"N.Y. Community Closes 25% of Schools Due to Surprising Circ*mstances" - Internewscast Journal (2024)

A family-friendly New York enclave has announced plans to shutter 25 percent of its schools for a startling reason.

Rochester City School District is set to shutter a staggering 11 of their 45 schools, after enrollment has plummeted by 11,000 in two decades.

Superintendent Carmine Peluso dropped the bombshell during what was supposed to be a routine subcommittee meeting, surprising students, parents and educators.

Research has shown that students whose schools have been closed often experience declines in attendance and achievement, and are less likely to graduate from college or find employment.

The impact is particularly severe for black students, with closures disproportionately affecting majority-black schools.

This comes after attendance drop from 34,000 in 2003 to just 23,000 last year.

With enrollment numbers in freefall – dropping by about 1,000 each year – district officials claim they had no choice.

Now the future of thousands of students hanging in the balance as they wait in limbo.

A decade ago, 2,600 kindergarten students enrolled in Rochester’s schools, representing about three-quarters of the children born in the city five years earlier, ProPublica reported.

Now, that proportion has dropped to around half, according to Peluso.

Despite being the fourth-largest city in New York, Rochester – with a population of around 210,000 – could face the prospect of its school system enrolling only about a third of the city’s current school-age children.

Peluso warned that if this trend continues without intervention, the district could shrink to fewer than 14,000 students within 10 years.

The list of doomed schools include: Clara Barton School No. 2, Dr. Walter Cooper Academy School No. 10, Adlai E. Stevenson School No. 29, Andrew J. Townson School No. 39, RISE Community School No. 106 and Wilson Foundation Academy are all on the elementary school chopping block.

Middle schools facing extinction include Dr. Alice Holloway-Young School of Excellence, Franklin Lower School and Monroe Lower School.

High schools aren’t spared either, with Franklin Upper School and Northeast College Preparatory High School set to turn off the lights for good.

Janice Kpor, a devoted mother and president of the parent-teacher organization at School 10, the Dr. Walter Cooper Academy, said she was shocked to hear the news.

‘I was in disbelief,’ Kpor said to ProPublica. ‘It was a stab in the back.’

School 10, a two-story structure built in 1916 and recently treated to a multimillion-dollar renovsation, is one of the schools set to close its doors.

The building won’t even be abandoned – it’s set to be handed over to a Montessori program, leaving Kpor and other parents feeling like they’ve been unceremoniously evicted.

‘It was more of an insult,’ Kpor said to ProPublica, ‘because now you have this place and all these kids and a whole bunch of new kids in the same building, so what is the logic of, quote-unquote, closing the school.’

The closure plan has laid bare the deep-seated tensions in this economically divided city.

School 10, serving a student body that’s more than 90 percent black or Latino, is being replaced by a program with a slightly higher proportion of white families.

It’s a move that is noticed by parents on both sides of the divide.

Robert Rodgers, a parent at the Montessori school set to take over School 10’s building, acknowledged the awkwardness of the situation.

‘The perception is that you’ve got the kids at this protected, special school – you can see the difference between what they get and what we get,’ he admitted.

‘If I was a parent at School 10, I would be livid.’

On top of this, Superintendent Peluso dropped another bombshell in March, announcing his departure for a cushy new job in the suburbs.

The position, overseeing a district of just 3,800 students – more than 70 percent of them white – pays nearly as much as his Rochester post.

‘This hurts,’ Rodgers said. ‘It’s another situation where the suburbs are taking something from the city.’

As the final bell tolled on the 2023-2024 school year, the reality of the closures began to sink in.

At School 10’s last days, even the school’s 95-year-old namesake, Dr. Walter Cooper, expressed his dismay.

‘It’s tragic,’ the research scientist told the outlet. ‘It points to the fundamental instability in the future of the schools.’

The situation is even worse at School 29, where many special-needs students face an uncertain future.

‘We’re not doing well at all,’ Latoya Crockton-Brown, a teacher of 19 years, told the outlet.

‘This was a family school. It’s very disheartening. Even the children cried today.’

As Rochester grapples with this drastic change, many fear the future of public education in the city is at stake.

‘It’s like you’re watching institutions decline in real time,’ warned Rachel Barnhart, a former TV news reporter who now serves in the county legislature. ‘Anchors of the community are disappearing.’

But the situation in Rochester is not isolated – in fact, it’s an acute example of a nationwide trend.

Since the start of the Covidpandemic, public school enrollment has declined by about a million students across the country.

Researchers attribute the drop to families switching to private schools – aided by an expansion of voucher programs in many red and purple states – and to homeschooling, which has seen especially strong growth.

An estimated 50,000 students are unaccounted for – many of them are simply not in school.

The Urban-Suburban program, which allows city students to transfer to surrounding suburban districts also contributes.

While supporters see it as a step towards integration, critics argue it’s draining engaged families from city schools.

With about 1,000 children enrolled in the program, it’s contributing to the city’s enrollment woes.

Thomas Dee, a professor of education at Stanford, warned that the consequences of these closures could be far-reaching.

‘School closures are difficult events that rend the community, the fabric of the community,’ he said. ‘The concern I have is that it’s going to be yet another layer of the educational harm of the pandemic.’

With federal pandemic aid set to dry up and no end in sight to the enrollment exodus, many are wondering if this is just the beginning.

On top of this, teachers are quitting in droves as a new generation of appallingly behaved students push their patience to the limit.

Born between roughly 2010 and the end of 2024, Generation Alpha will make up the largest cohort of children ever to live on planet earth.

However, the two billion-plus toddlers and pre-teens are already being cited for their illiteracy, unruly behavior and an uncontrollable addiction to screens.

Many blame lockdowns and school closures during the pandemic for the rise in bad behavior, while some are pointing the finger at Millennial parents who are opting to distract children with technology rather than properly discipline them.

Now a new bombshell study has revealed the devastating impact this has had on school life, with 26 percent of public schools reporting that a lack of focus among ‘iPad’ students has had a ‘severe negative impact’ on teacher morale.

On top of low morale, a separate April study revealed that 92 percent of leadership at public schools were concerned that students were not meeting academic standards, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Two years earlier, NCES reported that 44 percent of all public schools were operating without a full teaching staff.

That year also featured the lowest job satisfaction levels among teachers of all time – only 12 percent – according to 2022 research published by Brown University.

In May of this year alone, 59,000 teachers and other educational staff quit their jobs in the United States according to a poll by Statista, leaving their thankless job in favor of a more ‘fulfilling’ career.

‘It’s chaos right now,’ a special education teacher who works in San Diego County told DailyMail.com, adding that she teaches ‘kids with severe ADHD who are also iPad babies and [their course load] is so difficult for their attention span.’

Meanwhile, Mitchell Rutherford, a 35-year-old teacher who has taught for more than a decade, was one of those educators pushed to leave.

He quit his job as a biology teacher at Sahuaro High School in Tuscon, Arizona, in May after becoming frustrated by his student’s cell phone addiction – even after he went to great lengths to encourage less screen time.