When 1 in 3 students weren't graduating, Yonkers overhauled school culture
A story in four parts
Introduction: Yonkers schools pulled off a stunning turnaround. Can their blueprint help others?
Changing school culture: When 1 in 3 students weren't graduating, Yonkers overhauled school culture
Keeping students on track: What Yonkers can teach urban schools about keeping students on track
The next challenge: The next challenge is preparing Yonkers students for life after high school
"My family was like, 'Are you nuts?' "
Helen Friscia said that was her extended family's reaction when the oldest of her four children decided to attend one of Yonkers' eight public high schools in 2020.
Friscia had planned to send her daughter to Catholic school, but opted for Yonkers High School, "much to my family's dismay." Friscia attended the Yonkers Public Schools herself, as did her husband, and knew that families with means had long turned to private school when their kids reached middle or high school.
She now says that her daughter has had a terrific high school experience, and her second oldest plans to attend another Yonkers school, Saunders Trades and Technical High. But it's hard to change an urban school system's reputation decades in the making.
"I know some people think they push kids through," Friscia said. "There's still this reputation, which I think comes from outside Yonkers, that Yonkers is poor and can't keep up. But when I walk into my daughter's school, they know my child and can talk specifics. The teachers stay after school to help the kids. I feel like the schools want to have this relatable, approachable, loving environment."
'Back in the day'
What most New Yorkers probably know about the Yonkers schools' past is far more grim: that they were a focus of the renowned federal desegregation case and have been plagued by recurring financial problems.
The landmark desegregation case, United States vs. City of Yonkers, filed in 1980 and settled in 2007, found that city and school officials had purposefully segregated Black residents and students in public housing and schools. A settlement called for the creation of magnet schools to foster integration and for the state to pony up $300 million to Yonkers during the mid-2000s to assist Black and Hispanic students in catching up.
Then a $50 million budget hole in 2004 launched almost two decades of sporadic financial crises, which produced waves of staff layoffs and the near elimination of music, arts, sports and more in schools at several points. A key culprit was that the city and state, which jointly fund the Yonkers schools, would for years play a game of chicken with the school system's budget, waiting for the other party to step up with key funds.
The school system also suffered from unstable leadership. Between 2000 and 2005, three superintendents resigned or were fired.
This was a time when high school graduation rates were hardly on the public radar. The state Education Department did not start collecting and releasing them until 2001. Without public awareness of how many students were not getting a diploma, school districts could simply not make graduation a priority.
Yonkers' graduation rate mostly lingered in the 60s between 2002 and 2010.
Yonkers schools Superintendent Edwin Quezada recalled that when he became principal of Yonkers' Lincoln High School in 2004, the district was comfortable putting many students on a path toward a General Equivalency Diploma. Lincoln's graduation rate at the time was 49%.
"So back in the day, if you weren't going to graduate on time, we were going to have a GED conversation with you," he said. "We no longer have a GED conversation; that GED conversation doesn't exist in our schools."
Jamal Epps, a 2004 Gorton High School graduate, said there weren't a lot of conversations about going to college when he was in school, or even what to do after high school. He remembers the threat of not graduating being held over students' heads — if you don't pass your classes you won't get a diploma.
"Graduation was only spoken of in terms of punishment," Epps said. "It was easy to fall through the cracks."
All things were not equal, he said. His friends in advanced classes or at other schools, such as Saunders, received guidance that Epps wishes he got.
Epps attended some community college classes and a couple semesters at CUNY Lehman College. Only after a friend encouraged him did he becomea firefighter in Yonkers.
"Somebody had to tell me there is a place for you here," Epps said.
Quezada and other senior officials refer to "back in the day" when talking about the years when students routinely slipped through the cracks.
People who have worked in Yonkers schools for many years say that, before the schools' slow turnaround began over a decade ago, principals spent more time in their offices than classrooms and hallways, teachers' lessons were not seriously evaluated, schools did not support one another, administrators did not always communicate with Spanish-speaking parents, and college prep was not a serious priority.
RoseAnne Collins-Judon, an assistant superintendent who supervises the high schools and documents the daily happenings in Yonkers schools on social media, was blunt about back in the day:
"The district was a disaster; I'll say it like it is," she said. "But you know something? We became lunatics for the children. We had to change the culture, love the kids so much that they would want to come every day."
National concerns rose over dropouts
During the early 2000s, Yonkers was far from the only city where students were falling by the wayside. It was accepted that in America, many students would never complete their education.
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"There were a bunch of schools where it wasn't even the norm to graduate," said Bob Balfanz, an authority on increasing achievement at high-poverty high schools and director of the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education in Baltimore.
