WBFO Education Desk

This Black History Month, a local Facebook campaign is sharing the stories of African American educators who have helped shape Buffalo’s educational system. The campaign is also raising awareness for the first-ever Excellence in Education Awards scheduled to be held in May.

A new contract for teacher aides and assistants, out-of-school suspensions and charter school push-outs were among the major issues discussed at Wednesday’s meeting of the Buffalo Board of Education.

Two of the country’s largest teachers unions announced Tuesday that they want schools to rethink student involvement in active shooter drills. They say practice lockdowns can traumatize students and may even be counter-productive. But are Western New York unions ready to walk away from lockdowns?

The Office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James has notified Buffalo Public Schools that it received a complaint about the district’s disproportionate suspensions of non-white students, WBFO confirmed Friday.

Child care advocates will gather in Albany Tuesday to call for more state funding amid a growing child care availability crisis, which a new survey found is worst for infants in Western and Central New York.

The Section VI Football Federation announced Monday it will delay a recent decision to return to league play—a move that would have left Buffalo teams without a league to play in.

Buffalo is joining cities like Chicago, Newark and Washington, D.C., in changing the way its public schools teach students about the legacy of slavery.

Governor Cuomo wants New York State to send more money to less wealthy school districts. But after making that argument in his State of the State address Wednesday, some stakeholders are saying the state just needs to better fund education, period.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered his tenth State of the State address Wednesday in Albany. WBFO reporters took in-depth look at what the governor and others are saying about some key challenges the state faces at the start of a new decade.

Two University at Buffalo students are spending their winter break volunteering at a remote school in Nepal—and it’s not just a service trip. For Pemba Sherpa and Hemanta Adhikari, it’s a homecoming 10 years in the making.

Parents and teachers are moving forward with lawsuits against the Buffalo Public Schools over access to music education. It can partly be attributed to years of instability surrounding music education in city schools. WBFO’s Nick Lippa reports it has created an atmosphere of confusion, where in attempts to meet requirements, schools have implemented a technical one-minute period where students receive credit for music classes.

Competitive video gaming, also known as eSports, has been growing in popularity at colleges around the country and now, two Buffalo public high schools have teams.

Both parents and teachers are filing separate lawsuits against the Buffalo Public Schools, citing a lack of access to music education. The legal papers claim a legally-required arts sequence is only provided at two district high schools.

Last week, students, parents, and Buffalo Public School District faculty explored the themes represented in the play Pipeline at the Ujima Theater.

After two decades, the Executive Director of the New York State School Boards Association, Tim Kremer, has decided it’s time to retire. He shares his  insights with WBFO Albany Correspondent Karen DeWitt, including how he came to believe that all of the emphasis on standardized testing in recent years, may have been a mistake.

Buffalo Seminary has become an officially committed Steinway Select School. What does that mean? As WBFO’s Nick Lippa reports, the partnership will allow SEM to offer new student scholarships for incoming freshmen and will help replace SEM’s old pianos with new Steinways.

There are some Buffalo Public Schools that don’t offer music programs like chorus or art classes like photography. The Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology (BCAT) on Main Street currently helps fill a role by providing these kind of classes and more for students after school. BCAT has been growing recently due to increased interest. And they have been able to meet a growing need in part to increased philanthropic support.

Drivers who speed past schools, in Buffalo, may not get away scot-free much longer. The city has installed school zone enforcement cameras at more than a dozen locations. 

A group of Buffalo Public Schools students singing in English, Spanish and Swahili premiered a music video Wednesday of an original song they wrote and recorded with the support of local artists.

The Northland Workforce Training Center is expanding beyond just job training into providing college and perhaps graduate degrees.