RCSD parent
Ultimately, it is Rochester’s children and families who pay the cost of a failed education system. It is a pain all too familiar to parents like Angie, whose son has special needs. For years, she struggled to get her son the support he needed to succeed in the classroom. Teachers were quick to put him out of the classroom, rather than provide him with resources. Once schools went remote during the pandemic, her son lost interest – and hope. He dropped out of the system. Here is Angie’s story:
“It’s difficult because you need to be on them all the time. You need to pay attention to what the teachers do, what the principals do, how they treat your kids. There is a lot of things. For example, you go to the office in downtown, you have to be on them so they can do something for you. You need to fight with them so they can help you, doing what they are supposed to do for your kids’ education and to do the right thing. It was really hard. A lot of things happened at school.
“They didn’t help him the way they were supposed to help him. I’m talking about everything; about the way they treat him, about the way they listen to him, the education. It was everything. This pandemic was the worst thing ever, because it helped him to go away from school. ‘I don’t want to go back, I don’t like the teachers, I don’t like the school.’ My son has ADHD, and it was really hard for me to try to convince him to be in school for a lot of reasons. Like the teachers, how they used to treat him. They used to tell him everything was his fault. Right now he’s not doing really good. I’ve been trying to do my best with him. He went another way and it has been hard for me too.”
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