Over the past two years, Rochester Public Schools has put in place an aggressive strategic plan focused on enabling all students to master deeper learning and develop a powerful sense of purpose. We have also faced the academic gaps in our school district and are working to close them by surrounding every student with a multitiered system of supports.

As an early sign of progress, last year the high school graduation rate in Rochester Public Schools went up 2.1%, compared to 0.2% for the state as a whole. Graduation rates for Black students went up an extraordinary 8.69%, Latino students were up by 2.78%, white students increased by 2.22%, students with disabilities improved by 4.56%, and low-income students’ graduation rates rose 2.32%.

In addition to moving forward with an ambitious academic agenda, we are also making hard but necessary decisions to put the school district on the path to financial stability. Since I began my tenure as superintendent two years ago, we have cut more than $20 million from the district’s General Fund, and we will make an additional round of cuts next year as part of the district’s three-year fiscal stabilization plan.

And while we have been moving forward both academically and financially, we have weathered the challenges of keeping students and staff safe during the COVID pandemic, responding to protests over masks and other issues, and restoring our technology systems after a cyberattack, for which we did not pay the ransom demanded by global cyber criminals.

But while we have made good progress over the past two years, we need additional support from the citizens of Rochester to make Rochester Public Schools the extraordinary district that I know it can be and that this community deserves. The additional support we need is not expansive. It is strategic and focused on investment in an area that will pay broader dividends for the district as a whole: the technology that is integrated into almost every aspect of our organization today.

At the RPS School Board meeting on Aug. 1, the board voted to approve my recommendation to place a referendum on the ballot in November that would ask voters to approve $10,150,000 in funding each year for a 10-year period to support technology operations, upgrades, and related initiatives. Approval of the technology levy would enable the school district to redirect approximately $7 million from the school district’s General Fund that is currently used to finance technology services to instead support teaching, learning, student mental health, and other priorities. $3 million of the $10,150,000 that the levy would generate each year would enable RPS to invest in new technology or to replace federal funding for technology that the district received during the COVID pandemic but that ends in September 2024.

If approved, the capital projects levy that I recommend the School Board place on the ballot in November 2023 would result in an increase of $135 in the taxes paid by the owner of an average priced home in Rochester (which is currently identified as $325,000) each year — or $11.25 per month.

So what specifically would the technology levy support? Examples of the resources we could purchase or sustain include:

• Software and hardware to keep students and staff safe both inside and outside schools and to protect against future cyberattacks

• Computers and tablets for students that will enable RPS to continue providing every student with a device for learning, which the district first achieved in 2020 thanks to federal COVID funding

• Software applications that advance priorities of the RPS Strategic Plan, such as accelerating student learning in reading and math and helping students develop and implement plans for success in postsecondary education and a career.

While the referendum that the school board has put on the ballot in November is focused on technology, the plan that the levy would support is about much more than hardware and software. It is about leveraging technology to transform Rochester Public Schools into one of the highest performing diverse school systems in the United States. If the citizens of Rochester vote to invest in technology for transformation this fall, it will benefit the students of Rochester in countless ways for years to come.

Kent Pekel is superintendent of the Rochester Public Schools. He lives in Rochester with his wife, Katie, and family.