Special ed among areas taking the biggest hits
Justin Murphy – Rochester Democrat and Chronicle USA TODAY NETWORK – in the D&C on 4/17/2020 on page A1
The Rochester school board Thursday night grappled in unusually blunt fashion with the central fact of its 2020-21 budget crisis: Students won’t get what they need.
Over and over during a four-hour budget deliberation session, board members asked Superintendent Terry Dade whether he really thought services could be sustained, or even improved upon, despite deep cuts to funding in nearly every corner of the district.
They asked about the deeply vulnerable students at Interim Health Academy being moved to All City High, which itself is facing an 11% budget decrease. They asked about reductions in teachers of English as a new language when the proportion of students needing such teachers in the district’s enrollment is rising. They asked about 27% of social workers being eliminated from a district full of traumatized children.