The last week of April was a perfectly awful week for Superintendent Manuel Rivera. He was in his last days with the district, and his staff on the second floor of Central Office was noticeably subdued. The school district's hot and cold relationship with City Hall had turned frosty again. The State Department of Education had released a damning report on the district's graduation rate. And he had just learned that a beloved district employee had committed suicide.

Rivera rubbed his eyes with exhaustion as he sat down to talk about his tenure. Clearly this was not how he pictured leaving the district.

Rivera began his teaching career in Rochester, in 1975, teaching fifth and sixth grades at School 21. He held several administrative positions before completing his doctorate and serving as Rochester's superintendent from 1991 to 1994. He left to join Edison Schools in New York City and returned to the district for a second term as superintendent in 2002. That makes his tenure with Rochester schools one of the district's longest.

It's his later years that will be remembered most. And the praise, criticism, and analysis have begun.

Rivera says that when he returned to the district in 2002, he found a battered organization. His predecessor, Clifford Janey, had left after a bitter feud with then Mayor William Johnson. There were serious concerns about the district's financial management during that period, and they continued to haunt Rivera.

"I knew I had to immediately rebuild confidence in the numbers," he said during a City Newspaper interview, "but when I came on board there were about a dozen different software programs, each containing financial data. None of it was lining up. I felt the first thing I had to do was convince the board that we had to join the 21st century and bring a comprehensive information-management system online."

Rivera is a strong believer in the importance of early-childhood development, and he pushed for more pre-kindergarten funding. Several schools were removed from the state's list of schools in need of improvement, and in 2004 and 2005, state test scores for fourth- and eighth-grade math and English Language Arts improved.

In 2005, Wilson Magnet High School gained attention when Newsweek ranked it 27th of the top 100 high schools in the country, ahead of Pittsford Mendon, Brighton, and Pittsford Sutherland high schools. And in 2006, Rivera received the national Superintendent of the Year award.

Rivera says he thinks he'll be remembered most for proposing the Rochester Children's Zone, the surround-care program modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone. The committee now leading the effort recently released a list of nearly 200 proposed actions. Rivera says that list needs to be tightened and put in focus. But while funding is a major obstacle - done right, it will be extraordinarily expensive - Rivera says he thinks the money can be found, from local, state, and federal sources.

Any measure of Rivera's accomplishments will be tempered by problems, including the district's low graduation rate.

He dislikes conflict, and he concedes that working with some members of the School Board became difficult.

As the district made a concerted effort to remove poorly performing employees - something critics say it has been historically slow to address - Rivera and a handful of Central Office staff became the target of a group of African-American ministers. More than 30 former employees, most of them African American, filed complaints, saying the district had discriminated against them in hiring and promotions practices. The ministers picketed in front of the Central Office building, charging the district with racism.

The criticism from the employees and the ministers helped to expose a deeper sentiment: that the district wasn't hiring and promoting enough teachers and administrators of color to reflect the largely African-American and Hispanic student population.

Rivera says he thinks bringing attention to race "is a healthy thing." And he insists that the district has made progress. "For two years in a row, we have hired more African-American administrators than in the entire history of this district," he said in the City interview. "I think it was 44 percent for two years. Do we have a ways to go? Yes, we do. But I think my record speaks for itself."

Still, concerns remain about the diversity in this district, whose teaching and administrative staffs are predominantly white.

More recently, Mayor Bob Duffy surprised Rivera with a series of public criticisms, first over his change of heart about the job as superintendent of the Boston school district, then over the district's budget and graduation rate.

Though both leaders want higher graduation rates, the Duffy administration wants quick results. At a recent discussion on education at Monroe Community College, Deputy Mayor Patty Malgieri had this comment about City Hall's expectations: "We're not good with process. We want to see things happen now."

Rivera never openly criticizes Duffy. He says high school students in danger of not graduating should receive immediate attention. But he insists that improving the city's graduation rate requires a long-term commitment to reaching children in the earliest years. Those children are often behind their suburban counterparts academically before they walk into a kindergarten class.

Rivera has a different vision for high schools than some of his contemporaries. He doesn't agree that high school has to be completed in four years. He pictures high school functioning more like college, with some students taking less than four years to graduate and others taking longer.

