board.”
Maloy and Adams are two of three incumbents expected to run for re-election this year. Commissioner Willa Powell says she will not seek re-election this year, leaving one seat vacant.
Former RG&E manager Frank Orienter hopes to win a seat in his first run for the position. He said with his taxes going to city schools, he wants to see the district manage funds better.
Orienter said that includes looking at whether some jobs in Central Office are obsolete.
“I'm not sure that having that amount of overhead really helps the students,” Orienter said. “I would rather if we had the opportunity to have more counselors and social workers in the schools, rather than having a large overhead in the Central Office.”
School security officer Abdul Bounds and former city student Isaiah Santiago have also announced their candidacy. Bounds has yet to file paperwork to make his campaign official.
