Rod Watson: Stimulus money stimulates push to get city involved with schools

Hikes in the number of schools in good standing and the graduation rate do, indeed, indicate real progress.

But with the district now pondering how to spend $289 million in federal stimulus money, some business leaders say a Buffalo high school diploma isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. And they have a key statistic to back them up.

According to the state’s College, Career, and Civic Readiness Index, the district rates a 1 out of 4, the lowest score possible. The State Education Department calls the index an indicator of how well a district “has prepared its students for life beyond high school,” including readying them for college or the workforce.

Cash vigorously disputes both the business leaders’ assessments and the validity of the index itself as it pertains to the school system, with district officials calling such an emphasis divisive and not descriptive of the real Buffalo Public Schools.

But the critics’ focus on low test scores and the shortcomings of some graduates is why there’s a renewed push to get city officials involved in overseeing the district. The case was laid out in stark terms at a Common Council Education Committee meeting last week, with business leaders complaining of not being able to find qualified applicants to fill job openings.

“Imagine that: We hand these kids a diploma they can’t read. They can’t add up their GPA,” lamented Jon Williams, owner of Ontario Specialty Contracting, which took over the old Chevy plant site on East Delavan Avenue.

“The Buffalo school system has failed our kids,” said Paul Vukelic, CEO of Try-It Distributing and chairman of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, the region’s largest business advocacy group.

Bishop Michael A. Badger, who chairs the human resources committee at Erie County Medical Center, said the hospital wanted to push one group of workers up the career ladder, but none could pass an aptitude test that required only a sixth grade reading level and eighth grade math proficiency.

Maybe that’s because the most recent state data showed only 25% of Buffalo Public Schools students in grades three through eight were proficient in English language arts while just 21% were proficient in math.

And the critics weren’t buying poverty as an excuse. In calling on city officials to get involved, Williams noted that “our job is to educate the kids we have,” regardless of their backgrounds.

The data combined with the experiences of business leaders trying to hire Buffalo graduates make a compelling case for city involvement because, as Sam Radford of the Urban Think Tank put it, “we can’t ask the Board of Education to change itself.”

The Think Tank organized the presentation, and one of its key asks is to fully implement the 2015 recommendations made by Gary Orfield, which included creating a second City Honors School. He also called for further altering admissions criteria at the city’s most selective – and best schools – in which students of color who make up the bulk of the district’s enrollment are vastly underrepresented.

Orfield and his Civil Rights Project at UCLA examined the district as the federal Justice Department was handling a civil rights complaint filed against the school system. At last week’s virtual committee meeting he reiterated that the recommendations, if fully implemented, would “increase the chances for students in Buffalo substantially.” He also expressed the fear that the American Rescue Plan money – which everyone agrees presents a “once in a lifetime opportunity” – will be frittered away.

“There’s a good chance this money will be wasted,” Orfield warned. “It will not come again, in this magnitude.”

In an interview this week, Cash took aim at the overall thrust of the presentation, which one of his deputies complained was "dividing this community." For one, Cash said he doesn’t know where the business leaders are looking for workers.

“Every year I have at least 200 high-quality graduates who are ready,” he said, adding that he hasn’t heard from any business owners looking to meet them or offer them internships, which is why he started a “CEO connect” program to try to pair them up. He called the notion that there are no qualified applicants graduating from a 33,000-student district “ridiculous.”

But that dismisses a real problem voiced not just by these business executives, and not just in Buffalo. As was true in listening between the lines in “Cool Hand Luke,” this dispute is about more than just a failure to communicate.

It’s about the pace of improvement: How fast is fast enough for kids who don’t have time on their side? And for a city that needs a high-quality workforce that runs deeper than just the cream of the graduating crop?

And it's about who ultimately calls the shots. Is it the experts who’ve dedicated their lives to studying education and think they know what works? Or the families and taxpayers who have to live with the results of their decisions and aren’t satisfied with what they’ve gotten so far?

The district remains skeptical of the idea of a second City Honors, questioning how that could address underrepresentation at the current elite school. But that ignores the concomitant recommendation to further tinker with admissions criteria for such schools to broaden access.

The district instead has implemented Cash’s plan to revamp high schools with programs more aligned to industries’ needs. Now as proof it’s on the right track, it points to a graduation rate that has risen from below 50% to 76% last year – though that comes with a huge asterisk due to allowances made during the pandemic – and dramatic increases in the number of schools in “good standing” and a simultaneous drop in the number of receivership schools.

Cash argues, correctly, that there would be even more improvement if more families lived up to their part of his “education bargain” by getting kids to put in the necessary two to three hours a night on homework, “then you’ll see achievement gains.”

All of which is a roundabout way of saying the district sees no need for city involvement, even as it punts the issue by saying it’s a question “you will need to ask each Common Council member.”

Council Education Committee Chairman Bryan Bollman is meeting with Urban Think Tank members to learn more about another of their ideas: a task force to analyze the district’s plan for spending the stimulus money. He’s “open to it,” as well as to the idea that his committee might be the vehicle for that.

As for a city governance role in district operations, he says state education law determines how districts are governed and by the time those types of changes could be implemented, “ the stimulus money would probably be gone.”

But though it was triggered by the influx of cash, this is an idea that should outlive the temporary windfall.

Given the paltry turnout in School Board races, giving the – apparent – new mayor and Council members some accountability for schools would elevate education as a city priority and increase the pressure for faster improvement. It also would make education more of a talking point in the community and thereby help with Cash’s goal of getting more parents to do their part.

Regardless of whether it happens in time to affect the spending of this round of stimulus money, it’s a goal worth pursuing. It wouldn’t diminish what Cash and the board have accomplished. Done right, it could only add to it.