Education

Local churches are joining forces this summer in an effort to reach out to city school kids.

The Reverend Roosevelt Dixon is the senior pastor of Grace Unity Fellowship Church. He says he’s working with Upper Room Church and Full Gospel for a “Save Our Children” festival later in the summer.

A new charity-based concert series is hoping to revive music programs in the city school district.

NONCERTS Rochester will host a benefit concert this coming weekend. All proceeds raised will be used to purchase musical instruments for three city schools.

The worldwide attention continues for Greece school bus monitor Karen Klein, including an online fundraising effort that totals more than $660,000.

The elderly grandmother was relentlessly taunted and verbally abused by middle school students. The incident was captured in a 10 minute video posted to YouTube showing Klein trying her best to ignore the stream of profanity, insults and outright threats directed at her.

Police and school officials are promising a full investigation of the videotaped taunting of a Greece school bus monitor.

Video posted on YouTube and other websites shows bus monitor Karen Klein breaking into tears under a relentless verbal assault from bus riders.

The story and video have gone viral including this documenting of the incident and corresponding backlash on social media from Mashable.com.

The Greece School District posted the following statement about the incident:

Graduation rates have slipped in the Rochester City School District.

According to the State Education Department, 45.5 percent of students who started the 9th grade in 2007 graduated after four years. That's down from 46.1 percent for the group that started in 2006.

The statewide average was 74 percent. Rochester posted the lowest graduation rate of the state's "Big 5” City school districts.

City School Superintendent Dr. Bolgen Vargas said early intervention is necessary in improving graduation rates.