News Blog

The four-year graduation rate for the Rochester school district dropped by one point, according to the New York State Education Department. The SED has released its Report Cards for districts throughout the state, and out of Rochester’s 2007 cohort of 2,868 students, 50 percent graduated in 2012, down from 51 percent from the prior school year.

African American students had a 49 percent graduation rate, while the rate was 48 percent for Latino students and 62 percent for white students. Buffalo’s graduation rate, in comparison, was 56 percent. The state's goal is 80 percent.

The new graduation rate probably won’t surprise many parents, residents, and community leaders, since it has hovered around 50 percent for several years. But school officials point out that the grade rate has remained fairly steady as students adjusted to higher standards. Local diplomas are being phased out, and students will have to pass five Regents exams to receive a Regents diploma and graduate next year.

School officials also point to the five-year graduation rate of 56 percent as an indicator that progress is possible when students have more time.

The more rigorous standards will continue as districts around the state implement a tougher curriculum called the Common Core. Superintendent Bolgen Vargas has repeatedly stated that he expects the district’s test scores and grad rates to get worse before a strong turnaround can be expected.

At a special board meeting last night to review Vargas’s proposed budget for the 2013 to 2014 school year, Vargas told board members it could be four more years before the district begins seeing steady improvements in the graduation rates.

It's time to beat on Medley Centre again.

The state Comptroller's Office just released a report on statewide industrial development activity in 2011. The report devotes a fair amount of space to exemptions for retail projects, which it says have increased each year since 2007. Prior to 2008, a provision of state law prohibited IDA's from giving exemptions to retail projects outside of certain exceptions. That year the provision expired and wasn't renewed until the Legislature and governor enacted this year's budget.

The Comptroller's Office compiled a list of the top five retail projects receiving IDA benefits, based on the project cost. The $260 million Medley Centre in Irondequoit is at the top of that list. The report also says that in 2011, the project received $1.5 million in exemptions from the county IDA and created no jobs.

Developer Scott Congel bought Medley Centre in 2008 and the dead mall has sat idle for the past few years. Congel has a tax deal with the town, county, and East Irondequoit School District, and he's been making his required regular payments. And late last year there was a flurry of news about Congel agreeing to build a theater for the Rochester Broadway Theatre League as part of the Medley Centre project.

When children leave school for the summer, research shows that many lose a significant percentage of the knowledge and skills they developed during the school year. It varies from child to child, but some studies show that children can lose as much as half of the academic gains they’ve made. Some educators refer to it as the "summer brain drain."

When these children, particularly urban school children, return to school, they may have been promoted to the next grade. But academically, they’ve fallen behind and will need remedial help to catch up. Imagine what this does cumulatively over a period of years.

• FILE PHOTO
• Elaine Spaull.

Summer reading is particularly critical for children transitioning from third grade to fourth grade because children are supposed to have learned to read by then, and they’ll need to read to learn from that point on. If they can’t read to grade-level proficiency by third grade, their chances of graduating on time are greatly diminished.

To address this problem, more than 1,500 students in 13 city schools will receive six free books this summer. The summer reading program, which is in its seventh year, is coordinated by the Center for Youth in Rochester. Age- and reading-level appropriate books are mailed directly to the children. The program is designed to complement city schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas’s ROCRead program, which encourages children to develop their reading skills by reading during breaks.

According to the program’s directors, Patty Yarmel and Leslie Schwartz, 75 percent of the children said their reading ability improved as a result of the program, and 68 percent of parents saw improvement. Their pre- and post- program surveys found that the majority of children did not experience a summer slide in their reading ability, and the books were often shared with siblings.

While the program is funded by M&T Bank and an anonymous donor, City Council member Elaine Spaull, who is also director of the Center for Youth, should be commended, too. Many Rochester-area politicians lament the city school district’s low graduation rate, but do relatively little to help. Spaull has fought hard to keep this program alive during a time of severe budget constraints.

The conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy has released a report that says, predictably, that fracking could boost incomes in 28 New York counties.

