Superintendent Reynolds shares his vision and plans with New RoAR News

Advocates for a charter school in New Rochelle have claimed that the city’s public school system is failing to meet the needs of its students, particularly its students of color.  It is no secret that, like most public school districts, New Rochelle’s schools do not serve everyone equally, with significant disparities in opportunities and outcomes between various groups of students. Students challenged by systemic racism, poverty, immigration issues, and disability do not achieve at the same levels as students who face none of these challenges.  

Unlike charter schools, public schools have the responsibility to educate everyone, from the most privileged to the most disadvantaged.  Meeting the needs of a large, diverse student body is one of the greatest challenges our public schools face. 

In an environment of pervasive inequality, the schools alone can’t solve all the challenges faced by all their students.  Still, parents and the community have a right to expect that the public schools will do everything possible to enable every student to meet his or her fullest potential. 

To better understand how New Rochelle’s public schools are addressing the challenges faced by disadvantaged students, New RoAR News spoke with school superintendent Dr. Corey Reynolds.  New RoAR News sought to understand how the district views the differences in performance between racial, ethnic, and economic groups in the schools; how the district is trying to reduce or eliminate these disparities; and how the district is monitoring its own progress to see if its programs are working.

Here we present the second part of our interview with Dr. Reynolds, “Opportunities and Achievement in the Later Years.”  To read the full introduction to this series and Part 1 of the interview, “Literacy and Testing in the Early Grades,” click here. To read Part 3 of the interview, “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Competence,” click here.

PART II: OPPORTUNITIES AND ACHIEVEMENT IN THE LATER YEARS

NRN:  What about measuring opportunities and achievement in the later years?  What is being done to expand opportunities for all students?

CR:  From pre-K to12, the ultimate goal is graduation and after. So the metrics that I’m really focused on are our graduation rate and how we are graduating students from particular cultural backgrounds.  I’m very proud of our graduation rate. It is 84%.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but compared to where we were in the recent past, it’s increased, by about a percentage point this year.  But the reason why I’m proud is 88% of our Black students are graduating on time, with their cohort, within four years, and that’s up three points from last year. So we’re seeing increases on that level because of all of the things that we’re putting into place for our students.

One helpful intervention has been our in-time credit recovery.  We find that a lot of our students, particularly those who are Black and brown, have had issues with graduating on time because there was not an opportunity for them to gain credit recovery during the day. They had to go to night school, and many of our students have obligations after school. So within the last year and a half we’ve started a credit recovery program during the day. They may have to give up their lunch period to sit in on a class that they need to recover, but at least they’re doing it during the school day, and they’re able to maneuver around having to come in the evenings.

We’ve expanded our AP and dual enrollment access.  AP classes are what we’ve always prescribed where you get college credits. Dual enrollment means you’re actually enrolled in the college at the time that you’re in high school, you’re doing that coursework, and  you’re getting credits there.

For our dual enrollment classes, we’re at about 19% Black and African-American students participating, compared to about 33% of our white students.  District-wide, only 15% of our students are participating. Our African-American rate is outperforming our district-wide rate, which we’re happy about this year.

When we look at students enrolled in one or more Advanced Placement courses over the one-year period from 2023 to 2024, Black and African-American students rose from 17% participation to 21%. So we’re removing those barriers, trying to open this up so that our students realize that this is an opportunity that they should take advantage of.

Even if I’m not thinking of going to college, it’s good to have this under your belt in case you want to go. And my philosophy is, public education should lead to choices.  No one should make a choice or a decision for you. So if you don’t go to college, it should solely be your choice. But you should have enough under your belt that you’re prepared for it in case you change your mind later. That is what we’re trying to promote.

Here’s where the crux of the matter really is, and this is what we should be looking at. What barriers is the district putting into place in relation to access to all programming for all students?  One of my tenets that our district is operating on is removing those barriers. You shouldn’t have to pay for an AP class. That by itself is a barrier. It precludes a certain segment of our population from having access.  We want to be able to provide scholarship opportunities based on household economic needs.  So we’re looking at different avenues to level  the playing field.  

NRN:  What other metrics are important as students complete their experience in New Rochelle’s public schools?

