ITHACA, NY – According to a report from Rochester City Newspaper, multiple sources have said that current Ithaca City School District Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown will be Rochester City School District’s new superintendent.
According to that report, the RCSD would not confirm that Brown was chosen, and no contract has yet been signed.
Brown also would not confirm the information. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told the Ithaca Times in a phone call earlier today. “I haven’t told anyone about Rochester … Whenever something’s going on I will let you know.”
The Rochester City Newspaper article says that the search for a new Superintendent has been closed, as a search firm hired by the district advised that many highly qualified candidates wouldn’t apply unless the process was kept confidential.
Brown has been the subject of both praise and criticism in Ithaca. He’s partially credited with bringing up the graduation rate in Ithaca, but many people have been unhappy with the way the administration handled the lead in the water issue. Regardless of those experiences, it’s clear he’ll have his work cut out for him if he moves over to Rochester.
If Brown were to take the job, he would be moving from Ithaca’s approximately 5,000 student population to a district that serves approximately 42,000 students. Many of the schools in the district are struggling to meet standards, are dealing with much higher rates of poverty and have very different racial demographics compared to Ithaca’s schools.
According to the City Newspaper report, RCSD has “the lowest four-year graduation rate of New York’s big five school districts; one of the lowest graduation rates for black males in the country; a culture of instability and racial inequities; and a sizable list of schools tagged by the state as low performing.”