In his State of the City address last year, Mayor Bob Duffy warned that Rochester is two cities, "one prospering and vibrant, the other poor and struggling." And he urged us to pull together to create what surely we all want: One City.

Last week, in his second State address, he talked about the need for results, for accountability. Certainly we expect results and accountability from government. But the speech felt, well, small. Duffy named the problems again. But aside from some small specifics, he didn't talk much about how to solve those problems.

And there was no big vision, no sense of where he might lead us, together.

Maybe everybody in City Hall is a little wary of talking about big projects, given the history of the ferry. I don't think we'll pull out of what is a growing crisis, though, if we don't think a lot bigger.

I was particularly disappointed in what seemed to be a frontal attack on the school district. Duffy ticked off a raft of statistics: the school district's budget is $633 million. The district has about twice as many employees as the city has. The city is "generous" to the district, giving a it lot more ($119 million) than Buffalo gives to its district ($70 million). And yet the Buffalo district is "much larger" than Rochester's, and Buffalo's graduation rate is better than ours.

(For the record, Buffalo has 36,806 students, and Rochester has 33,055.)

"I will never be convinced by anyone that our children cannot learn," said Duffy. "Our kids are smart. They are eager and ready to learn."

And, he said: "I will never be convinced that our teachers cannot teach. Our city school teachers are dedicated and hard working."

"But," he said, "somewhere between the dollars coming in and the results in the classroom, there is a disconnect. We have the worst graduation rate in the state."

"Clearly money is not the issue here," he said. "It's about results."

Well, in addition to having the state's lowest graduation rate, we have the state's highest child poverty rate. Rochester's child poverty rate is higher than that of New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Maybe there's a connection.

This is the kind of detail that we like to argue about, of course. It lets us avoid searching for the cause of the problem. It lets us avoid talking about solutions.

Improving our graduation rate is crucial. But Duffy seems headed down a dangerous road. "I care about our children graduating from school," he said, "and that should be and will be our funding criteria for our schools" (my emphasis).

Meaning what? That if the graduation rate doesn't improve, the city will reduce the money it gives the district?

Best I can tell, the mayor isn't a threatening kind of person. And he did say this: "We must solve this together."

Still, for a community to solve a problem this big "together" takes leadership. And nobody's in a better position to lead on this issue than Bob Duffy. He has the popularity and the charisma to lead.

Duffy will be getting plenty of advice about the school district from his administration, which includes some longtime district critics. And City Council's not overflowing with district fans, either.

So here's some unsolicited advice to the mayor:

1) Spell out the solutions or put the focus where it belongs.

I've pressed city officials, including the mayor, to say what they want changed. Their answers dwell on results: they want better test scores, better graduation rates, fewer dropouts. Don't we all. But when I ask what the district should do to get those results --- what it's doing wrong, what it should do that it isn't doing --- they throw up their hands. "That's not our job." "We're not educators." "We don't want to run the school district."

That's not good enough. If they know what the district should do, they should say so. Spell it out.

This debate has been going on for years. Superintendents have come and gone. Budget directors have come and gone. School board members have come and gone. Teachers and principals have come and gone.

One thing has been constant: as the district's poverty rate has gotten worse, the results have gotten worse.

The Rochester schools that are doing best are those with the lowest student poverty rate: the most economically integrated schools.

Rochester's experiment with charter schools mimics that record. The two schools that have been shut down for poor performance had high poverty rates. The charter school doing the best is the one with an economically integrated population.

I can't reach any conclusion other than this: As long as the Rochester school district has the concentration of poverty that it has, nothing's going to change. It's time for city officials to accept that.

"We can't say that," the critics will say. "That would mean giving up."

Oh?

A little distraction making the rounds right now is a report that the state might let Rochester's mayor appoint a couple of School Board members. Rochester board members are all up in arms about this. I think it's a heck of an idea, myself. It would give city officials a first-hand look at the challenges facing the district --- and the limits to the district's power to change things.

