Roosevelt UFSD - NYS Violations

We would like to make the NYS Department of Education aware of the following:

• Roosevelt UFSD in Roosevelt New York is not adhering to new legislation of the workforce representing the student body and community and are violating stipulations under the ESSA.

The population in Roosevelt is 56% Hispanic yet there are no Hispanics in leading roles.  There are no Principals, Assistant Principals, or other key Administrators that are Hispanic (the only exception is the Director of the Bilingual and ENL Department).  The schools do not have intervention (AIS) teachers that speak Spanish.  When additional AIS positions are approved by the Board, they are not filled with Hispanic staff that can communicate with the students and their families.  Office and main desk staff do not speak Spanish.  Parents are afraid to call the schools because there is no one they can speak to.  Teachers are interrupted from their teaching and called upon to translate on a daily basis.  Parents desperately seek out any Spanish speaking teacher they see in hopes they can be helped.  The nurses do not speak Spanish.  The teachers are the ones that have to stop teaching to communicate with the parents if a child is sick or hurt even if the teacher was not present at the time of the incident.  The robocalls placed by the district about such important matters as distribution of devices, Covid 19, school closings to name a few are all in English.  The Spanish speaking teachers are put in a position of having to communicate these important matters on their personal time to the Hispanic families.  The Hispanic staff employed by the district is primarily contained within the Bilingual Department where they are forced to stay and given no other opportunities.  No member of the Board is Hispanic to see to it that the needs of this population is being met.  When there was a Hispanic member on the Board many years ago, things were purposely made difficult for them to get them to resign.  This district engages in discriminatory practices.

• Roosevelt UFSD has implemented a new ELA and Math curriculum this year.  The Roosevelt UFSD is always in a state of flux and constantly using funding to continuously change the curriculum.  The classrooms are filled with materials from all the past curriculums which have been abandoned and this is only within the past few years.  Despite having known about the new curriculum, no effective planning was done.  As a result, it is now November 2021 and teachers have still not received all the materials they need to teach the curriculum because sufficient quantities were not ordered.  Teachers are expected to use online resources in a district that has WiFi problems constantly.  At the beginning of the school year teachers had no printers and had to make lines at the few copier machines available to provide work to their students as they awaited for the new curriculum to be implemented.  The Roosevelt District is completely mismanaged.

• In the school year 2020-2021, Washington Rose violated ESSA by not providing every bilingual student the option of taking the Math State Assessments in Spanish.  Math had been taught exclusively in Spanish in ALL the bilingual classes throughout the district yet no copies of the Math State Assessments were ordered in Spanish by Rickita Jennings, to give these students the option of taking the test in their home language but also the language that the subject matter had been taught to them for their entire education at this district.

Contact Us: changeroosevelt@outlook.com