School Reform and Smart Growth - A Mayor's Perspective

Mayor Johnson, you're presently attending a conference addressing how best to link school reform and smart growth. What about this roundtable meeting of experts from both movements will be of value to you as Mayor of Rochester?

I think we have an opportunity to create the right arguments to bring to people who have pretty much rejected public schools by their actions. They have moved away from cities into suburbs and into rural areas because they believe they can find better school experiences. If we create the right nexus, I think that we can bring a lot of those people back.

What leverage and what tools do you have as a mayor to integrate school reform with your efforts to revitalize the City of Rochester?

Well, we have one very powerful tool, in that we fund the schools in Rochester. Even though we can't really prescribe to the district how that money is spent, it certainly gives us the opportunity to creatively collaborate with the school district and to get them to understand that we have mutual agendas and mutual interests. We can use these resources to our best advantages for the betterment of not only the schools, but the community as well.

How hard is it for the City of Rochester to create and administer a common agenda with your school district?

Well, I think that every school district these days – particularly urban districts – are so strapped for resources that they view their missions very narrowly, and they don't want to be distracted from that. I think it is very easy, particularly in an environment like Rochester – where we have a Master Plan that actually places education at the very top of the priority list – to understand that our agendas are mutually inclusive. One cannot survive without the support of the other. I see now, after many abortive efforts to get that message across, more acceptance and understanding of our mutual interests.

With the support of progressive business, union, and civic leadership, Rochester was on the cutting edge of school reform for a decade or more. Now such efforts seem to have fallen on hard times. Why did your reforms fail to gain traction with the community? What were the public's expectations?

We have implemented nearly every known education reform there is in Rochester. We've increased teacher pay; we've included parents in the planning process; and we've established school-based planning, school-based budgeting, and Montessori programs. If you went down the list, I could check off almost every reform as implemented. But the will of the community has dissipated. We had tremendous private sector involvement and parent-neighborhood civic leadership. We had what we called a "Call to Action," in which we essentially created a specific task for each element of the community to become involved with. The leading corporate leaders of our community were heavily involved.

People were expecting something tangible and measurable at the end. If we increase financial support of the schools, if we create opportunities for more parental involvement, if we raise the professional standards and the professional pay for teachers, and if we have levels of accountability that are very quantifiable, then that should lead to better student performance. But, other factors have intervened. I don't know that all of these factors were exclusive, but something obviously intervened to mitigate against our progress. And this has caused a lot of folks to lose patience and to lose interest in school reform. They believe it's a bottomless pit.

Now, we can't afford to throw in the towel. There are lives at stake. There is a community at stake. And so, it is really incumbent upon the elected leadership at the school and civic levels to begin to reinvigorate this population. We have to find these elusive answers.

You have been a mayor for more than 10 years. Mayors seldom have a significant influence on the school reform. Why is that?

Well, I've looked at every aspect of this. I've looked at mayoral control – whether or not the mayor should essentially control the school district. I think most mayors shy away from that because they don't want to be accountable for blame in a highly visible area.

In Rochester, we have looked at new funding formulas. For example, New York State's six largest school districts are fiscally dependent on their cities, while our suburban districts have independent taxing authorities. Perhaps we should try to address that inequity by allowing urban school districts to have their own fiscal independence. We also looked at governance – whether or not to go from elected school boards to appointed school boards, in the belief that you can bring in the right level of expertise that you need. Many of our school board members are well-meaning people, but do not have the expertise to manage a half-billion dollar enterprise.

I looked at all of these issues. What tends to interfere most of all, as I indicated earlier, is that people who are a vital part of the school district protect their own self-interests. They become like cartels, and they align themselves together because the status quo is very beneficial to them, even though it might not meet the approval of the outside public.

We have to somehow figure a way to dismantle that attitude without effectively crippling the schools. We have to find a way to reposition the power relationship that currently exists between schools and their communities. I refuse to discount the bottom line of student achievement. Schools only exist for one purpose, and that's to educate children and to educate them well.

Following on the heels of this roundtable discussion of smart growth and school reform, what do you think state government can do to advance this mutual agenda?

Well, I think states should recognize the importance of accountability. I think they should recognize the benefits of targeting their resources to the areas of greatest need. I think they should be more willing to tackle the very hot-button issue of land use and to create more regionally-based incentives that can lead to better land-use decisions. That's the central reason why we are now where we are with these problems – we have too much local autonomy.

I appreciate the fact that education is viewed as a local initiative and that people really want to control their local schools. But, I think that they also recognize that they aren't willing, aren't capable, and aren't able to pay the total costs of schools. States put up lots of money for schools, so somehow or other they have to think radically if we are going to achieve better results in performance and equity. I just can't see how we can spend as much money as we do but be willing to tolerate the fact that some children will get a higher quality product than others, when we understand what that means in terms of life decisions. The child with a poor education is doomed to a life of failure, and the child with a good education is placed on the road to riches. I just don't know how we can tolerate that.

Mayor Johnson, you noted in your remarks today that you were a product of segregated schools, but that you are now the Mayor of Rochester and a successful man. You conclude that poverty does not explain why schools are failing so many of Rochester's youth. Please elaborate.

I think that the times were a lot simpler in my youth. I think that opportunities were greater. Fortunately, I was born at the right time, at a time when the economy was booming and opportunities were expanding in the nation. If someone was really willing to invest in his education, there was reward for him at the end. Today, it's pretty hard to motivate children of poverty when they have never seen success or that there's something at the end of this rainbow that we call education. So, I think you have to factor that in. But I also know that poverty in and of itself does not define the entire problem with our public schools. Many people overcome poverty and the most wretched living conditions to succeed. Whatever that formula is, we've got to find it, and we've got to ensure that more children in those situations can succeed. Right now, too few of them do.

Finally, many school reform and smart growth advocates, including former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, New Schools Better Neighborhoods, and Knowledge-Works Foundation, argue that in order to get significantly better educational results, school districts and cities must consciously build schools as centers of communities – co-located facilities and joint-use schools which are purposely designed to transform neighbor-hoods into healthy communities that positively nurture their youth. Is there anything to that concept, or is this just another untested reform idea?

Yes, there is something to it. Again, we don't spend this amount of time and resources on education just to keep kids occupied during a certain part of their life. It's the transfer of knowledge, the transfer of values – the whole question of success. How do you prepare a person to succeed? That is why we have to engage the total community. We tend to hand our children off to the professionals, but education is not just a pedagogical experience. It is one where we have to really rely upon the total community to instill those values and make sure we succeed.