City of Rochester
News Release
(Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010) – Mayor Robert J. Duffy today released the first draft of several formal reports on the case for School Governance Reform through Mayoral Accountability, pledging to improve student achievement and graduation rates, build communities around neighborhood schools and save taxpayer dollars by eliminating wasteful redundancies in the City government and School District budgets.
“It is important to understand that this draft report is not the legislation that would lead to the reforms I am calling for,” Mayor Duffy said. “This is a framework outlining the reasons why change is needed and some of the things that would look different under that change.”
In the draft report, Mayor Duffy outlines the process on how a five-year pilot program for Mayoral Accountability would be implemented using the educational systems in New York City, Boston and Chicago as models. He also describes some of the changes that would occur as the result of School Governance Reform. The report makes the case on why reform is necessary; citing the failures of the current system and the perception it is creating within the Rochester community and beyond.
The draft report, titled Putting Children First: A Framework for Change in School Governance, describes Mayor Duffy’s call to appoint Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard to lead the schools and implement his Strategic Plan, with the goal of improving graduation rates from 46 percent to 65 percent within five years.
The draft report is intended to be a starting point for a communitywide discussion on School Governance Reform through Mayoral Accountability. That discussion will continue with a series of Voice of the Customer community forums in each of the city’s four quadrants.
“We have a choice,” Mayor Duffy says in the draft report. “We can do nothing and accept consistent failure and under performance, or we can work together and change the future for our children.”
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