Education Week - April 14, 2021 - 6

East High School is the site
of " The Legacy Project:
The Eyes of our Ancestors, "
an art installation by Rochester
artist Shawn Dunwoody.

Mike Bradley for Education Week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

What's Ahead for Hybrid Learning:
Putting Best Practices in Motion
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6 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 14, 2021 | www.edweek.org

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school in droves.
Over the next several decades,
meanwhile, the district implemented
an elaborate school choice model
and invested more in its magnet programs than in neighborhood schools
such as East. The school's offerings
suffered as a result, Nelms said.
By 2015, just 5 percent of the neighborhood's students chose East,
which now, like the district at large,
is made up mostly of Black and Latino students. Almost 1 in 5 of its students are English-language learners,
and more than 1 in 6 students have a
learning disability. In addition to just
a handful of students at the school
meeting state benchmarks, there was
high turnover among the teaching
staff, morale was low, and the school
lacked a cohesive curriculum.
Discipline-and the way it was administered-was also a problem. Any
adult in the school-including police
officers, cafeteria workers, and hallway monitors-could issue suspensions and they often did, suspending
students for days at a time for talking
out of turn, not abiding by the dress
code, and running in the hallway.
All of that culminated in the district's decision in 2015 to put the
University of Rochester in charge of
turning around East. The university
in turn tapped Nelms, a former assistant superintendent in the district, to
lead the school.
By setting up the arrangement with
the university, the school became eligible under the state's accountability
system for millions of dollars of state
and federal improvement grants.
Nelms along with the group of professors at the University of Rochester
conducted several studies to identify
the school's needs. Faculty members
were required to reapply for their
jobs and, if hired, given a 9 percent
raise.
In the 2015-16 school year, Nelms
started adding hours to the school
day, at a cost of $2 million a year, and
developing customized education
plans for each student. Students also
were given two courses of math and
two courses of English/language arts.
The school spent another
$150,000 rewriting the curriculum,
and half a million dollars on consultants from the university who offered
more than 20 days of professional
development, observed classes, and
collected data.
It hired seven social workers, 11
guidance counselors, and two nurses,
as well as an outside nonprofit to revise its discipline practices. And after
learning that some students in the
neighborhood were afraid of enrolling because of violence nearby, East
increased bus transportation for all
students.
By 2017, the results were promising. More students had started enrolling. Discipline incidents plummeted from 1,629 in 2015 to 332 in
2019. The passing rate on 9th grad-

ers' state English/language arts
exam climbed from 30 percent in
2015 to 60 percent in 2019.
By the start of the 2019-20 school
year, just a few months before the
pandemic, the school was one of the
district's fastest-growing in terms of
academics.
New pressures threaten to
unravel East High's progress

But the University of Rochester
management regime couldn't spare
East from the district's financial woes.
In 2019, the district's chief financial
officer mistakenly hired too many special education teachers, resulting in a
$45 million shortfall. While the state
bailed the district out with a loan, administrators still had to lay off more
than 100 teachers and staff members.
The school board voted in 2020,
after the start of the pandemic, to
cut 20 percent of East High School's
budget. Nelms reduced professional
development, ended some contracted
services with University of Rochester,
and laid off some support staff.
Nelms said he expects Rochester
this year to restore many of the cuts
in a budget process that started in
earnest last month. And while the
state plans to make some cuts to its
overall K-12 spending, Gov. Andrew
Cuomo, a Democrat, has proposed to
restore a long-term loan the state has
promised Rochester to help balance
its budget.
Rochester stands to receive more
than $200 million from the newest
flood of federal COVID-19 aid this
year, according to local predictions.
But the district's CFO has warned of
potential layoffs.
Still, Nelms said, " Now that we have
a clear plan in place, it's much easier to
identify where new money has to go. "
Both Nelms and Uebbing also
are convinced that the school's
spending needs will decrease
over the coming years. The district
spent a lot of money training teachers on classroom management and
restorative practices, which they project will reduce costly discipline cases.
Enrollment is expected to rebound,
bringing in more per-pupil revenue.
And with teachers having written the
school's curriculum, the administration hopes to spend less on professional development in that area.
" If you want to make a difference,
you have to invest in that difference, "
Uebbing said. " In the long run, it'll
make a better life for these kids. "
But the school's supporters and others in the community are well-aware
of how fragile its turnaround remains,
especially at a time when the pandemic continues to destabilize local
budgets nationwide.
" A big point of contention here for
the last couple of years is this thought
that, 'Why does East get more money
than my school?' and 'How can we
take away from that?' " said Scanlon,
of the Children's Agenda advocacy
group. " But if you do that, East is no
longer what it is. "
This story was produced with support
from the Education Writers Association
Reporting Fellowship program.

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Education Week - April 14, 2021

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