2) Get to know the schools.

Each top official of the Duffy administration --- the mayor, the deputy mayor, all of the commissioners --- should become a City Hall liaison to an individual city school. So should every member of City Council. Join the parents group. Get to know the principal. Get to know the teachers. Volunteer several hours a month helping out in that school.

Unquestionably, they would find shortcomings. There's not an institution on earth, public or private, that can't be improved. But I think the folks at City Hall would find what I've found when I've visited schools and talked to teachers and principals: the public's expecting the impossible.

3) Market the district's successes.

And there are indeed successes. Not every child in the Rochester school district is dropping out or taking six years to graduate. Many are doing well, making good grades, taking AP classes, and going on to college --- good colleges.

We don't hear about them. We hear about the failures. And the more public officials beat up on the school district, the harder it is to attract and keep motivated children and their families in the district. This is not to suggest that anybody should gloss over the district's problems or be satisfied with mediocrity. It is important, however, for city officials to learn about and publicly praise the successes. Otherwise, we risk driving people away from the district.

Duffy has said numerous times that crime, education, and employment opportunities are inextricably linked. He's absolutely right. We can't fix any one of those in isolation from the others. Last year, he said he was "honored to serve as the district's Number 1 cheerleader." While he's holding the district's feet to the fire, I'd like to see him become the school district's Number 1 cheerleader.

4) Push for campus schools.

It's time to directly attack the single biggest obstacle to city schools' improvement: the concentration of poverty. One way to do that is through a metropolitan school district. No one in my lifetime will seriously suggest that, but there's another way to get economically integrated schools: Appeal to every college and university to open a campus school, a public school serving city and suburban students. Insure that the student body of each school is economically integrated. And make the schools so good that they'll have a waiting list.

Incorporate area university education programs. Link higher-ed technical programs and arts programs to the schools. And science. And medicine.

Make Rochester a model.

Here, a voice says: You could do all this with the schools we have, concentrated poverty and all.

But we've tried similar things with the schools we have. We've created schools within schools, given them fancy names, instituted mentoring programs and partnerships with businesses. You see the results. What we have not done is break up the poverty concentration.

Campus schools wouldn't solve everything. There wouldn't be enough of them to serve every city student. We'd still have schools with high poverty rates. And the campus school idea would be controversial. There would be critics --- white, African American, Hispanic --- who would insist that it was a wasted effort, that students in a high-poverty school could learn if only the teachers would shape up.

But we've been saying that for far too long. We've sacrificed too many students clinging to the myth that a segregated school system can provide a good education.

In his State of the City address last week, Bob Duffy said that Rochester's students come to school ready to learn. Some do, Mr. Mayor. Some do. Many do not. Here are some statistics, from the 2005 blue-ribbon task force headed by RIT President Al Simone:

Everybody is frustrated with the district's graduation rate, and if the district is wasting money or failing to do what it needs to do to improve student achievement, it should be held accountable. But the graduation rate, and the low test scores, and the high drop-out rate are symptoms, just as the city's high murder rate, abandoned houses, and drug problems are symptoms. Working together, to use a Duffy phrase, we can achieve a lot. Throwing stones, we can't.

Should the city tie its school funding to the district's graduation rate? If so, maybe the state should tie aid to the City of Rochester to our murder rate and job-loss rate.

There are no easy answers to Rochester's education crisis. And I am very, very worried about the future. We are losing a stellar superintendent, and even if his successor is every bit as good, there'll be a long learning period. Meanwhile, the School Board threatens to become one of the most dysfunctional in recent memory.

A recent Rochester Business Journal poll asked readers to rate the priorities for Mayor Duffy. The choices: economic development, public safety, fiscal management, obtaining state aid, and education. Education came in dead last.

Education is not, I know, dead last in the mayor's mind. But if it were first, what might we achieve?

It would be interesting to find out.