Get the White Out
I originally wrote this column back in June of 2011. Since Dr. Eugene White is looking for a new job, I figured the least I could do is let any future employer know what they are getting.
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Picture this. A CEO of a company who makes nearly $250,000 in salary and benefits. His company loses about 1,000 customers annually. It has a product completion rate of less than 50%. Facilities are struggling to fill space. A majority of his board of directors are mindless automatons that rubber stamp his every decision. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions and failures, he would prefer to blame the competition. And when the government has warned him time and again that if his company doesn’t get its act together, it will step in and take over instead of addressing the problem, tries to cut a last minute deal. Hard to imagine? Not really when you know that CEO is Dr. Eugene White, commander-in-chief of the personification of the area of Murphy’s law known as the Indianapolis Public Schools.
Since I am incapable of harboring any white, liberal guilt, I have no problem in criticizing Dr. White and IPS. Dr. White, along with his enablers, is the problem and is the reason why the State of Indiana is in the process of taking over several IPS schools. For the past five years, Broad Ripple, Arlington Community, Manual, Northwest, Howe and George Washington High Schools, along with Donna Middle School, have been on academic probation for being failing schools. Hearings started this week on state intervention and now everyone is freaking out over the possibility that the Department of Education will step in and do the job that should have been done back in 2005.
Locals are trying to organize and tell what they believe is good news about these failing schools and offer their alternatives to a state takeover. Some Indiana House Democrats are trying to put out a mailer accusing Republicans of wanting to take over inner-city schools (and not include the fact the schools were failing). Even Democratic Mayoral candidate Melina Kennedy is wading into the topic offering vague, generic, proposals to improve education. They are about as exciting as mayonnaise on white bread, but I’ll give her credit for pretending to care.
White has been trying to negotiate with the State to avoid a takeover of the failing schools. Just this past Monday, he begged officials that he should be allowed to operate his failing schools under the new changes in state law regarding collective bargaining and teacher evaluations. This is the same person, who according to the same state officials I spoke with, never took advantage of current state law to make changes in his low-performing schools. If anything he acknowledged that up to 60% of the teachers in some schools were “pedestrian”. And while White can blame collective bargaining rules on not being able to eliminate bad teachers, there’s no excuse for taking administrators from one failing school and sending them to another failing school. White has done the equivalent of putting the Captain of the Titanic in command of the Exxon Valdez.
This is just a series in a long line of events that has brought IPS to this point. White has vowed to break state law and deny enrollment to students who leave the district for charter schools and try to return at a later date. He has refused to give board members detailed copies of the budget; I had to file an open records request to get one. And while he is part of a group that supports mayoral control of IPS, I argue it is not because he cares about accountability it is because he thinks it the best way he can save his skin and not have to deal with any real accountability.
So what is the moral of this story? Over the next few weeks, as these hearings over the possible state takeover of several IPS schools get underway, don’t believe a word Eugene White tells you. He, his administration, and the board members who rubber stamp his every move are the epitome of the decline of modern public education. Behind closed doors they blame IPS’ problems on the Governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction. IPS’ own attorneys have told them what’s coming, but the District doesn’t want to listen. If they had been doing their jobs, we wouldn’t be here right now. My only regret is that the state doesn’t takeover the entire school district and send White and his minions to the unemployment line where they belong.
