After several weeks of wrangling over budgets and graduation rates, the mood between City Hall and the school district has shifted from suspicion to optimism. That was the message from Deputy Mayor Patty Malgieri yesterday at a talk she gave at Monroe Community College describing how the city and the school district have agreed to use $11.1 million of the $119 million the city provides to the district for programs of mutual interest.

Insisting that Mayor Bob Duffy has no interest in micromanaging what happens in the classroom, Malgieri said, "We can influence kids during that time when they are not in school through the surround-care programs we've talked about: summer youth employment, literacy for young people, curfew and truancy."

In the coming year, the city and district will pay particular attention to improving school security and reinforcing the curfew program with a renewed effort at curbing truancy. Malgieri said she is concerned about the number of students who are not in school either through poor attendance, truancy, and suspensions.

"Attendance is only 84 percent," she said. "That's 8.4 days out of 10. We need to get that up to at least 93 percent."

And she said that the Duffy administration was surprised to learn that some students who are suspended are sent to the Central Library for tutoring, which has increased the number of police calls to the library.

Though she said it was too early for specifics, she said the city and the district "are joined at the hip" and future collaboration is mandatory if graduation rates are going to improve.