POSITION PAPER
COMMUNITY MANDATE: RENEWED MORAL COMMITMENT to
MEETING YOUTH's UNMET NEEDS
GUIDING PRINCIPLES for FORWARD MOVEMENT
For more than two decades, the Rochester City School District has worked to educate youth
with unmet needs. Marshalling the considerable talents of dedicated educators,
implementing a variety of program models, the district has experienced limited success.
Simultaneously, state and local agencies, including mental health and juvenile justice, have
likewise worked to serve this population of youth, as have community based organizations,
recreation programs, and youth services. They too have struggled with the complex needs of
youth and their families, but in parallel with school efforts. As the district once again
recommits to these youth, given low graduation, and high dropout, and truancy rates, it is
seeking input from students, families, and the community. One thing is clear: through these
decades we have learned a great deal from youth and their families. The youth, families, and
community welcome the opportunity to provide the District with Guiding Principles as we
move forward with a renewed moral commitment, at a time of increasingly limited material
resources.
1. The youth with unmet needs must be served in a true collaboration. No one part of
the community can be fully successful functioning alone. Youth need stable adults,
and supportive, valued, community inclusion to succeed in school; they need to
master basic skills and career competencies to succeed in the community. We need to
integrate our efforts in reaching the aspirations of the whole child.
2. We must work together to understand youth with unmet needs. Health and
developmental research has identified multiple layers of trauma in the lives of urban
children that shape the psychobiology underpinning their behavior. This trauma
includes a normalized urban violence that undermines childhood safety. We must
understand that trauma and its implications. We must understand the continuing
impact of lead poisoning on our youth. Affected children's needs have never been
followed. So, it is reasonable to suspect that we are subjecting them to sets of
ambiguous diagnoses, and ineffective behavioral interventions that do not match their
reality--i.e. an organically altered psychobiology. In order to serve and teach youth, we
need to understand them, reframing the question from “What’s wrong with you?” to
“What’s happened to you?”
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3. Integrated efforts that serve and teach must be person-centered, with an
individualized plan developed by and with each youth and based on the youth’s
strengths, needs, interests, and aspirations. It must be a youth driven plan, with
simple, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-framed (SMART) objectives for
learning, personal health, recreation, social relationships, and self-advocacy that focus
adult efforts on supporting youth driven success.
4. The learning, growing environment must be welcoming, person-centered, trauma
informed, and one of healing. Punitive approaches re-traumatize and are
counterproductive. The traditional educational model will not work for all. Learning
must be experiential, collaborative, kinesthetic, active, and engaging. Experience
indicates that aggregating youth with complex needs all in the same place is
unmanageable and unproductive. Rather, we must establish small group, personalized
learning settings based upon collaborative relationships with caring adults. Learning
experiences must respect and embody the power and depth of the learners’ culture
and its historical trajectory forward.
5. The Goal: holistic health; positive, valued community engagement; and, economic
self-sufficiency based on productive, meaningful employment in a sustainable career.
Achieving that goal will require multiple opportunities, including but not limited to, a
High School Diploma, GED, or vocational training. We must maintain high standards
and expectations based on the real strengths and competencies of each student.
6. Youth, parents/guardians, and the community need to be integrally engaged with
educators in the design, development, and implementation of learning experiences.
These opportunities must include a variety of small group, engaging, collaborative
learning experiences that integrate educational, health, and youth development
personnel and resources.
7. The school cannot, nor should be expected to, do this alone. Success will take a broad
base of collaboration. The Neighborhood Consortium for Youth and Family Justice, its
Neighborhood Safety Nets, participating organizations, and the community-at-large
are ready to partner in designing, developing, and implementing an effective learning
experience for these youth. We stand committed to these youth.
LET'S DO THIS!!!
Because we should.
Because we can.
And because TOGETHER,
we can do this well
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