School district to address downtown transportation

The Rochester City School District will monitor the transportation of students, including having appropriate personnel on site, and implement a new transportation plan, in the wake of a large fight Monday near the Liberty Pole.

The plan came about after a meeting of city, school and Rochester Genesee Regional Transit Authority officials.

“We cannot expect disturbances such as the one we saw on Monday to be corrected as long as hundreds of unsupervised RCSD students continue to be brought downtown at the same time as part of the district’s transportation program,” Mayor Thomas S. Richards said in a statement.

A solution devised by the RCSD and RGRTA to address the recurring problem was supposed to be in place this school year, but all sides agree the solution has not worked, Richards said.

The Rochester Police Department will continue to deploy significant resources to deal with problems that may arise, but ultimately this is an issue that the school district must address in a permanent manner, Richards said.

School Superintendent Bolgen Vargas has said that transportation is not the issue that caused the incident, but the poor behavior of a small fraction of students.