Veteran blogger Steve Hinnefeld writes about education in Indiana. In this post, he describes a controversy in the Legislature about whether a portion of a district should be allowed to secede in order to join a “whiter” district.
Some Indiana House Republicans lost their cool last week when Democratic colleagues dared to raise the issue of race. According to the Indianapolis Star, the Republican legislators “shouted down and booed Black lawmakers during floor debate on a bill that some see as discriminatory.”
Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, became emotional and walked off the House floor when Republicans interrupted his attempt to speak, the Star reported. Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, began talking about his own experiences with racism and “was met with ‘boos’ from several … GOP lawmakers.”
But Porter and Smith were right. Lawmakers were debating House Bill 1367, which would allow Greene Township in St. Joseph County to secede from South Bend Community Schools and join John Glenn School Corp. Greene Township’s population is 98% white, according to census data, while nearly three-fourths of South Bend students are Black, Hispanic or multiracial. John Glenn’s enrollment is 90% white and less than 1% Black. How can you debate a bill like that and not talk about race?
Indiana’s Legislature is encouraging school choice, of course, despite the fact that these choice policies are desegregating schools across the state. Black legislators are outraged, as they should be.
When legislators promote laws that make schools more segregated, their actions should be scrutinized.
The same should apply to Indiana’s state-sanctioned open enrollment policy, in which families may transfer their children from the school district where they live to another, provided there’s room. The policy accounts for about half the “school choice” in the state. In theory, it lets parents choose the public school that best fits their children’s needs, as long as they can provide transportation. In practice, families are leaving racially diverse urban schools for mostly white suburban or rural districts.
Muncie Community Schools, for example, where 57% of students are white, lose nearly a quarter of their prospective students through inter-district transfers. Many go to nearby districts where over 90% of students are white. Figures are similar for Marion Community Schools, where 48% of students are white and many leave for districts that are 80% or more white.
The resegregation that is occurring across the nation, especially in the South, has been hastened by the secession of white families who want their children to enroll in a whiter district.
The VOX article continues:
In one recent case in Alabama, white families in Gardendale–a suburb of Birmingham–attempted to secede from the Jefferson County school district. A lower court judge approved their request, but it was overturned by an appeals court.
While the Gardendale plan was ultimately halted, other school secessions have been allowed to occur, the secession study authors note. “It’s hard not to look at many of these instances of secession and see them as a modern-day effort by Southern whites to avoid diverse schools,” Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, a study co-author and an associate professor of educational leadership, policy, and justice at Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a press release. “This is especially true given the obstacles to comprehensive cross-district integration policies.”
As these efforts continue, and in some cases accelerate, the study authors caution that more attention needs to be paid to the impacts of school secessions, which they call “a new form of resisting desegregation amid the growing diversity of the South’s public schools.”
“Secession has weakened the potential for greater school integration across the South’s broadly defined communities,” the researchers note, “fracturing White and Black and White and Hispanic students into separate school systems.”
The secession movement in the South has reached Indiana, where it appears to be gaining traction. Will the courts stand by the Brown vs. Board decision of 1954?
.”..despite the fact that these choice policies are desegregating schools across the state.”
Did you mean segregating? re-segregating?
A conservative recently suggested that the present resurgence of racism is to be laid at the foot of Obama. The narrative is this: MLK was a great leader who solved the problems of racism in America. Obama then played the race card to get elected and continued to divide America by taking the idea of racism to his constituency.
Pretzels.
These “conservatives” turn logic and sanity on its head. They are beyond cynical and duplicitous, they engage in conspiracy theories and blatant demagoguery. According to these phonies, Obama was the racist, Antifa caused the Jan. 6th insurrection, the school massacres were false flag operations and wind turbines caused the disaster in Texas. They are truly a cancer on our country. Pretzels indeed.
