Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard has more than enough challenges. But one of the toughest is how to help the Rochester school district's "high-risk" students. These are students who are so disengaged from school that they skip class, or have home problems so severe that they can't concentrate. Students who don't care whether they pass or fail. Students who are constantly in trouble for truancy or fights.

New superintendents always arrive with bright ideas for reform, but in a conversation with Brizard last week, I was struck by two of his. They're practical proposals. They'll also be expensive, and Brizard doesn't shy away from that, although he says the district might need to look for private money to help fund them.

Some of his ideas simply involve better coordination with existing social-service agencies. A child who has been suspended 12 times needs help, Brizard said - and the parent needs help. Maybe, he suggested, the district could have a social-service agency offer classes on parenting: "How do you raise a teenage son? How do you raise a teenage daughter?"

More far-reaching, though - and more expensive - are these: a system of "advocate counselors" and a new alternative school.

Unlike volunteer mentors, Brizard's advocate counselors would be school-district employees: paid professionals with a background in counseling, the social services.

Each would be, in effect, a shepherd, working with no more than 10 high-risk students. They would have close daily contact with students and their teachers. They would get know their students' families. They would help get health care when it was needed. They would be in contact with the court system and the police if the student was in trouble.

Brizard doesn't object to volunteer mentors, but, he said, you can't get enough mentors to help every student who needs one. He's right. A few years ago, business and government leaders got all excited about a proposal to line up 10,000 mentors for Rochester students. It didn't happen, and there was no way it could. Effective mentoring is valuable. It's also time consuming. Mentors who can't spend time with their students regularly - and who can't stick with their students for a long period of time - can do more harm than good, disillusioning the students and their families still further.

To pay for the advocates, "we may need to leverage private funding," said Brizard. "But we cannot do it on the cheap."

Brizard also wants to establish a separate school for high-risk students. It would be small, he said, no more than 150 students - maybe starting with 75. This wouldn't be a dumping ground. It would be a true alternative, with trained staff, advocate counselors, and strong, trained leaders. Students would apply to get in, and the decision to enroll students would be made by the school, the parents, and the students.

Brizard said he hopes to have a school ready to operate "if not for the next school year, by the fall of 2009."

This wouldn't be the first time Rochester has opened a special school for at-risk students. The most recent was Josh Lofton, which the district closed in 2004. Low student achievement was one reason. The other: the per-pupil cost was higher than for other schools. Done right, the alternative school of Brizard's vision will also cost more than other schools. Advocate mentors will cost real money, too.

It won't be easy to sell new, expensive programs, particularly in this tight-budget period. And this community has built up a high degree of skepticism about the district and its reform ideas. I hope Brizard is able to convince business and government leaders to buy into both of these concepts, though. It's way past time to think we can give Rochester's students the help they need "on the cheap," as Brizard puts it.