U.S. Department of Education Senior Official to Visit Buffalo, New York, to Discuss Turnaround Efforts of Some of the City's Lowest-Performing Schools

Jason Snyder, deputy assistant secretary for policy, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, will visit Buffalo, N.Y., on Thursday, Dec. 8, to discuss turnaround efforts of some of the city’s lowest-performing schools. He will first visit Buffalo’s International School #45 that received federal funds to turn around its persistently lowest-achieving schools through the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. Buffalo Interim Superintendent Amber Dixon will join him.

That afternoon, Snyder will visit and have lunch with students at Emerson School of Hospitality for lunch, and later that evening he will attend a parent assembly at Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts. During the assembly, he will give an overview of the Department’s efforts to support school turnaround and the $4 billion in Title I School Improvement Grants awarded to states to turn around their lowest-performing schools. New York received $356.7 million of those funds over the last two years to turn around its persistently lowest achieving schools. The $356.7 million made available to New York was distributed by formula to the state and was then competed out by the state to school districts.