School 43 community demands more IPS support after failed partnership

Members of the midtown neighborhoods around James Whitcomb Riley School 43 are raising concern about its future. Plans were underway for School 43 to be transformed into a visual performing arts program this summer as part of Indianapolis Public Schools’ Rebuilding Stronger plan. 

But this month, Edison School of the Arts abruptly canceled its contract with the Indianapolis Public Schools district to operate the school following the termination of the Edison CEO for using inappropriate language with students. 

Now community groups are demanding IPS do more to support students at School 43, which currently serves roughly 380 students and has a history of repeated turnover of leadership.

Five different principals led School 43 during a five year period before the current principal began in summer 2019. 

The Butler Tarkington/Crown Hill Education Committee released an open letter to IPS last Wednesday. Meetings of the committee, which are made up of neighbors and other interested people, are hosted at the Martin Luther King Community Center located a few blocks from School 43 on West 40th Street.

An announcement about the school’s future was expected at Thursday’s IPS school board meeting but none was made. 

The Butler Tarkington and Crown Hill Education Committee will also host a public meeting about School 43 at the MLK Center on April 5 at 6 p.m. 

The Butler Tarkington/Crown Hill Education Committee is demanding IPS work with its members to implement a school improvement plan. They also ask the district to: 

• Create a separate community advisory committee, potentially with parents, students, teachers and community members, who make decisions in conjunction with the new school leader.
• Implement a school improvement plan that is constantly monitored and allows the community to track student success based on a needs assessment. 
• Accept the committee’s recommendation for a community school leader since the committee has been involved in the principal hiring process before.  
• Commit to fully staffing the school with qualified educators before the 2023-2024 school year, and fund teachers who are willing to stay at School 43 beyond next school year. 

Last November, the IPS School Board approved the Rebuilding Stronger academic and facility overhaul. Part of the plan included a contract with the nonprofit organization that operates Edison School of the Arts to run School 43 as a new visual and performing arts middle school. 

The MLK Center has hosted the committee’s meetings for more than eight years. The committee originally focused on adult education, early education and other issues in the neighborhood. Then it morphed into a support system for School 43 as concerns around the community’s youngest residents dominated the agenda. 

Over nearly a decade, Allison Luthe, executive director of the MLK center, said students’ needs have remained the same, but a lack of comprehensive community support has been the detriment of students’ early academic careers.  

“The adults are the ones that have just constantly been failing them,” Luthe said. “And our lack of coordination in the school, the coordination of the school with the community, has really left them with not enough support.” 

IPS hoped a partnership between Edison and School 43 next year would boost student performance as the district aims to have at least 50 percent of students pass state standardized tests by 2025. 

Only 1.5 percent of Indiana students passed both the math and English sections of ILEARN in 2021-22, according to state data.

Contact WFYI education reporter Elizabeth Gabriel at egabriel@wfyi.org. Follow on Twitter: @_elizabethgabs.