Colleagues, In the ongoing effort to balance next year's budget, the Rochester City School District continues to target our most vulnerable students and their teachers.  Only a few weeks ago, the Board of Education decided to support a proposal to lay off 192 RTA members: Social Workers, Guidance Counselors, Speech and Hearing, ESOL, Special Education, and other teachers. They also determined to support the reduction or elimination of programs that serve, among others, Young Mothers, English Language Learners, refugees, Bilingual, and Special Education students. And now they are considering closing two more schools (four total) and laying off another 88.5 teachers. Altogether, the proposed teacher layoffs represent 82% of all staff reductions - whereas teachers represent, by far, a significantly lesser percentage of the cost in the District’s budget. Cutting as close to the classroom as possible seems to be the RCSD’s persistent and unfortunate choice. At the same time, they fiercely...