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What is our return on investment?
Our community’s education stewards recently passed a budget of $1.026 billion to support education for Rochester’s families – including some of our community’s most vulnerable youth. Our property taxes account for $119.1 million of that budget. But do you know what you “bought”? What’s the return on our investment?
Many of us think that we invested in educational opportunities that prepare Rochester’s children to thrive, to pursue careers that provide financial stability and to contribute to society as productive citizens. If we believe education is a vehicle for social and economic mobility, looking at the wealth gap can be a good measure for whether we are living up to that promise. So, we must ask ourselves, what does the wealth gap look like in Rochester and how are our public K-12 schools working to close the gap?
According to an August 2020 report by ACT Rochester and Rochester Area Community Foundation, African Americans are almost 3 times as likely to experience unemployment, while Latinos are 2 ½ times as likely as their White peers. Further, African American incomes on average are less than half (49%) those of their White counterparts, while Latino incomes are only slightly more than half (53%). Assessing academic performance during the same period we see that African Americans and Latino students underperform their White counterparts in all measures of student learning.
Are you happy with your investment? Do you want a say in what you’re “buying”? What if we could:
- Reimagine our approach to education by designing and developing learning environments that students, families, and educators want;
- Invest in meaningful opportunities for students to shape their learning experiences;
- Harness the talents of our educators and empower them to employ their expertise to devise solutions and structures that better engage and educate Rochester’s children; and
- Contribute to the viability of our community by tailoring learning opportunities to the workforce development needs of our growing industries?
As we work to advance our community’s shared vision to ensure that all children have access to quality schools, we must invest in comprehensive, community-centered design efforts to ensure that Rochester’s schools are responsive to the needs and concerns of our families, educators, and the community as a whole.
If you want to see a return on your investment that is aligned to your values and a bright future for children in Rochester, take the pledge below and join the other 225 community members who are READY for quality schools.
Yours in service,
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