Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. — from C.P. Cavafy’s “Ithaca” (trans. Edmund Keeley, 1975)
The Ithaca of antiquity is rocky and pitted with foothills. The land is inhospitable to tilling and sowing. Mountain goats spring adroitly over the crevices and perilous unpeopled cliffs. For lack of better things to do, gangly youths hang around the courts of comely widows. This is the ancestral home of Odysseus, the beleaguered war strategist—ever-returning and never really arriving.
In my hometown, the non-Ionian Ithaca of upstate New York, the Odyssean epic finds little sympathy in the hearts of Ithacans. The tradition that began with Homer and stretched through Aeschylus, Herodotus, continued in Roman incarnation with Horace, Vergil, Ovid—our intellectual inheritance—is largely unstudied in our schools. In fact, the loss of our earliest great literature is a source of pride. They celebrate the absence of classical works in the curriculum.
Why read these crumbling texts when we are so much wiser and more virtuous than the ancient writers ever were? This view has been championed by students and teachers alike. Out with the old, in with the new!
During my time on the school newspaper, writing as a new homeschooler (an outsider) but with a genuine concern for the health of my former school district, I wrote about the disappearance of books from curricula. I lamented the low-balling of students, the gutting of expectations, the listless post-pandemic classrooms. When Classics departments across the country began disappearing, I observed the trend toward utilitarian schooling (rather than soul-forming education) at the primary and secondary levels.
So for the last four years, if anyone asked me what I thought of public education in Ithaca, I would say “Well, there’s a reason I started homeschooling!” But I always emphasized the very real motive to go to Ithaca High School: if you can wade through the bookless English classrooms and neck-deep levels of administrators, you can study Latin with Suzanne Nussbaum. She offers the kind of education you wish you could have in every discipline, I told curious parents and students—an energetic expert’s greathearted warmth coupled with lofty expectations.
But that all sounds too high-minded and professorial. Let me tell you something else about Suzanne Nussbaum. She is funny. Her jokes are occasional but riotous. Taking the time to work through a text with a first-time reader like me, her generosity of spirit lends the impression that she is reading it for the first time too. She reads with emotion and the most tender, compassionate, sorrowful passages of the works we read together—Aeneas beholding the temple walls in Carthage, Priam’s supplication before Achilles—cause her twinkling eyes to well.
So when she told me two days ago before our Friday afternoon lesson that her position at Ithaca High School had been terminated I felt nauseated. There will be no more Latin program at Ithaca High School. The nausea remains as I write this.
I found it hard to focus on the poem of Horace we were working to translate. But her composure was bracing. She didn’t seem angry or self-righteous (all while my black bile was gurgling on her behalf). She just taught Latin as she had done for the past three decades, singly holding up these foundational texts for students like me.
For Suzanne: I find it much easier to write how I feel than speak it plainly. (I think you do too, and that is why you’re such a good correspondent.) I hope you know just how much you’ve meant to me and my family. I can’t imagine my education without you. I hope I always know you.
What will become of school in this great-named town? I’m sending the letter below to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Chuck Schumer. If you are a constituent of New York State please feel free to copy this letter or send your own version to support the continuance of a small but thriving program, and a modest but exceptional teacher.
The Honorable Kathy Hochul Governor State of New York New York State Capitol Bldg. Albany, NY, 12224 The Honorable Charles. E. Schumer U.S. Senate Washington D.C., 20510
Dear Governor Hochul and Senator Schumer,
My name is Ruby LaRocca. I am eighteen years old, on my way to college in California. I am a constituent of the State of New York. I am also a former student of the Ithaca City School District (ICSD).
I am writing to express my profound concern regarding the condition of public education in my home district under the administration of Superintendent Luvelle Brown. As you may be aware, Governor Hochul, this year the New York State Education Department cited the ICSD as a “Target District” for especially poor performance on state tests. NYSED has identified four ICSD schools as in need of support and improvement: Enfield (CSI), Beverly J. Martin (TSI), Boynton (TSI), and DeWitt (TSI). All of these schools were, until recently, in good standing.
The new accountability status contextualizes the Annual Budget Vote, which occurred on Tuesday, May 21st, 2024. Ithaca constituents voted overwhelmingly to veto the proposed budget, which was grossly inflated and would have meant an uncomfortable increase in taxes for items that were low priorities for voters. Now, instead of trimming the excess in areas like clean transportation in order to regain voter approval, the new budget designed by Superintendent Brown and his fleet of administrators aims to deflate the number by cutting educational programs and slashing teachers’ salaries.
On Friday, June 14th, 2024, I was sickened to learn that my beloved Latin teacher Suzanne Nussbaum had been dismissed from her position, and that the Latin program—which she had run entirely on her own on a part-time salary with no healthcare benefits—is to be permanently abolished. She had no plans to retire.
Suzanne Nussbaum has dedicated her life to preserving and investigating the language and literature of the ancient world. She taught young learners at the Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca for many years, and has been at Ithaca High School for the past seventeen years, since 2007. Her students don’t just come away competent in the Latin language—they also learn what it is to study rigorously, read carefully, and become stewards of a great educational tradition. She generously gives her free time outside of class to students eager to go beyond the curriculum. For the past four years, on weekday mornings, on weekend afternoons, I have been the grateful recipient of her incomparable teaching. I declared a Classics major upon applying to university. I love Latin, but I love her more.
I am deeply concerned that the demolition of Ithaca High School’s Latin program is part of a larger gutting of the rigorous aspects of our curriculum—in language, reading, and math.
I urge you, Governor Hochul, Senator Schumer, to charge the Ithaca City School District’s administration with reinstating the Ithaca High School Latin program with Suzanne Nussbaum at its helm. The program is an insignificant draw on the school’s budget, but an incredibly significant part of students’ lives. Suzanne Nussbaum’s teaching changed my life and so many others, irrevocably, for the better. I would be appalled and dismayed to see such a teacher go to waste in a struggling school district that manifestly needs her.
Thank you for reading this far. I can only hope that you have had such a teacher in your life and you can understand how an ill-considered school budget cut like this one would permanently worsen the quality of education in this great state of New York.
Respectfully and sincerely,
Ruby LaRocca