The Buffalo Board of Education meets at noon Monday, facing decisions Albany is forcing.
The school board called a special meeting to discuss a plan to turn over control of East and Lafayette high schools to Johns Hopkins University and BOCES. Only around a quarter of the students in the two schools graduate.
The university would put into effect plans for academic turnarounds it spent most of last year developing with teachers, students and administrators.
Students from both schools who want vocational training not available in the city can go to the BOCES programs in the suburbs.
"It's pretty well put together. I'm pretty comfortable with what I've seen so far," said Board Member Jim Sampson. "Johns Hopkins has a nice track record in working in those kinds of environments and actually with their model turning around failing schools."
The school administration filed the plan last week, only to see it bounce from Albany because it hadn't been approved by the board.
Sampson expects school board members to talk about the transfer plan put together by administrators which only allows a fraction of transfer requests from bad school to good schools. There are 2,200 transfer requests.
Sampson said there should have been much more stress on placing students in suburban schools this year, rather than next year. State and federal law mandate the transfers if requested.
