Board pilots data‑monitoring cadence with Council of Great City Schools, commissioners press for accessible reports

The Rochester Board of Education held a training and practice session on April 7 with the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) to deploy a new progress‑monitoring calendar that prioritizes focused, strategic board conversations on student outcomes.

Dr. Ray Hart, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, told commissioners the exercise was designed to sharpen question‑asking skills and shift meeting time from technical clarifications to strategy: “The focus of your conversation and the monitoring process is really on the strategies,” he said. CGCS proposed a regular cadence in which the board reviews one (and at most two) goals per meeting, monitors guardrails annually and receives more accessible, disaggregated reports on predictors (interim goals) before full presentations.

Chief Wilson laid out a draft schedule showing each board goal will be monitored four times per year (including interim reports). Staff and CGCS asked commissioners to submit technical and tactical questions (definitions and measurement clarifications) in writing after the work session so the administration can prepare responses before the board meeting, reserving meeting time for strategic discussion about interventions and root causes.

Several commissioners voiced frustration about data access and format. Commissioner Santiago said the board has not received some core measures since the governance model began and asked why literacy and other scores were not readily available; Commissioner Griffin went further, noting he had requested Career and Technical Education (CTE), athletics and other data since 2024. Commissioner LeBron said the district’s $1.22 billion budget is driven by expense data and urged clarity about how budget decisions map to student outcome data.

The district presented a practice graduation‑rate report showing declines overall and persistent subgroup gaps: several high schools saw year‑over‑year decreases, while multilingual learners and students with exceptionalities graduated at lower rates than peers. Superintendent Dr. Roser said the report is a practice tool and emphasized the need to disaggregate data and understand root causes before moving to strategies.

CGCS and the district agreed on an operational flow: reports will be posted in BoardDocs (generally on the Friday before a work session), commissioners will have a week to submit technical/tactical questions, administration will answer those questions before the business meeting, and the business meeting presentation will focus on strategy and next steps. CGCS also offered to help refine the report format and the district said it would work on a clearer dashboard and Q&A posting to make the data more accessible to commissioners and the public.

The session ended with agreements to pilot the cadence, to improve report clarity and accessibility, and to return to the board with the refined monitoring calendar and examples of the Q&A workflow.