House Bill 1315 under debate in Muncie community

Ball State management of MCS draws scrutiny from some, others approve

By Tina Maric

“My kids only get to go through elementary school one time. If there’s going to be drastic

changes every year, we don’t get a redo if it doesn’t work,” she said. “If they make the whole

corporation lab schools and experiment with them, we don’t get to go back and start over if it

doesn’t work the way it should.”

Elizabeth Piazza, a parent to two students who attend East Washington Academy in

Muncie Community Schools, said she is concerned about HB 1315, which is a bill that calls for

Ball State to oversee the management of the school district. This bill passed in the Indiana House

and has moved on to the Senate.

The school district has undergone changes in the not-so-distant past. In 2014, Southside

High School was closed. Recently, an emergency manager took over the district last month for

financial reasons.

The most recent proposed change would put Ball State in charge of MCS finances.

However, the extent of the university being involved in other aspects of the district’s operations

is unclear.

“I fully see it [the provisions of the bill] creeping into curriculum,” Piazza said. “I see it

creeping into building structures and hiring decisions, which is what concerns me with having

the board appointed. We’re going to get the philosophy of whoever’s making those appointments

trickling down through the whole school system.”

 Piazza said that the school board being appointed by Ball State’s Board of Trustees and

the president under the bill, replacing the current elected school board, is another area of

concern.

“At the end of the day, I truly don’t see how weakening democracy is a good lesson to

teach our kids, because that’s what this would be,” she said. “It would be taking away our

democratic right to locally control our schools.”

Piazza said that having an informed public that has a say in the operations of the schools

by electing school board members is fundamental.

“It’s the bedrock of our democracy that we educate people,” she said. “We do that locally

and we control that with a local board, so I hope this isn’t going to become a national trend.”

School board member Jason Donati, who was elected in 2016, said in Indiana, passing a

bill like HB 1315 could start a pattern for other school districts such as Gary Community School

Corp., which has also been put under an emergency manager.

“It could set a negative precedent for future districts beyond Gary and Muncie,” Donati

said.

He also said he shared Piazza’s concern regarding an appointed school board.

“I think that taking away the citizens’ ability to elect their leadership is disenfranchising,”

he said. “It’s the definition of disenfranchisement, in my opinion.”

However, Donati said that potentially losing his position as a school board member is not

the most worrying aspect of the bill.

He explained that even though school board members worked to earn their positions, the

focus regarding the implications of the bill should be directed toward its effects on students.
Donati said that the proposed change, along with the ones from the past, would cause instability,

which the students would feel.

Piazza said uncertainty as to the possible impact of the bill has already influenced

students’ decisions on where to attend school.

“I know a lot of my daughter’s classmates who are going into junior high next year are

making choices to go to other school districts or to enroll in the Burris lottery because they’re

uncomfortable with the idea of not knowing what next year will look like,” she said.

Burris Laboratory School, which is not a part of Muncie Community Schools, is K-12

and considered a division of the university.

Ball State English Professor Larry Riley wrote a column for the Star Press in 2016

suggesting that Ball State oversee the district. He said that if the university did oversee MCS, the

same practices in place at Burris should be applied to MCS.

Riley added that Ball State students would assist in the classrooms while his kids were

students at Burris, which gave the children more attention. He said that extra help for the

students would benefit the district.

However, Riley said that instruction isn’t a problem for MCS. Instead, he said that the

school boards have not served the district properly in the past.

“For 20 years, school boards have ignored what’s going on,” he said. “They’ve acted as if

there’s been no change in the past 20 years. They’ve [MCS] been shedding students by the

hundreds every year for more than 20 years. There’s just been horrible decision making by a

string of school boards.”

 According to the Indiana Department of Education, in the 2006-07 school year, there

were 7,758 total students enrolled in MCS. During 2011-12, there were 6,871 total students.

Now, there are 5,215.

In the 12-year period between 2006 and today, enrollment has gone down about 33

percent.

Riley said that Ball State would have to do more than appoint the school board to impact

the district.

“Surely they realize you can’t just tinker with the edges,” he said. “And just having Ball

State appoint the board isn’t going to create a turnaround. So they must know there has to be

some fundamental changes made that are significant and will reshape the system.”

As a parent, Piazza said the potential for a reconfiguration of MCS like what Riley

suggests has her skeptical.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I want my kids’ school to be an experiment,” she said.