ROCHESTER N.Y. — Parents in the Rochester area were invited to attend a Board of Education work session Saturday morning. The gathering is intended to disclose the Board’s plans for the Path Forward study.

“Path Forward is really a different way of doing business,” said RCSD Deputy Superintendent of Administration, Lawrence “Bo” Wright. “It’s about fixing some of the issues that we see here in the district in the immediate but then also planning for our future—reimagining our schools and our classrooms and making sure our facility needs are aligned with our educational needs.”

The idea was proposed by Superintendent Barbara Deane Williams in 2017, with the goal of ensuring an even enrollment throughout the district, while accommodating students with disabilities and those who are not first-language English speaking natives, but recent changes and proposals impacting schools left many parents concerned.

“Parents saw on the news one day that the school is being shut down as of the next year and they are really upset,” said Mercedes Mike, an Educational Organizers for Metro Justice and parent. She adds one of the biggest concerns among parents is the lack of communication from the district.

“People didn’t even know about this event today, because they’re not advertising it, they’ll tell you ‘it’s on the school districts site, but am I going to go on the school districts site every day?’ There is a lack of transparency between the district, parents and schools and it’s very troubling. I am holding hope that they will try to start involving the community more and parents.”

With modification still underway, it is with hope that the goals of the proposed changes will help improve and create more successful schools in the district.

“Any proposals that we’ve made, are directly linked back to what we heard from our students, our parents and our community,” said Wright.