BUFFALO PUBLIC SCHOOLS
School 44 is failure, Williams admits
Buffalo’s alternative school is failing to adequately serve the city’s most needy students and will be overhauled, School Superintendent James A. Williams said Wednesday night.
“We took a risk,” Williams said of Academy School 44, which has been the subject of widespread criticism since shortly after opening in 2006. “It didn’t work. We take full blame for it not working.”
Williams said he will present a plan for “a new philosophy on alternative education” at a Board of Education committee meeting next Wednesday.
Moments earlier, the board failed by one vote to pass a resolution directing Williams to remedy the problems at the school or terminate a contract with ResulTech, a Maryland firm that helps run it.
The board voted, 5-4, in support of the resolution, but six votes were needed for passage because it was filed too late to be on the regular agenda of the board.
All four board members who voted against the resolution said they wanted to withhold judgment until they hear Williams’ plan next week.
The resolution, filed by board member Pamela D. Perry-Cahill, expressed “serious concerns about the execution and ongoing costs” of the contract with ResulTech, which receives $139,000 a month.
Cahill said coaches were not available to students when they were supposed to be. In addition, she said, ResulTech is paid to work with 300 students, but the average daily attendance is just 110.
In July, a state Education Department report said the school, at 1369 Broadway, failed to meet state standards on instructional time, lacked supplies and equipment, did not offer challenging work for many students, assigned teachers to subjects they were not certified to teach and had a serious attendance problem.
Robert M. Bennett, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said at the time that School 44 should be closed if it doesn’t improve dramatically.
The school, for students in grades 7 through 12, was designed to assist at-risk youngsters and reduce violence in other city schools. But last year, just 9 percent of the school’s seventh-graders were proficient in English, and 6 percent were proficient in math.
Williams said the problems resulted from “a combination of issues” such as lower-than-expected enrollment and failure to move the school to a better building.
Others backing the resolution to fix the problems or fire Resul- Tech were Ralph R. Hernandez, Christopher L. Jacobs, Catherine Nugent Panepinto and Louis Petrucci. Voting against it were Catherine Collins, Vivian O. Evans, Florence D. Johnson and board President Mary Ruth Kapsiak.
