StriveTogether is a national movement with a clear purpose: help every child succeed in school and in life from cradle to career, regardless of race, zip code or circumstance. ROC the Future is a member of the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network, and there are nearly 70 communities like us across the country in partnership with StriveTogether. Continue reading →

On March 30th, in honor of Women’s History Month, Tanishia Johnson, Community and Family Engagement Manager and Founder/CEO of Beyond This Moment Life Coaching and Business Consulting, hosted the annual Beyond This Moment Conference, 2019 Theme: Authentic Sisterhood…let the healing begin! Continue reading →

Each week, we will be lifting up community members and partners on social media who are doing their part to ensure that every child is ready, cradle to career. No matter how big or small, we are recognizing and celebrating their efforts! This month’s spotlight is Ja’lynn Marie. Continue reading →

Did you know that the Rochester Area Community Foundation offers over $700,000 in scholarships every year to students locally? Did you know that the Rochester Education Foundation has a Founder’s Award for RCSD’s seniors in honor of Pat Braus, founding director? Continue reading →

Our Children. Our Future!

Last month, ROC the Future launched the “Our Children. Our Future.” Campaign in response to the steps taken by the RCSD, resulting from Dr. Jaime Aquino’s, Distinguished Educator Report.  We view the campaign as a call to action for the entire community to amplify our collective efforts, to ensure that all of Rochester’s children are college and career ready.  Continue reading →

The Children’s Agenda is pleased to welcome Camille Simmons as the Manager of Continuous Improvement for ROC the Future. Camille will work directly with our Outcome Teams, Collaborative Action Networks, and other stakeholder groups to develop and improve processes to accelerate the impacts of our work. Camille comes to us from Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection. As the previous Manager of Operations, Camille oversaw a team dedicated to the agency’s youth employment, academic, college readiness, and career based services and partnerships. Continue reading →

Over 1700 people are registered for the ReadyRosie app which provides Modeled Moment videos showing a simple, quick, and fun activity that is rooted in learning goals for children. As an added bonus, teachers can now send curated playlists to parents to align with lessons taught in the classroom through ReadyRosie Share. Continue reading →

Since 2014, the Rochester Education Foundation, which leads our College Access CAN, has hosted FAFSA Fest events throughout the city to help high school seniors and their families file the FAFSA. This year, the College Access CAN is shooting for at least a 45% FAFSA completion rate by June 30th among Rochester city and charter seniors, a 5% boost over last year. As of March 15^th, our FAFSA completion rate for RCSD and charter schools was 32.07% compared to 28.9% this time last year.  There will be a community-based FASFA event on Thursday, April 25th from 3-7pm in partnership with Literacy Volunteers located at 1600 South Ave. Continue reading →

ROC Northstars, the Strive Together Leadership Program team led by Jackie Campbell, ROC the Future Director, and team members Dr. Karen Fahy, Executive Director of ELA/Integrated Literacy, Luis Perez, Director of Greater Rochester Summer Learning Association, Dr. Tolley Reeves, Assistant Director of Rochester Public Library, and Amy Schiavi, Chief of Superintendent’s Receivership Schools at RCSD, participated in the second Strive leadership program session in Miami, Florida in early March. The second session, “Accountability, Alignment, Action” brought the five Accelerator Grant cohort community teams together again to learn processes and share the progress of their projects over two days. Teams applied strategies from the last meeting and learned new strategies and tools to apply to their cradle-to-career projects, and had time to discuss their successes, challenges and ideas with the other Strive Together teams. Continue reading →

The month of February has been nothing short of miraculous!

On Friday, February 8th, ROC the Future held a historic meeting, with invited guests, to discuss our collective thoughts on Dr. Jaime Aquino’s report on the Rochester City School District, the newly released RCSD response and the potential response from NYSED Commissioner Mary-Ellen Elia.  To help facilitate consensus building with more than 70 people, and on something of this magnitude, we engaged Junious Williams Consulting, from Oakland California, who masterfully shared his experience and best thinking on what might work for our community.  Continue reading →