Indianapolis Public Schools is cash strapped.  There are a lot of reasons for this. Like many other urban school districts around the country, they are serving significantly less students than they did in the past and less students means less funding. They have recently unveiled their plan to save money and predictably the plan includes closing schools and consolidating students. Also predictably, some people are not going to let their school go quietly. While it is always good to see a community rally around a school, they really should have rallied around it while it was open.

Everyone in education has seen this movie before:

1. Inner-city district faces declining enrollment and funding.
2. District decides to close a school or two to offset the losses.
3. Community catches wind of plans and raises hell.
4. Parents and alumni pack school board meetings and hold press conferences in support of school.
5. District tries to address concerns but ultimately closes school anyway.
6. Stakeholders claim that the district doesn’t listen or care about the community.

Once the consolidation train is on the track, it pretty much always arrives at the station. But what if we flipped the order of some of these events. What if the fourth bullet actually came first? I have been lucky enough to be privy to some of the conversation about school closings and consolidations. There are two key points that I learned:

First, they are inevitable. It is simply not sustainable to operate a school built for 2000 plus kids with only 500 students. Shutting a school’s doors is rarely the first thing a district tries but it almost always comes to that because the cost benefit of operating multiple under enrolled schools vs consolidating into a few full ones makes the choice ridiculously obvious.

Second, there is a reason they choose the schools they do. The schools that are picked to shut down are virtually, without exception, failing, under-enrolled and lacking community support. That last part is a generalization as obviously there are plenty of community members trying their best to make the student experience great even at schools that are at-risk for closure but unfortunately it is a contest. Every time someone in that school’s neighborhood sends their kid to a different school, they are in essence voting on the future of that school. Sparsely attended PTA meetings. Empty stands at games. Lack of volunteers for extra curriculars. All of these are signs that a school is on it’s last leg, and if you are a superintendent forced to make a choice about what school to close you are very likely going to pick the one I described.

Coincidently Indianapolis went through a contraction of schools a few years ago. It was a similar money saving situation where they decided the best course of action was to close high schools. Technically any school could have been on the chopping block, but we all knew damn well it wasn’t going to be Crispus Attucks because Crispus Attucks is a historically significant school with a massive base of devoted alumni, parents, and community stakeholders. Though they weren’t a high achieving academic school by most metrics, they had the enrollment and everything else you would want to see in a sustainable school. When people don’t like the way things are going at Attucks, you will hear about it.

On the flip side I have seen schools fail abysmally for years without so much as a peep from the community but the second the district proposes shutting the doors for good, the whole neighborhood comes out of the woodwork to talk about what the school means to them.

Where was all of this energy when the school was failing for 20 years?

Where were all these people when the school needed volunteers for athletics, mentorship, committees, and fundraisers?

If the school is good, why aren’t the kids in the neighborhood going there?

Why does it take an existential threat to the building for the community to start showing up to meetings and putting pressure on the district?

Historically, Black people have been given ample reason to be skeptical of any new district plans concerning their schools. It is easy to understand why people rally around schools that are on the short list to close. But the fact of the matter is that those schools are usually on the list to close for a reason and many of the people showing up to fight those decisions haven’t actually stepped foot in the school in years.

In a perfect world, we would be able to leave all of the buildings open. However, the district has finite resources, and they are correct to try and find sensible ways to save them. This is not telling anybody to not argue or question their local school’s closure. But before you do, look in the mirror and ask yourself: Have I actually demonstrated my commitment to the school? – Because if you aren’t invested, why should the district be?

THIS IS NOT BLAMING POOR COMMUNITIES FOR FAILING SCHOOLS. It is just to say that in an area with limited money, a superintendent might have to make tough choices about closing schools … some places make that decision easier than others. Ultimately we need to care about the students more than we do the buildings.