Last fall when I called the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) to account for their scheme to make Shortridge High School a school where Northside whites would feel “more comfortable” sending their kids, some of my readers thought I overdramatized the situation.
Now, IPS is proposing a new sinister scheme that confirms many of our African-American community’s worst fears; that IPS is becoming a school system with two standards – one for whites living on the Northside and near downtown and one for everyone else.
Last week, the IPS School Board OK’d a “Transformation Plan” for George Washington and Northwest High Schools; which the State Board of Education still has oversight over. For the past four years IPS has operated these two schools with a “lead partner.” These are expensive consultants who think they understand Indy, when all they understand is an inflated paycheck.
The latest consultant is a Boston-based non-profit division of a for-profit outfit called Mass Insight, which has had some success working with Evansville-Vanderburgh County’s troubled schools.
Evansville’s district is three-fourth’s IPS’ size and is majority-white (70.8 percent); compared to IPS’ 79.3 percent minority student population.
The IPS/Mass Insight Transformation Plan involves paring four IPS elementary schools on the district’s Westside as feeder schools into Northwest and Washington after sixth grade.
Now, unlike other normal school districts around Indy, IPS only has one “true” seventh and eighth grade middle school – Harshman, which is a magnet school. Nine of IPS’ high schools double as middle schools. Another 11 are elementary schools that go up to eighth grade.
This leaves some 45 kindergarten through sixth grade elementary schools.
In the plan, Washington would be paired with Wendell Phillips School 63 and William Penn School 49 which are 1.4 and 1.3 miles respectively away from the high school. Students would attend middle school in their immediate neighborhood.
Northwest would be paired with Lew Wallace School 107 which is just 0.63 miles away. But in a bizarre twist, Mass Insight and IPS assigned Louis B. Russell School 48 to Northwest, a distance of 6.75 miles.
Yes, IPS’ hand-picked, $2 million dollar Boston consultant wants to bus to the far Westside all students enrolled at a Black school named for the African-American IPS teacher and heart transplant survivor. School 48 is an anchor to the Mapleton-Fall Creek and Watson McCord neighborhoods.
And yes, Russell School is within sight of Shortridge. It’s only 4.2 miles from Broad Ripple, 3.5 miles from Attucks; 4.3 miles from Tech. Yet IPS’ new insensitive school board voted 6-1 for this abomination of busing Black kids way across town; not for desegregation purposes; but for no good reason.
I’ve asked IPS to explain this bizarre development.
Meanwhile in another truly weird and bizarre IPS action, the IPS School Board held an unusual, out of character “special called meeting” last Sunday to allow them to discuss how to build upon their “framework” for what the district should be and to define “autonomy” for IPS schools.
Such a Board discussion, under Indiana law, was required to be an open public meeting. But, instead of holding it on a weekday evening, as has been past practice, or on a Saturday, the Board majority chose March 22. Ironically, this came on the heels of “Sunshine Week” a national effort to promote the public’s right to know about their government and public agencies. (See Sunshineweek.org for more information.)
One problem. In Indiana and throughout this country, public bodies – legislatures, local councils, elected school boards—don’t meet on Sundays. Unless it’s an emergency of some sort. Even Congress rarely meets Sundays.
Seems the Board wanted this meeting to be a casual affair. But it came off as a bungled exercise in hubris and public disdain.
The meeting was scheduled for the “foyer,” or the lobby, of the John Morton Finney Education Center. Then mere minutes before it began, the meeting was moved into the Board’s regular meeting location because the “public” (25 people) showed up and there wasn’t enough seating in the “foyer;” so the move.
But, instead of sitting in their formal seats in the Board Meeting Room, the six board members present pulled up an eight-foot table, arranged chairs around it, and began their public meeting.
There was no roll call, no Pledge of Allegiance. The Board Secretary was absent; so I have no clue who was taking the notes for the official minutes or a meeting summary.
IPS Board President Diane Arnold told the public they were welcome to “sit and listen” but there “would be no public comment of discussion.” Just board members talking amongst themselves.
Then the biggest problem. No sound system, no microphones, not even a bullhorn. The Board members talked amongst themselves, and unless you were sitting in the first or second row, you couldn’t hear a thing!
Gayle Cosby, the only Board member who seemed to give a damn about the public and community, pressed her fellow board members to try and get the sound system working.
While the room’s wireless mics were “on,” but no one knew how to work the system. Also, the Board refused to request audio-visual staff.
Eventually President Arnold said the public had permission to move their chairs closer. But, as you might expect, no one heard her. And Arnold didn’t stop the meeting to tell the public her decision.
I only learned of it on Twitter, via a tweet by @ChalkbeatIN’s Hayleigh Colombo.
I then relayed that information to those attending and boldly moved my chair closer!
Back to the content of the IPS policy-making: amid the decision to bus Black kids miles from their neighborhoods for no good reason and the Sunday meeting fiasco, there are growing fears that IPS’ leadership is making deliberate decisions to stiff arm the community while they try and ram radical plans to change the district down the community’s throat.
What is IPS’ response to the School 48/Northwest forced busing? What is the IPS Board’s response to their meeting fiasco? Like the “Empire” finale, this is a two-part column. See ‘ya next week with the conclusion!
You can email Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
