Two Rochester middle schools will be under the same roof next school year.
Barely a year since opening, Andrew Langston Middle School will move from the Jefferson campus on Edgerton Park to the Douglass Campus on Fernwood Park in northeast Rochester — a building that is currently home to Northwest Junior High.
With an enrollment of 315 students, Langston Middle School features a partnership with WDKX, Rochester’s independent Black-owned radio station whose founder is the school’s namesake. The school also has partnerships with Foodlink, Center for Youth, and the Monroe County Bar Association.
“We have a full law academy with mock trials, podcasting programs led by our kids, Saturday schools offering hot meals and Regents prep, including art. And a food pantry that's feeding over 30 families,” art teacher Adam MacIntyre-Ross said during a recent school board meeting.
Except the campus that is home to the school is already designated to be used as a swing space for the latest phase of a years-long Facilities Modernization Plan (FMP).
“We still need to relieve the Jefferson campus to make way for FMP,” Interim Superintendent Demario Strickland said ahead of the school board’s vote in favor of relocating the school. “The team and I are working on how we are going to make sure that everything is safe as possible, equitable as possible, things of that nature.”
With less than a year in operation, the school also faces a possible 52% funding cut in the draft budget for next school year.
“Cutting over half of our staff isn't just a logistical decision, it's a moral one,” MacIntyre-Ross said. “It risks unraveling the relationships, trust and programs and the sense of belonging that we fought so hard to create."
Teachers and students — who have already undergone the turbulence of last year's school reconfiguration plan — implored the school board in a recent meeting to allow staff and students to relocate as a collective and to reconsider slashing the school’s budget.
“I was originally at Monroe, but they shut that down too,” student ambassador RayQuan Lott said. “If you shut all the teachers away, most of the students won't have the motivation to learn about anything, because they don't have the people that they grew a strong bond with.”
The city school board voted to move Langston Middle School after previously striking down a similar proposal to relocate the middle school and close Northwest Junior High.
Langston Middle School was created at the Jefferson Campus last year as part of a school reconfiguration plan under then-superintendent Carmine Peluso.
Rochester Teachers Association president Adam Urbanski said the district needs to put people first when making decisions.
“All they're asking for is an opportunity not to be broken up and dispersed to the four winds,” Urbanski said. “I think that this district, their excuses notwithstanding, can and should figure out a way to do that. Because otherwise, we're continuing this unfortunate pattern of treating our success stories as if they weren't successful.”
A spokesperson with the city school district said in an e-mail that district administration is still finalizing changes and adjustments in the budget.
The school board is scheduled to vote on it on Monday. That vote was postponed from Tuesday. The state budget was approved late on Thursday.
