If Indy is ever going to be a world class city, it will be because of our nationally recognized educational system, not our brick and mortar, that will turn out students who demonstrate acedemic excellence. Set the bar higher for teachers and students or close the mediocre school system. We owe it to our city and nations future. The easy way for students is not the best way. challenge them to excel and when they don’t let them know they are not meeting expectations.

Frankly I feel an activist judge ruined IPS, like many large city urban school districts. Rather than leave things be they did forced busing which sent those who could afford it fleeing to surrounding areas. Those would could not afford to sell and move were stuck, and I have no doubt the tax base as a result eroded.

There is no way IPS can reasonably improve when they have to deal with thousands of illegal immigrant non-English speaking children dropped on their doorstep in addition to the many native children who can barely speak the language. And, yes IPS probably has to be administrators, but they also have too many extreme educational needs to address. They don’t have classrooms full of “All-American Boys and Girls. They have students with severe problems and home lives that they have to deal with - not occassionally, but constantly. It is hard to educate or to accomplish anything, when you spend most of your time putting out fires. The fact that they accomplish anything at some of their schools is amazing. It is also amazing how little schools in suburbs accomplish despite their many advantages.

Hopefully our Governor has his eye on privitization of our schools too! Maybe he’ll drag Indiana kicking and screaming toward school privitization too!

Dr. Eugene White inherited a nightmare in IPS behind the former superintendant,Pat Pritchard who did nothing to correct the problems in the system. By design he allowed for low achievement standards and social promotions. The school district is over 51% minority. Who really cares if the parents don’t was his attitude. He has since moved to Florida after retirement.
“Rome was not built in a day, nor did it fall in one.” Dr. White deserves the opportunity to allow his vision and plan for IPS to work.

Mayor Peterson is not an educator, in fact he can’t seem to do a very good job of running the City of Indianapolis. Maybe he needs to spend more time dealing with those issues.

I support public schools and quality education for all children. Politics needs to be taken out of the formula. Dr. White is doing the best job he can to improve the process. He has requested Mayor Peterson not to approve any more charter schools. The Mayor has stated that he will not honor the request. It appears that as long as African American children are being disavantaged, he does not care. Peterson needs to stop the hypocrisy. Again, funding is being taken from IPS and building up other schools just like when one way busing was the law. The tax money followed the students to the out lying townships. Those funds were used to upgrade their classrooms, build swimming pools and athletic fields while IPS suffered. This kept their property taxes low while home owners in IPS District had increases. It is all about the money.

Hoosiers have fought anti-school naysayers for many years but our free public school system was finally implemented in our new Indiana Constitution back in 1851. Priests and mullahs now want madrassas or some such nowadays. Shelbyville H.S. and Indiana University worked for me - I support public education!