In 2002, when the graduation rate was 67% in Yonkers, it was 60% in Buffalo, 58% in Syracuse, 54% in Rochester and, according to a New York City database, 49% in the nation’s largest school system.
Balfanz said American communities kept building high schools from the 1930s to the 1970s, graduating more and more students. The national graduation rate reached the low 70s during the mid-1970s but got stuck there.
Few cared, though, because people without a high school degree could still get a good, middle-class job.
By the early 2000s, this was no longer true. A high school degree became a necessity.
The country realized it had a dropout problem, Balfanz said, especially for students of color and from low-income families.
He said schools had to confront the reasons students drop out:
They fail classes and don't have enough credits
They get expelled due to behavior or attendance
They think they'll get the same kind of job without a diploma ("They just sort of fade out.")
Life events like pregnancy or entering the juvenile justice system knock them off course
In short time, ushering students to graduation became a national goal.
Researchers called for schools to make changes like helping eighth-graders transition to high school, assigning experienced teachers to ninth grade, a pivotal year, and creating data-based “early warning systems” to identify students at risk of dropping out.
Balfanz said a milestone change happened in 2007 when federal law finally set a uniform, if obvious, way to measure graduation: the percentage of students who graduate after four years of high school.
Notably, the feds also required states to set goals for raising their graduation rate.
Yonkers gets serious about graduation
In Yonkers, Bernard Pierorazio was paying attention.
Pierorazio became Yonkers superintendent in 2005 after his predecessor was indicted for perjury in connection to a nepotism investigation.
A Yonkers native, he had attended the city's schools and become a Yonkers teacher. He worked his way up the administrative ladder, winning plaudits as principal at Saunders High, named a federal "Blue Ribbon School of Excellence."
Pierorazio poured over the latest research on turning around urban schools. He put in place the initial reforms that would, in time, help more Yonkers students get diplomas.
"I was steeped in data and driven to improve academic achievement across the district," Pierorazio said recently. "I always believed that if you challenge students, they will meet the challenge. It could be hard to convince adults of that."
First, he focused on getting kids in school. The data showed third- and fourth-graders with bad attendance were more likely to drop out down the road; ninth-graders who didn't show up would never catch up.
He required all students to take Regents exams like earth science and sequential math 1 before it was required by the state.
Pierorazio called for teams of teachers and staff to focus on ninth-graders, creating "communities" to ease the academic and social transition to high school.
Perhaps most important, he phased out standalone middle schools, where many students struggled, and created Pre-K-8 schools. Yonkers also went from five high schools to eight smaller ones.
"Students were suffering from peer pressure in big middle schools and parents were bailing out of the district," he said. "Parents embraced the changes."
Another major push for Yonkers came in 2010, when a much-debated federal agenda sought to raise expectations in urban schools.
The Obama administration and New York's education leadership got behind a slate of reforms conceived by the Gates Foundation, politicians and corporations:
Grade-by-grade academic standards (the Common Core) designed to create uniformity among the states
A laser-like focus on standardized test scores to weed out "failing" schools
An aggressive teacher evaluation system
These reforms were roundly criticized, including by suburban school districts that said they were blunt and punitive.
But these changes were seen differently in the Yonkers Public Schools and other urban districts with histories of unstable leadership. Many in Yonkers welcomed uniform standards, as well as strict requirements for principals to observe classroom lessons, that would outlast political and financial turmoil.
Sure enough, Yonkers got hit with both.
District upheaval sets stage for change
Pierorazio, who was named New York's Superintendent of the Year in 2011 for his achievements, abruptly retired in 2014. A budgeting error on his watch created a $55 million shortfall, forcing Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano to plead for state relief. Albany came through with a bailout package that gave Spano's office more control over administrative, non-academic functions of the school system.
The city's inspector general investigated what went wrong, blaming the mishap on the school system's finance office being in "complete disarray" because of budget cuts.
Pierorazio's successor, Michael Yazurlo, a former Yonkers teacher and Tuckahoe superintendent, only lasted a year. He resigned in 2015, accused of watching porn on school district computers.
Quezada, then deputy superintendent, got the top job.
By 2020, the Yonkers Board of Education was won over and gave Quezada a new five-year deal at an annual salary of $272,295, even though he still had three years on his contract.
"People ask me how we did it, 90% graduation," said school board President Steve Lopez. "We're no longer fractured like other big city districts, with the political rifts and turmoil. We're all pulling in the same direction and for the same cause: the children."
Read the next installment: What Yonkers can teach urban schools about keeping students on track
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Yonkers schools pivoted after reaching a new low in graduation rates