The report's authors based their conclusions on data from Pennsylvania counties where Marcellus Shale drilling is occurring. They say that had New York allowed its counties to "fully exploit the Marcellus Shale," the 28 counties would have seen income growth of 15 percent over the past four years. And if New York State green-lights fracking, the counties could still see incomes grow by 15 percent — or an additional $8 billion — over the next four years.

But news reports have pointed out flaws in the report. For example, a story from Gannett's Albany Bureau points out that the $8 billion growth conclusion relies on the unlikely premise that each of the counties would have 400 wells drilled in that four-year time period.

I see a couple of flaws with the report, too. It claims to address the economic impact of permitting fracking, but while it focuses on income growth, it doesn't factor in costs. Road maintenance comes quickly to mind: well-related truck traffic chews up local roads fast and if the drilling companies don't cover repair costs, the public has to.

And the report doesn't say who will earn these higher wages. In Pennsylvania, while plenty of the workers are local, many have come from other states: ones with longer histories of drilling. In a 2011 story, the New York Times reported that the influx of out-of-state oil and gas workers was driving up housing costs in some Pennsylvania counties.

On Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., the local anti-fracking group R-CAUSE will hold a panel discussion titled “Hydrofracking as Seen Through the Lens of Public Health.”

Two panelists will discuss the possible environmental consequences of fracking, and fracking’s potential impact on human health.

The speakers are Dr. David Carpenter and David Kowalski. Carpenter, a public health physician, is the director of the University of Albany’s Institute for Health and the Environment. Kowalski is a professor emeritus at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. R-CAUSE’s press release says that, in his retirement, Kowalski has become interested in how different energy sources affect the environment and human health.

The event will take place at RIT’s Panara Theater, which is in the LBJ building. (An RIT campus map is available here.) The event is free and American Sign Language interpreted. Jeremy Moule
This item has been corrected. City received incorrect information about a speaker's title.

The Rochester school board will meet at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7, to review Superintendent Bolgen Vargas’s 2013 to 2014 proposed $728 million budget. The board will meet again at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 9, to vote on the budget. Both meetings will be held at the district’s central office, 131 West Broad Street. Tim Louis Macaluso

Rochester Mayor Tom Richards will give his annual State of the City address at 7 p.m. today (Monday) at School of the Arts on Prince Street. It’s unlikely that Richards will roll out any grand initiatives or programs; the speech is typically a chance to highlight accomplishments as well as to identify ongoing challenges.

It will be interesting to check the tone and substance of the speech against the backdrop of the pending mayoral primary. Richards is being challenged by City Council President Lovely Warren. Warren says the Richards administration has not done enough for the people in the city’s neighborhoods — a charge Richards denies. So if I were a betting person, I’d say that Richards will spend a good chunk of time tonight talking about what his administration has done and still plans to do in the neighborhoods.

The speech will be carried live by YNN (cable channel 9), City 12 TV, and the city will stream it on its website, www.cityofrochester.gov

The City of Rochester’s Preservation Board meets on Wednesday, May 8, and one of the items on the agenda concerns a controversial apartment proposal for University Avenue. Morgan Management hopes to take over the property at 933 University, demolish the veterans' building that’s there, and build a new one for them, and build a large apartment building, three and four stories high, with 102 one- and two-bedroom units.

Critics say the size and scale of the proposal are inappropriate for the East Avenue Preservation District.

Morgan must get approval from both the Preservation Board and the Planning Commission. On May 8, Preservation Board members will listen to public comments and then make their own remarks, but they won’t vote.

The comments will be sent to the Planning Commission, which will meet on May 20, take comments from the public, and vote. If the Planning Commission approves the project, the application will then go back to the Preservation Board for a vote.
Tonight's meeting starts at 6 p.m., but Morgan's application won't be heard until 7:30 p.m. in City Council chambers, 30 Church Street.

Christine Carrie Fien

Yesterday, a state appeals court upheld two towns' bans on oil and gas drilling in separate but similar cases. The decisions were cheered by environmental and anti-fracking groups, as well by some elected officials.

