Currently, in Rochester, more than half of our children live below the poverty level and over the last five years, the number of schools in Rochester City School District (“RCSD”) in receivership has increased to ten. While the state appointed Distinguished Educator Jamie Aquino in July 2018 to help improve the school district, Aquino left his position a year later, citing that Rochester was “a community with low expectations for students rooted in a deep history of institutional racism.”

With many families experiencing generational failure of educational outcomes, Rochester has become a city with some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the state. There is both significant need and desire for high-performing schools in these neighborhoods and recent reports have shown an increase in charter school support in Rochester, especially amongst “the young, the poor and racial minorities....”

Rochester Academy of Science (“RocSci”) is a proposed, tuition-free public charter school for the students and families in Rochester. RocSci is seeking to open its doors to K-1students in Sep 2022 and Grade 9 students in Sep 2023 and then grow to K-12.  RocSci is part of the Buffalo Academy of Science Charter School (BuffSci) system that is one of the highest-performing charter school systems in Western New York. Opened in 2004, BuffSci is a high-performing, STEM-focused, college-prep charter school that has achieved great results for Buffalo students.  As part of its strategic plan, the BuffSci is proposing to expand its services to serve Rochester students by replicating its school model. 

We hope that you will lend your support for the proposed RocSci school as replication of BuffSci so that we may further address the needs of the community by extending the same high-quality education that we have provided our current students to many more students in Rochester.