Communities enact racist policies under the guise of choice, efficiency or any other lame excuses that will hide the true intention of the change which is generally to separate white from Black and brown students. Secession is one such tool used to create predominately white school districts. In the past four years more that two dozen school districts have attempted to redraw attendance lines that will work to their racial or economic advantage. During the same time the federal government has failed to enforce existing civil rights or integration laws, not just in Indiana. When legislators promote laws that make schools more segregated, their actions should be scrutinized. This link shows how many districts have attempted or failed to subdivide school districts. I know of one such secession where affluent Gulf Shores, Alabama left the diverse Baldwin County Public Schools to build a more “local” system. https://edbuild.org/content/fractured#intro
My favorite school district is one I ran across talking with Steven Singer. It is the Keystone-Oaks school district. It is made up of three lumps that are surrounded by other school districts, notably the Pittsburgh Public School District. The map is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_School_District_(Allegheny_County,_Pennsylvania)#/media/File:Map_of_Allegheny_County_Pennsylvania_School_Districts.png
The drawing of school districts along racial lines is a feature of school districts and catchment based school admissions, not a bug. It is what you get with local political control of schools.
retired teacher: Enlightening link. At least as regards secessions (analyzed at the link), wealth-hoarding is an even more common denominator than racism. They say this is what happens when lax secession policies meet school funding depending primarily on property taxes. Redrawing school district lines so that wealthy areas don’t have to share their taxes with poor ones is equivalent to the twisted gerrymandering that gives one party’s voters more elective clout than the other’s.
However those generalizations are undercut by this detail: one state—Maine—accounts for a full 30% (!) of the last 20 yrs’ 128 secessions chronicled here, and motivations are complex. Theirs are a backlash to consolidations mandated in 2007, when rapidly declining revenue collided with accelerating school expenditures. Maine managed to reduce #districts by 43% in 4 yrs; some consolidations worked. Many didn’t, where costs weren’t reduced, especially in sparsely-populated rural areas where new district was just too big in sqmis. There were also problems in coastal areas, with towns in the midst of suddenly-spiraling RE values adjacent to low-tax-base towns on the decline.
Indiana’s GOP legislators long for the days when the playing field wasn’t level and they were at the front of the line for resources like jobs, housing, promotions, medical care, loans and, for special consideration from the courts and law enforcement, etc. They don’t want to have to compete in a bigger pool of more capable people.
Trump gave them the promise of their place of privilege at the center of culture.
The National Council of State Legislatures provides a table that lists by state the percent of state legislators who have religious affiliation. The statistic for the nation as a whole is 58%. Unspecified or N/A is 42%.
The states that have more than 80% of legislators affiliated with a religion are Ark, 99%, Tenn. 98%, Virginia, 96%, Miss, 95%, Ala, 94%, Fla, 94%, Ky, 93%, Ind, 83%, Louisiana, 81%.
The reason that Bellwether advised ed reformers targeting the south to reach out to churches is made evident by NCSL’s research.
You might also call it gerrymandering the school districts similar to that done to ensure Republican control of the Indiana State House: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1EX7CsoA606PmRTwMRk1ekNCb-QA&usp=sharing
.. and the Indiana State Senate: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1AZKx8tZQmNfvF5as7i5VMQbRWXM&usp=sharing
Thanks for adding the info.
If you are not already aware, state Catholic conferences are very active in politicking for school choice. In some states the Conferences co-host school choice rallies with Koch’s AFP. The article in Christian Recorder, 1-3-2021, “Why religion and politics are at play in Georgia”, is worth a read.
The Cristo Rey Catholic school chain operates schools in 17 states, many of which are tax supported. They’ve received funding from the privatizing Walton heirs and Bill Gates. Cristo Rey should be contrasted with the operation of wealthier Catholic schools. The Christiansen Institute described a Cristo Rey prototype in California with 60 students per class.
Good article – obviously race is a pertinent part of the discussion, & the idiots booing/ shouting down the speakers should be censured.
However, the import of this particular bill probably lies more in what it bodes for the future [i.e., does it open any doors not already opened?] than what it can do re: Greene vs SBend. Horses already out of the barn thanks to the open enrollment policy mentioned further down in the article. At this point after some yrs of open enrollment policy, only 89 of Greene Township’s 400 students still attend South Bend schools.