Why are the migrants in the city schools?
Seriously.
As they are bused up from New York City, after being bused up from Texas, after illegally crossing our southern border, why is it, that of all the school districts in Monroe County, they are put in the city schools?
The Rochester City School District is not only objectively the worst school system in the state of New York, it is one of the worst in the United States. And, truth be told, it is worse than the educational systems from which most of the migrants come.
Seriously.
Through the nine years of compulsory public education in Venezuela, something like 90% of students read at grade level. In Rochester, more than half of all students are one or two years behind grade level. The literacy rate in Venezuela, consequently, is right about 90% while the literacy rate in Rochester is estimated at 57%. Honduras is 88.5% and even Haiti, the poorest and most troubled nation in the hemisphere, is 61%. When these asylum seekers come to Rochester, they are coming to a community less educated than the troubled nations they have fled.
The Rochester City School District is an understaffed academic failure, cursing the futures of the large majority of the young men and women who are its students. It’s also dangerous. Last year, the evening news showed an attempted point-blank execution in a school doorway. Last week, a parent told he couldn’t pull into the bus loop brandished a handgun at a school sentry.
Further, the Rochester City School District is the seedbed of a failed culture of criminality and irresponsibility, with its students thus far this year having stolen hundreds and hundreds of cars and repeatedly being the victims and perpetrators of homicide.
And yet, of all the districts in the Rochester region, it’s the city school district where these foreign kids are being dumped. Where they can be beaten up, ill-educated, and acculturated into a failed, violent, and welfare-dependent American subculture.
Who thinks that’s a good idea?
Nobody but the city school district and its cluster of non-profits – all of whom see the migrants as a cash crop, bringing state and federal grant money into the coffers of the district and the non-profits.
What makes this all the more wrong is that Rochester is surrounded by very wealthy and very successful school districts with proven track records of educating students. In the suburban districts, the students who want to learn can, and they typically do so in a safe and nurturing educational environment.
These districts, also, are among the most progressive voices in the region, embracing critical race theory, the transgender movement, and antiracism, recognizing they are built on land stolen from Native Americans, and offering sexually explicit gay books in elementary school libraries. The leadership of the Greece, the Irondequoit, Hilton, Brighton, Pittsford, Rush-Henrietta, and Penfield districts are particularly progressive, and implicitly welcoming of the illegal border crossings which have given rise to the migrant crisis.
They are good at talking progressive, but not so good at actually doing progressive.
At least when it comes to migrant kids.
There are relatively few of these foreign students and there are several very large suburban districts, it seems that if the newcomers were distributed among the various suburban districts their first educational experience in America would be a good one and the burden on any individual district would be negligible.
This could easily be done, and it’s surprising that it’s not.
If the issue truly is compassion for the migrants, why no practical compassion from the suburban school superintendents? Seriously. If these children are guests in our country, why aren’t we treating them like it?
And if the virtue-signaling lawn signs and DEI programs are anything other than bull crap, why haven’t the teachers and parents in the suburban districts called out to welcome these kids?
Put them in good classrooms, where they can be safe and where they and their classmates have a high likelihood of success. Let them be acculturated into an America of achievement and self-reliance, and give them an honest shot at chasing their own American dream, instead of being shunted into the nation’s sad, permanent underclass.
The Rochester City School District, for a majority of its students, is a pipeline to failure. It is unconscionable that we allow it to continue. And it would be unconscionable to force more children into it.
Which gets back to the question: Why are the migrants in the city schools?
The answer is clear: Because the woke suburban schools don’t give a damn.
Talking the talk is a lot easier than walking the walk.