Sticky Lips BBQ owner Howard Nielsen wrote a letter to the editor, printed in the August 20 issue of City Newspaper.
Go back to neighborhood schools
I have had the opportunity to experience a childhood growing up in the town of Irondequoit, and then as a young adult raising my family in the Tenth Ward neighborhood.
It takes a village to raise a child. At one point in our city’s school district history, each high school had neighborhood boundaries. Our children went to school with each other from kindergarten through high school, and families got to know one another. The school was a point of pride for the neighborhood. It was the people of the neighborhood who built a better school system, not the politicians or school boards.
By having a neighborhood high school, local businesses would get behind schools like they do in the suburbs. And that would put parents in walking distance of their schools. You could greatly reduce the cost of busing (taxpayer dollars), and put those savings back into buying the books that are so badly needed.
A neighborhood working together could eliminate much of the cost of government-funded (taxpayer dollars) breakfast and lunch programs. Local church groups working with people on welfare could supply the labor of making lunches for school kids.
Stop blaming the teachers for under-performance. Let’s get our educators out of what I call the “educational arms race.” We see TV commercials comparing the USA’s test scores to those of other countries. We really should be teaching something relevant and obtainable that would spark the interest in a student for a possible career choice. Especially given the city’s high dropout rate, should we be teaching trigonometry or trades? (This is not to say that there aren’t successful students in the city school system who aspire to go to college.)
Let’s produce confident students who will later become confident leaders. Let’s teach our students real skills and a work ethic that they can use in their personal life and the working world.
If the city wants the success that the suburban schools seem to enjoy, then do what they are doing. Bring back the neighborhood schools that once produced a successful City of Rochester school system.
This won’t fix all the problems, but could be a good start.
HOWARD NIELSEN