He says the Education Leadership Council that he co-chaired with Duffy is the forum best suited for tackling the most critical challenges facing the Rochester City School District. While it still meets, Rivera was expecting it to be more aggressive.

Asked to name his most important accomplishment, he says it was focusing public attention on the welfare of the district's students.

As for what has he learned in his years leading the Rochester district: "I learned that we couldn't do it alone," he says. "It's too big a problem to think we can handle it by ourselves. We needed our college and university partners. We needed the unions to work with us to make some big changes. We needed people out in the business community to ask, ‘Hey, what can we do to support the education of city kids?' be it health, reading, or after-school programs."

"My message to the community was, Education of our kids is everybody's responsibility," he says, "and we need to work together to achieve the results that we all want."

Fidgeting with a foil wrapper from leftover Easter candy, Rivera says politics plays an increasing role in the superintendent's job - something that disappoints him.

Following is an edited version of interviews with River during his last days on the job.

You met recently with Mayor Duffy regarding graduation rates and the school district's budget. Did he make any specific recommendations?

No, but look: The mayor, like all of us, wants higher performance and accountability. But you have to have systems in place to get there. If we want graduation rates to improve, we have to look at how well we are preparing children for kindergarten, what we are doing for children from the time they are born, and greater accountability in the elementary grades so we don't lose kids.

I think the group we had established, the Education Leadership Council, which brought together the leaders in this community - business leaders, the county executive, the presidents of our colleges, United Way - that's the body that I had hoped would come together to develop the strategies for achieving what the mayor wants.

If we have the research that shows that a program works, like the Rochester Children's Zone or the Hillside Work Scholarship program, my hope was this was the best forum to come up with the strategies for implementing them.

The mayor has a sense of what he wants - kids to stay in school, higher attendance, a reduction in truancy, higher graduation rates - but we didn't get to a strategy for implementation. And I still think the Education Leadership Council is the best way. We were on the right track. We have a start with our elementary schools. We repositioned our high schools. We know what needs to be done. If this community can come together and embrace key strategies, Rochester would get the results everybody wants to see.

What's your view of mayoral control of urban school districts?

There's not any evidence that mayoral control really works. In Boston, New York City, Providence, you have mayoral control. I think there's insufficient evidence to say that it is the right answer. It may be right in some circumstances that are unique to some cities.

When you have a dysfunctional school board, a revolving door of board members, a revolving door of superintendents from one year to the next, then maybe in those situations it provides something.

In an ideal world, you have elected officials who bring a range of experience. That's the advantage of a strong functional school board.

In your experience, what is the single most important factor for improving graduation rates?

To get kids to graduate, I want every single kid when they enter seventh grade to be reading at grade level at the very minimum. The standards for what kids today need to know have changed dramatically. And it increases exponentially by the time they enter middle school years. What kids need to know in terms of math by grade 8 used to be taught in grades 9 and 10. And language is the key. If these kids fall behind in reading and language, by the time they get to eighth and ninth grade, they are not going to make it. There is no way for them to keep up.

There's plenty of research out there telling us that when kids are entering kindergarten, we need to have the right set of assessment tools and the right intervention. We know that kids who are living in poverty enter school without the language skills they need. The biggest predictor is their third-grade reading scores as to how well those kids will do and whether or not they will graduate.

The problem starts way back here. So when we are talking about kids who are in trouble right now, in their junior and senior years, they are not just deficient in their core subjects for that grade level. They often lack the basic skills they need to succeed, period.

When they get there at seventh grade, you have got to have the support system. You've got to have a faculty that knows who their kids are and they embrace their kids and they say, Jose or Johnny, you're going to graduate, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get you there.

That's why some of the pilot schools in Boston have been so successful. They get kids and they surround them. If Johnny doesn't show up for school one day, someone goes to the home and brings him in.

And last, there has to be the type of support system that allows this young person to come to an adult and talk, so when they are worried, fear for their safety, or something is happening at home, they have someone consistent in their life who is listening and looking out for them. And they know this. They trust this person. Our kids need these support structures, because there are other opportunities for support in wealthier homes that our kids just don't have. That's where they fall through the cracks. That's when they begin to think their education doesn't matter.

There continues to be a shadow over the district's financial management.

