Everybody is hating too much on Geneva City Schools, and it’s a bit unfair. Hear me out.

As a Geneva High graduate and a high school English teacher and assistant principal in NYC public schools for 15-plus years, I care about the reputation of my hometown school because I know what Geneva is: Geneva is all heart, baby. I also know what Geneva is up against. Geneva is not serving a simple, highly advantaged student population. Geneva is serving a diverse, high-needs, multilingual, economically varied community. That work is harder. It just is.

A neighboring district like, for example Canandaigua, may look better on paper, but Geneva is doing incredibly different work with a much more complex student population. The raw performance does not prove Canandaigua, or school districts like it, serves kids better. Period. That is the point families need to understand. Canandaigua is often treated as the gold standard district in the Finger Lakes; however, its community profile is very different from everywhere around it, such as Geneva, Waterloo, Seneca Falls, Newark, and other surrounding........

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