One case challenged a ban in the Town of Dryden, (decision here) and the other, in the Town of Middlefield (decision here).

Essentially, a panel of state Appellate Division justices ruled that the towns did not exceed their regulatory authority by enacting the bans. Generally, the state regulates oil and gas drilling. But state courts have consistently held that local governments can exclude oil and gas drilling by saying they aren't acceptable land uses.

Both towns are located above the Marcellus Shale and faced the possibility of hydrofracking within their borders to extract the natural gas. Town officials argued that fracking amounts to heavy industry inconsistent with community character and other local industry, especially agriculture.

Drilling industry representatives told some reporters that they plan to appeal the decisions. But they also said that the higher court is unlikely to hear the cases. The Appellate Division decisions were unanimous in both cases.

The Democrat and Chronicle is moving fewer copies of its print paper, but more people are accessing its content digitally.

That's what the numbers from the latest Alliance for Audited Media (formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations) show. On a general, national basis, newspaper circulation is down, but digital products account for an increasingly greater portion of the circulation. So the D and C's print decrease and digital increase are in line with national trends.

The Alliance for Audited Media cautions against using this period's data to make direct comparisons with past figures. In a blog post, it notes that publishers have changed the way they market and distribute products, which affects the counts. And the organization has also changed its reporting criteria over the years.

That said, between its April 2007 report and the recent report, the D and C has seen a 34 percent decrease in average Monday through Friday circulation. In April 2007, the D and C reported that circulation as 154,599. In the recent report, that figure, which includes digital editions, dropped to 101,885.

Total Sunday circulation has decreased by about 33 percent. Total Sunday circulation was 209,427 in April 2007 and 140,483 in the April 30 report.

The D and C has touted its digital gains. In an article published yesterday, it says that the use of the digital products by subscribers has increased by 21 percent a month since the company instituted its paywall last May. The measurement is actually a little confusing and complicated. But in September 2012, digital circulation amounted to 3,457 subscriptions or registrations for digital products. In the recent report, that number has increased to 5,577.

Brick-N-Motor could be back up and running at a Henrietta office park as soon as Friday, May 3.

Last night, the Henrietta Town Board approved, by a 4 to 1 vote, a special permit for the food truck to operate at the Eagle's Landing Business Park. First, though, the truck owners have to meet with Terry Ekwell, the town's director of building and fire prevention, for inspections of the site and the truck, says Paul Vroman, co-owner of Brick-N-Motor. Vroman says that he and his business partner, Nathan Hurtt, hope the meeting happens today.

The permit allows the truck to operate only at the office park.

"It doesn't allow us to roam around Henrietta," Vroman says.

He also says that the town expects other food trucks to apply for permits, but that they'll be decided on a case by case basis.

Up until March 15, Brick-N-Motor was operating at the office park two days a week for six months. But the town told the owners to stop, and that they needed a permit.

Elected officials are finding it easier and easier to get behind active transportation initiatives. As she spoke to the audience at yesterday's Genesee-Finger Lakes Active Transportation Summit, Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks ticked off the reasons why, including economic and community health benefits.

• PHOTO BY JEREMY MOULE
• This is what parking looks like at an active transportation summit.

But she also pointed out that active transportation initiatives, from creating bike lanes to making sure sidewalks have curb cuts at crosswalks, are politically popular. Many different constituencies have made active transportation — biking, walking, and other human-powered ways of getting around — a priority, Brooks said. And that's true. Parents of school-age children, some government agency staff, competitive and recreational cyclists, environmentalists, and the AARP are just some of the groups embracing active transportation initiatives and infrastructure.

"At the end of the day, we listen to you," Brooks said. "And that's our job."

Brooks told the crowd that the county's Transportation Department has been working with members of the Rochester Cycling Alliance to make sure road projects incorporate bike-friendly features. And the department has given the alliance advice on how their advocacy could help the county accomplish their mutual goals, she said.

Brooks also said the county will complete a major active transportation initiative this year: it'll finish installing countdown crosswalk signals on county roads. It's a federal mandate, but it's something officials wanted to do anyway, she said.