Despite challenges (see Buffalo), the East/University of Rochester partnership can succeed

Posted by [email protected] | Sep 25, 2015 | East/Warner | 0 |

• September 12, 2014

As has been extensively discussed (including in this blog), the partnership between the UR’s Warner School and East is gaining steam. Everyone I talk with is cautiously optimistic the initiative–a breath of fresh air–can be the positive step forward the District definitively needs.

How disconcerting to read the other day that the Buffalo City School District lost its university partner, Johns Hopkins. buffalonews.com/city-region/buffalo-public-schools/after-loss-of-johns-hopkins-two-buffalo-high-schools-need-plans-20140907

Apparently, after two years the university found its task to act as the school’s superintendent overwhelming and unmanageable. According to the article, Hopkins just wanted out.

Obviously, this is not good news for such partnerships. But I still have much hope. Perhaps a better way to view the Buffalo breakup is that Johns Hopkins was never a good fit. As a Maryland school, Hopkins does not have deep or wide roots in western New York, and as such, no base from which to build broad community interest.

Here, the UR has exactly such rich roots, with alumni and friends just about everywhere. Go no further than the number of Warner School grads teaching in the RCSD. Of course, it will take the whole Rochester community to “save” East. But once we get the entire UR family on board, the turnaround has a fighting chance.

Tagged East High school, Johns Hopkins University, University of Rochester

see What the new East will and will not be

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.