Tonight (2017-09-21) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Urban-Suburban Research Committee.
The focus for the evening was gathering questions from the general public. Not so much in answering those questions, but collecting a sampling of what the community wants to know before any decision is made on HFL’s involvement with the program.
Before that, some general background was given to the audience. Which, amusingly enough, was mostly people affiliated with the school. Nearly everyone I could identify, which was over half of the people in the room, was either employed by the district or on a board/committee for the district. Which may be why Gene (Superintendent) asked those present to talk to their friends/neighbors.
In the background slideshow there were some spreadsheets filled with numbers (as spreadsheets tend to be). It would have been nice if something like color scale had been applied. Would have made processing the numbers a bit easier.
Apparently, for each student from the city, the state would pay HFL ~$10k. This was presented as a net gain, financially. But that was challenged later on, and it was unclear if it would really be a financial benefit to the district.
The program appears to have a 15 mile limit for travel distance. A quick look at a map suggests most of the city is too far away from HFL. Which would imply, baring an exemption, we can’t be part of the program. I can’t really disagree with the logic here, long school bus rides are not the most efficient use of time.
Much of the time was spent in small groups pondering the program and throwing questions around. At the end of those discussions each group shared their highlights. Lots of repetition between the groups, which didn’t really surprise me. But I did have an interesting thought while listening:
We (as a district) are racist. And we seek to atone (in part) for are racism by bringing in a handful of token city school students. Statistically, these will be black kids. Which makes this act (Urban-Suburban program) itself racist.
I could, of course, be wrong in the above assessment, but that did seem to be the underlying theme of the discussion. As always, time will tell how this turns out.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the September 21th, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Urban-Suburban Research Committee.