His last day as Rochester's interim schools superintendent was December 28. But before he departed, Bill Cala left a sometimes scathing assessment of the school district on new Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard's desk.

The 48-page document, which Cala titled "Rochester City School District Priorities," describes a dysfunctional, bureaucratic school system. (The full report is available here.)

Some of the district's problems, Cala writes, are self-created. Others are the result of issues beyond the control of this large urban school district. One example of the latter is safety, which Cala says is his greatest concern for both students and district employees. Many students come from neighborhoods and homes where they are exposed to violence, and it has predictably found its way into city schools.

"So many of the murders we've had, when you think about it, are related to students or someone who worked here," Cala said in an interview early this week. "It was like one a week." That has an impact on the entire school district, he said: students and employees.

And if students are afraid going to school or returning home, "how can we expect them to perform?" he said. "A sense of security is a basic need."

The safety issue affects staff as well as students, says Cala. Teachers, fearing how students will react, are increasingly reluctant to discipline them, he says.

Cala's other concerns include:

• Poor student attendance and a sloppy tracking of attendance. The average student in kindergarten, says Cala's report, misses one month of school each year, setting in motion a situation that is "progressively exacerbated as the child moves through the grades." At the secondary level, teachers are not taking period-by-period attendance, so students could have a good attendance record but be cutting many of their classes.
• Too many suspensions. An over-reliance on long-term suspension, Cala says, compounds the attendance problem, creating large numbers of students who are falling farther behind. In the 2006-07 school year, there were 2,000 short-term and 1,804 long-term suspensions, says Cala.
• Too many administrators. "Buffalo has 85 Central Office administrators," writes Cala. "Rochester has 127. Buffalo has 45 secondary administrators; Rochester had 155."
• Squandered opportunities for partnerships with colleges and businesses. Cala says many volunteers - parents, clergy, and community leaders - told him that the district had turned them away or failed to respond to their offers of help. SUNY Brockport, for example, has offered free training for students in several fields. "Unfortunately, very few referrals of our students into this program have been made," writes Cala.
• Poor district commitment to parent involvement. Parents often complain that their involvement is treated like a nuisance, Cala says, and some parent groups are composed primarily of district employees, not parents. "Required parental sign-off, communication, and participation on important state documents, procedures, and programs have been ignored, minimized or marginalized," says the report.
• A School Board that is too political and that is moving away from policy making and toward direct management of staff. Cala says he is concerned about the level of discourse among board members and toward district staff. "All too often," he says, "I have seen staff ‘dressed down' at these public committee meetings."

Cala's report also refers to concerns about the district's human resources department. While he doesn't elaborate, he says new Superintendent Brizard should conduct a thorough study of the department.

Among the report's recommendations for reform:

• Provide door-to-door transportation for all students to ensure safety. Currently, the district provides transportation only for students living 1.5 or more miles from school.
• Scan all students for weapons as they enter school.
• Increase the number of children in the district's pre-kindergarten program. Research indicates that children who have attended pre-K do better in school, but about a third of eligible city children aren't enrolled. The reasons most often cited by parents, says Cala, are lack of transportation and, because Rochester provides only a half-day pre-K program, day care. Cala wants the district to provide transportation for pre-K children, and he wants the state to fund full-day pre-K.
• Reduce class sizes to no more than 15 students in kindergarten through third grade.
• Create small secondary schools and consider expanding successful programs such as School Without Walls.
• Provide more student and family intervention. As an example, Cala cites the Family Wisdom Initiative at Freddie Thomas, a family mentoring program with 40 adults led by a psychologist. The program is intended to help families learn how to identify problems, improve communication with one another, and improve their parenting skills. Cala wants it duplicated at other schools.
• Provide mentors for every seventh grader. Helping students make the transition from the middle grades to high school, Cala says, would let the district intervene with students before they develop serious behavior problems.
• Create a re-entry program for students who have been incarcerated. Approximately 1,250 city students during the 2006-07 school year had to leave school for some form of incarceration. These students return to school, usually during the same year, and have often been exposed to gangs and violence. Their recidivism rate, Cala says, is about 76 percent. A re-entry program that offers guidance and academic support could help students finish high school, plan career goals, and avoid criminal behavior.

Cala's report recognizes that some challenges don't have clear solutions. For instance, he says he is concerned about a student culture that is becoming increasingly immune to consequences. Many students, he says, don't view suspension as a serious threat. And students who are offered alternatives to suspension often reject the help. Whether it's cutting classes or threatening a teacher, there should be consequences, Cala says, but the district is limited in its response.

Cala says his report isn't meant to be a comprehensive analysis of the district. It is more of an insider's observation, he says.

And, he said this week: "The problems are absolutely fixable. How long it will take is hard to say. It depends on what we're talking about. But people should understand that we are talking in terms of years. It took the district decades to get this way, and it's going to take years to change it."

Superintendent Brizard wasn't available for comment early this week. Board President Malik Evans said he hadn't yet read the report; two other board members contacted for comment said they hadn't seen the report.