Indianapolis Public Schools Supt. Eugene White grandstanding on alleged charter school discrimination

 

     White’s letter to Bennett seems to be an attempt to back up insensitive comments he made in a radio interview last week with WIBC-FM. Discussing perceived differences between charters and IPS schools, White told the radio station that unlike his competitors, “We take everybody that come through the door, whether they are blind, crippled, crazy.”
     Indiana Public Charter Schools Association President Russ Simnick has heard White’s charter school discrimination allegations before, and described them to the Associated Press as “a tired myth that’s been around a long time.”
     Indiana Department of Education data shows that the state’s charter schools don’t pick and choose students, he said, and students moving from one district to another after count day aren’t uncommon.  IPS’ own data seems to support that assessment. Simnick is simply pointing out the obvious.
     “I have yet to hear a single parent come forward and say a charter school is denying them access to the services they require,” Simnick told the AP. He said IPCSA would support efforts to move to multiple count days throughout the year.
     That support certainly erodes White’s conspiracy theory.
     But we suspect that White’s allegations are really based more on his distaste for schools competing with IPS than on any serious issues with enrollment. The charter allegations fit well into his ongoing quest to deny quality alternatives to Hoosier students.

 

 

     Earlier this year, White threatened to sue the state for taking over the IPS’ worst schools, despite years of dismal academic performance. Instead, he decided to cut sports and other extracurricular activities at those schools.

     More recently, White has spoken out through the anti-choice group Indiana Coalition for Public Education. Like ICPE, White has made it clear he opposes vouchers for low-income students to attend private schools, companies hired to fix his schools, policies of Superintendent Tony Bennett, charter school expansion, and important reforms enacted during the last legislative session.
     “Politics brought this all in, and politics can bring all this out, but we have to wake the people up,” White declared at ICPE’s first meeting, according to the Northwest Indiana Times.
     We believe Hoosiers are wide awake. They realize that traditional public schools don’t always work for all students, especially in inner-city districts like IPS. Indianapolis residents see that their public school district is failing to educate more students than most, despite some successes at its more innovative schools. They watch and read news reports, in which IPS leaders constantly offer excuses and attempt to block solutions.
     IPS parents are now keen to the tradition of five figure raises for district administrators and their massive expenses, and are connecting the dots … directly to White’s money-hungry mission to maintain control over the city’s schools. Public charter schools are not causing IPS’ academic failures. In fact, they are offering quality options for students, which push IPS schools to improve in order to compete.
     White’s claims of discrimination should be investigated. Any school that depends on public funds should receive scrutiny, and those found in violation of state or federal laws should be severely reprimanded. We think investigators will find that schools gaming the system are the exception, and White’s grandstanding is mostly hot air.

 

     There seems to be one big hole in White’s discrimination claims against Indianapolis charter schools: the absence of an actual human being to back up his story. In an IndyStar.com blog titled “What was Eugene White thinking?” Star reporter Scott Elliott offered some interesting context to White’s claims, and offered some very good questions that have yet to be answered.
     “There were 72 students who returned. Just 20 of those were for questionable reasons, according to the district itself. These are very small numbers in a district with 31,000 kids,” Elliott said in the blog posted yesterday. “In the story I wrote today, accused charters made strong counter claims.
     “Why would schools that already serve lots of special education kids steer one away (Fountain Square Academy)? Why would a charter with its own busing system that won a grant to help serve its homeless kids, refuse to bus from a homeless shelter (Fall Creek Academy)? Remember, charters are generally in the business of enrolling more kids, not fewer, for the sake of their very existence.”
     Elliott questions whether the evidence White collected through interviews with returning families proves anything. He noted that IPS officials have not produced a single person to back up White’s claims, despite requests by reporters to be connected with parents of the allegedly dumped students.
     Elliott also wonders what White stands to gain from all the publicity he is generating from his allegations.
     “The problem would be easily solved with a legislative change Bennett, Simnick and White all say they support — multiple enrollment count days and funding adjustments during the school year. But, oddly, White said such a system might hurt IPS in the long run because over the course of the year they may lose more students than they gain despite what he alleges about charter trickery,” Elliott wrote. “If that’s true, I was asked, why is he picking a fight about this? To some, it seems White is simply opening a new front in a personal war with Bennett. And they’re not sure what’s to be gained by it.”