EDUCATION: Grim grad news for minority males 

The Rochester city school district has earned another disturbing distinction. Only 9 percent of the district's black males who were eligible graduated in the 2009 to 2010 school year, according to a recent report. Rochester graduated the lowest percentage of black and Latino male students of any district in the country, behind Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. | The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males 2012, an analysis of graduation rates, was released by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. | "The necessary systemic reforms and investments to significantly improve black male outcomes and to provide them with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn have been at a painstakingly slow pace or not at all," the report says. | The situation for Latino males is equally grim. Rochester graduated only 10 percent of its Latino males in 2009 to 2010, the report says. | But district superintendent Bolgen Vargas disputes the report's finding. District data shows that 42 percent of eligible black males and 43 percent of eligible Latino males graduated in 2010, he says. Vargas says he doesn't have an explanation for the disparity in numbers.