I established the Blue Ribbon Committee specifically for this purpose, as well as inviting auditors to come in from the state controller's office. I thought: Let me have 10 to 12 auditors look at how we spend our money and look at how to improve our controls for financial management.

But I also knew that this is going to be short term, because a year from now, people who have an ax to grind, motivated by their own political purposes, who have no idea how different programs are funded, are going to be out there talking about the district's finances. And it's very damaging.

I go around the state and meet with our colleagues and watch them struggling, and we have done so much better. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But I don't think it will ever go away, because we live in a political world, and people are motivated to say things whether it is supported by fact or not. That's a reality you live with.

You report to a board, a committee of bosses who have different strengths and weaknesses. And this board has gotten into some pretty contentious public squabbles.

There are individual members who are elected and have their own views on particular issues. And there are members who have different views about governance and how they should operate.

But there should not be individual board members directing the superintendent or staff members on what to do or how to do it. The board should stick with policy matters, and if the board wants to move in a particular direction, they should reach a consensus about that rather than trying to drive change individually, because it will only create confusion and problems for the interim superintendent and the new superintendent.

Think about it: it's impossible to work for seven individual people. There must be consensus on the major directions, and then folks need to not micromanage.

Do the public conflicts, most of which are televised now, have anything to do with public perceptions about the district?

It's one thing to express your views; this is a democracy. But board members are a group of community leaders as well. There are children in the room [at School Board meetings], and some who are watching at home. We've had ceremonies when principals and teachers are here with their families, and you can't expect students to understand values, respect, and reasoned discourse if you are not modeling it at the top. And unfortunately, we see instances where that doesn't happen.

Critics have said this is a rubber-stamp board, that the majority just votes yes to everything you want.

No, absolutely not. People developed this perception after we were showing results through '03, '04, and '05 and we didn't have a lot of conflicts.

This board, to its credit, has been very diligent. I can't say that they have not taken their responsibilities seriously, and there have been many times when I have felt fortunate to have this board.

In the last six months, things have been a little different. But I think there is a dynamic that unfolds when a superintendent announces he or she is leaving. Some people feel that they have to step in and take over.

I think if I had to do this over again, I would have given a simple 30-day notice rather than watch this dynamic unfold. I don't think it is meant in any malicious way, but it is difficult.

About two years ago, you spoke of how difficult it is to fire incompetent teachers and principals. What progress did you make?

When I first came back here, most of the principals were new, with maybe two years of experience. They've grown with the support that we've offered.

With regard to teachers, we strengthened the teacher tenure review process. We probably dismissed more of the less-than-satisfactory probationary teachers than in the history of the district. We paid much closer attention to granting tenure. We used to just hand it out as an automatic right after you had been here for three years. Not any more.

We went after people who didn't have certification, and we did it in partnership with the union.

What's the biggest challenge in keeping good teachers? Is it salary?

No, I wouldn't say it is the biggest issue. Teachers come in, and some have not had the experience of working in urban schools. A good education, knowledge of contents, and good pedagogy is not enough. They need to understand our students, get to know them, understand their interests and backgrounds, which is in many cases going to be different than their own. Some rush to the challenge, and others realize that it just isn't for them. This is tough work. It is not for everyone.

The second is the culture within in a building. There needs to be respect, and there needs to be a sense of safety. And when we don't have that, it's in those schools where we see good teachers opting out.

Teaching has changed so much. Teachers in an urban district like this one are advisors, counselors, coaches, parents: they are expected to fill so many roles. They often have to step into and become familiar with what is happening in the home, and while they may want to help that student, some things are out of their control. That is very, very difficult for some teachers to come to terms with.

Some district critics have said that white teachers cannot teach African-American children.

We have to stop this. We really have to stop. We clearly want more people of color to work with our children, more African Americans, more Latinos, more Asians, more diversity.

But what really matters most is what is in your heart. That will determine whether or not children will connect with you. If you cannot connect, you cannot teach. It's that simple.

If your children don't sense that you care for them, it is not going to matter whether you are black or white or whatever. Kids know, they just know instantly when they are with a teacher who cares, who really wants to be with them, who cares where they are and loves to see them succeed. And that isn't about color or race. That's about you as a person.