Rochester city school board member Ricardo Adams is ending his bid for re-election this year.
Adams made the announcement on Wednesday after losing by a slim margin to a newcomer candidate in the Democratic Primaries.
A recent Monroe County Board of Elections recount confirmed that his challenger, Jacqueline Griffin, won by 33 votes.
Adams is also endorsed by the Working Families Party, so he will appear on the ballot for the November general election. But he said he will not be actively campaigning. Instead, he said he will be directing his focus to a pressing matter.
“I'm going to be able to take care of my health now,” Adams said. “Because the one thing about school board is it’s a very, very busy job going to schools working with parents, lot of meetings, a lot of reading so you have to put a lot of hours in, people have no idea.”
Adams was diagnosed with cancer in late 2021. After multiple surgeries, he said he is doing better and cancer-free, but the treatment has come at a cost.
“I was not able to get out to go door to door. You have to meet people, and talk to them, and remind them who you are, and I was unable to do that,” he said. “I just had a surgery about three-four weeks ago.”
While he won’t be campaigning for the general election, Adams said he does plan to be present at city school board meetings as a parent once his term ends.
Adams said he is proud of what he was able to accomplish during his time on the board.
“I definitely got a lot more funding ... to improve the food in the district ... Got the SSOs a $4.00 raise. I led that campaign. I literally led it I talked about it every meeting publicly. I got the police out of the schools,” Adams said.
There are four city school board seats up for election this year. There were three clear winners in the Democratic primaries, but until recently, the race for the fourth seat was almost too close to call between Adams and Griffn.
If Griffin is elected to the school board in the general election this November, it would be her first term.
Griffin graduated from the City School District in 1988. She said there is currently too much instability in what students are being taught.
“Teachers can’t teach because the curriculum is always changing,” Griffin said. “I don't understand how you can expect anybody to be successful when the curriculum keeps changing. The curriculum as a whole needs to be changed, and especially with the reading, where we need to go back to what works and what has worked years before.”
She said she plans to focus on literacy as a key issue if elected.
“Reading is a fundamental skill that anybody everybody should have,” she said. “So let's go back to the basics, that the basis is we need reading, and we need to make sure no child is left behind. We need to stop pushing them through when they can't read.”
Griffin said when students do not know how to read, it also impacts their mental health and self-esteem.
Incumbents Amy Maloy and Beatriz LeBron were also winners in the Democratic primary along with newcomer 19-year-old Isaiah Santiago, who would be the youngest school board commissioner in the district’s history.