CR:  One thing that we haven’t done, and I’ve asked our team to change that practice, is we haven’t shared all of the colleges that our students get accepted to.  We’ve shared the college that they plan on going to. So when you’re looking at other school districts and they have this vast list of college acceptances, it’s because they’re talking about all of the colleges that students have been accepted to. We may have a child who’s accepted to 20 colleges. All 20 of those should be on the list. So we want to start changing our narrative. 

We’re too focused and myopic on minuscule measures of success, and we’re not looking at the long term.  So we’re continuing our graduates’ relationship with the high school so that they are continuing to report to us how they’re doing. Did they advance a year within a year? Did they need to take certain remedial classes because they didn’t have that experience to make them successful in their first year of college after leaving us?  We’re starting to collect that data. This is foundational, but that’s something that we want to expand.  We’re looking to keep relevant and accurate data on our students who are graduating from college in four years, which is a goal, five years and six years.  We want to ensure that we’re close to a 90% success rate for our students graduating post high school experiences so that they’re successful citizens.

I’m interested in their four-year graduation rate if they’re going to college, or their advancement as an apprentice into a master trades worker if they choose that path.  I want to begin to look at how our offerings are allowing our students to be successful contributing citizens after public school.  It’s not just about getting them out of our school. It’s about getting them out of our school and then having them be successful. That’s really the true measure of the worth of our public education.

It is hard to track, but we are beginning to track it.

NRN:  What do you think are the most important metrics for parents to look at to determine whether the public schools are able to meet their children’s needs?

CR:  It’s dependent upon what the student’s and parents’ interest is.  For me, it was the athletics, you know, how are the teams performing?  What are the opportunities for my son? He transitioned from baseball to golf and swimming. What was that transition going to look like? How are we performing?  Do I need to get different coaching? That’s really what my interest was at the time. 

But compared to my brother-in-law, whose children are full academics, they wanted that academic data. What are the AP opportunities?  What are the dual enrollment opportunities? 

A parent may also be interested in the arts. So quite a few of our families here come to our schools specifically because of our PAVE program. What opportunities do you have for my child to be in “Fame”?  What opportunities are there for my children to perform at the state level, to perform at the conference level? So that they’re getting that recognition because they have a theatrical type of runway.

NRN:  It also sounds like these three areas could be pathways to scholarships.

CR:  Absolutely, not just pathways to scholarships, pathways to their lives. We want our school to be a perfect microcosm of any opportunity that a student wants to excel at.

Here’s what my concern has been as an educator. I never like to look at data in isolation. I like to look at the whole picture of the whole child. So a student who may not be performing academically, what other opportunities do they have?

Here’s where I think we’re lacking. I’m talking about career and technical education programs.  We don’t have an auto body.  I don’t think we have a shop program that’s substantial.  We don’t have medical billing.  All of these types of programs that are trades.  The electricians. I would like to bring that back to our school district.  That’s my vision for down the line. We send about 200 students a day to our local BOCES for them to receive that opportunity. I would love for us to have a building here that is literally an offshoot of the high school, where we can offer these classes as electives for all students.  Not a tracking system, but if I want to take an electrical engineering course, I should be able to put that into my schedule. So that’s eventually where I would like us to be. We find that a lot of our families who are not academically inclined as a pathway for their children, they only get to go to BOCES to get that other skill, which has a negative connotation, and it shouldn’t.

If I were a student nowadays, I’d be taking advantage of that.  I wouldn’t mind having a college degree and a trade, for those days that you really want to make money, because that’s where the trend is shifting.  Our trade workers are outperforming our students who have degrees in pay  in the long run. So why not make that a viable option here?

The metrics will improve when students have more opportunities. The metrics will improve when families trust that the school system is not just going to pigeonhole their child based on one metric, so please allow them to take the test because they need more exposure. It’s this level of trust that has eroded for generations. And I can’t state that there have not been efforts in the past to build barriers. So it’s our goal to tear those barriers down for our students, and I think that’s what we need to focus on as a community.

[Editor’s note: The third and final part of this series, “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Competence,” will be posted next week.]