The President of the Rochester School Board says it’s time to put the brakes on school upgrades in the district.
Van White’s comments come after recent reports of a federal investigation into a multi-year project to reconstruct and renovate school buildings. It’s called the Rochester Schools Modernization Program and it’s a three-phase capital initiative with the District and the City of Rochester.
White says details of the investigation are slim right now.
"Having been a former prosecutor - I know that information in this kind of situation you have limited access because when you talk about grand jury proceedings they're usually done in the strictest of confidence so will never know all you want to know when you hear something like this and that raises a number of concerns - what do you in response to sort of these vague assertions that there's a criminal investigation."
White says the $325 million first phase of the project should soon be completed. But he says there’s no legislation for phase two. White believes that trying to move forward to get approval from Albany for the second phase is unwise at this time. He says learning about the details of the investigation and if anything went wrong with the mechanics of the first phase of the project should be revealed first before moving forward.
White says the legislation that created a joint construction board made it clear the city school board is not directly involved in the process.