Yonkers superintendent has ambitious goals for district

Michael Yazurlo may have the most challenging job in Westchester.

As schools superintendent of Yorkers, Yazurlo is charged with rebuilding one of New York's largest school districts following years of cuts that have devastated the teacher ranks and demoralized students and parents.

For some leaders, bringing the district's 26,500 students up to par would be an ambitious enough goal.

Statewide, Yonkers isn't doing all that badly. It's the best by many measures of New York's big five school districts — the others are New York City, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.

But Yazurlo, in the role a year, wants more.

He'd like to see Yonkers doing as well as high-achieving Westchester districts.

That's an ambitious goal in a district where three-quarters of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and only about a fifth of students are proficient on state tests.

Short-term, Yazurlo is aiming to boost the graduation rate from 76 to 80 percent — close to that of Ossining and New Rochelle.

His eventual goal is 90 percent.

That would put Roosevelt and other Yonkers high schools on a level with Bedford, Hendrick Hudson and Tuckahoe.

Another immediate goal is to have all students reading on grade level by the end of the third grade — excepting students in the country for less than a year and those with cognitive impairments.

To rebuild staff and programs, he is asking for an $89 million increase in funding in next year's budget over this year's $522.9 million.

"That's only to get us back to ground zero, I'm not chauffeuring the kids in limousines," Yazurlo said.

In 2010, Yonkers had 2,000 teachers. Now with 1,000 more students, there are 1,800 teachers.

Yazurlo took over in the middle of a budget crisis caused by overestimates of state aid that resulted in a $55 million deficit. A deal was reached for the state to bail out the schools to the tune of $28 million in exchange for a merger of some school and city functions, including finance, legal and human resources.

Yazurlo's budget would add back social workers, psychologists and guidance counselors to support children with extra challenges. It would restore reading, art and music teachers — a given in neighboring wealthy districts.

He wants to ensure that each and every teacher he hires is excellent and that they all get the professional development and support they need to keep improving.

Another major initiative is the restoration of full-day pre-kindergarten, which was cut to half-day in 2011-12. The district was recently awarded a federal grant of $33 million over four years to restore a full-day program, which will start in the fall.

Yazurlo believes in going after every grant out there: he calls it "shaking the tree." Others the district has recently secured include $500,000 from the state for extended learning in some schools and $500,000 for arts and music education. The Yonkers Federation of Teachers has also secured thousands of books to give away to district families.

But the problem with grants, he said, is that they run out. That's why the budget increase is vital.

"The help has to come from the state of New York, which has a multi-billion-dollar surplus right now," Yazurlo said. "And it has to come from the federal government."

He has the support of teachers and their powerful union. Yonkers Federation of Teachers President Patricia Puleo said Yazurlo has been a "healing influence."

"The district for as long as I can remember has gone through one crisis or another," she said. But Yazurlo has committed to working with the teachers and they desperately want to work with him, Puleo said.

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano said he applauds Yazurlo for spelling-out the district's specific needs when they go to Albany to make their pitch for aid rather than simply arguing Yonkers isn't getting its fair share. Districts all over the state are fighting for money, he said.

"We have a lot of work to do and it's an aggressive ask," Spano said.

Yazurlo, 65, has roots in Yonkers. He started teaching in the early 1970s in a sixth-grade classroom in School 18. Then he moved to Enrico Fermi, where he taught sixth-grade science.

"Then one of the many financial crises took place in Yonkers and 600 teachers were laid off and I was one of them," he said.

That sent him into business with his brother, who owned an auto body shop on South Waverly in the city. But the principal at Enrico Fermi wanted him back. He was soon made a disciplinary dean, which he said was OK because the foolish things the elementary and middle-school aged kids did made him laugh.

After a stint in Pleasantville — where he enticed students in an alternative program through the doors by cooking them breakfasts of eggs, pancakes and waffles in the home economics room — he became assistant principal at Roosevelt High in the mid-1980s.

It was at the beginning of the turbulent court-ordered desegregation, when the high school went from mostly white to mostly black and Hispanic.

A memory of that time is how he stood across from the school in the mornings to urge the kids inside, away from the store owners and shoppers who were leery of their presence.

His experiences, including the difficult years of desegregation, have led him to believe that the quality of the teacher in the front of the class is the single-most important factor to a student's success.

"Nothing else will reach that goal," Yazurlo said.

After stints at the Hawthorne PEARLS school, Yonkers' K-8th grade academically talented program, and principal in the 1990s at Roosevelt — where he took a student body that was failing state math and English tests and turned them around — Yazurlo was named Tuckahoe superintendent in 1998. He stepped down in 2011 but found retirement "dreadful," he said. "I just absolutely could not stand it."

"Every child can achieve," he said. "Some it will take longer. But they all can achieve.

"Let's give them what they need to make that happen."

Twitter: @eganga

Yonkers Superintendent Michael Yazurlo on the issues

Standardized tests

I don't think you measure a system or a child by a test on one morning. We're going to make decisions on the rest of their lives and the quality of a school system based on one test. That doesn't make sense. The only people that are happy with these state tests are Pearson because they're making millions and millions of dollars.

Teacher evaluations (Annual Professional Performance Review)

It's a failed system of trying to weed out the weaker teachers. It's a joke. It does nothing. And I think the one indicator that I can point out to everyone is there's no way that over 95 percent of New York State teachers are highly effective or even effective. There's no way. Otherwise we would see much different results than we're getting. It provides little or no feedback to teachers to help them become better. And it was a sellout on the part of the state to get Race to the Top money from the federal government. The politicians are afraid, or they don't know enough, to say 'We made a mistake, let's revisit this.'

Mayoral control

I don't support mayoral control. I don't believe mayoral control works. You want to take an example look at New York City, look at Chicago, look at other places that have tried it, they've been disasters. Educators should be doing the education.

Yonkers school district facts

Number of students: 26,500

Rank in state by size: Fourth largest

Number of schools: 39

Students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch: 75.6 percent

Percent English language learners: 10.6 percent