"The strike is as disruptive as any major labor strike in recent memory, causing tremendous hardship on Chicago’s nearly 400,000 students and their families."
What about all this testing Mr. Malacuso? That's not causing hardship? A couple weeks of no school compared to the potential coming generations of oppressive schooling?
It surprises me but doesn't surprise me that CIty would make a statement echoing the conservative mainstream media. Tim, I don't doubt that your lens has some clarity to it, but when you're at the eye doctor, they have you try on many different combinations. Hopefully you pay attention to what views you're provided rather than just taking the first pair of glasses handed to you and calling it a day.
Ms. Towler, let's start naming institutional Racism as the main culprit of our school system's problems and recognize the inner city's poverty as the main symptom of that Racism.
Re: “Downtown rising?”
Ms. Towler, every year you indeed do comment on how the Jazz Fest gives us a glimpse of what the city could be. There me a connection to this anecdote- over the last decade or so, many of my fellow musicians in Rochester have noted that the music scene has picked, we all work a lot more than we used to (fifteen or twenty years ago).
Maybe some Rochesterians have learned that live music is really fun and they want to support it more often than once a year? Maybe less suburban people are afraid of "the city" than they used to be? They went to the jazz fest and the boogie man got them, but in a good way?
I'm probably naive in saying this, but if the jazz fest gives us a glimpse of what we could be, why weep about our lack of Fortune 500 companies? We have one of the most musical cities in the country; is it possible that re-branding and investing in Rochester as a music city, rather than a tech and financial city, could be the path to take Rochester into fully realizing herself?
Another related note: The RCSD (with the help of the Rochester Education Foundation) has been investing heavily in the musical education of its students. If that trend continues, perhaps all of Rochester's residents will get a taste of how music can transform individuals and communities.