Here's where incoming South Bend school board members stand on facility planning

SOUTH BEND — Two new names will take seats on the South Bend school board in January following last week's midterm elections.

Three seats were up for election this year, including those of incumbents Ruth Warren, Oletha Jones and Stuart Greene.

Of the three, only Greene will return to the board when new terms begin in January.

Greene beat challenger Robert “Smitty” Smith with more than 53% of the vote, according to unofficial results made available by St. Joseph County late last Tuesday night.

Kate Lee, who serves as executive director of education & workforce for the South Bend Regional Chamber, won Warren’s seat after the retired Clay High School principal decided not to run again this year. Wylette Veldman-Weaver filed to run against Lee, but did not launch a campaign for the seat. Lee won with nearly 77% of the vote.

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And, in the district’s most highly contested race, three candidates challenged Jones for her position on the board.

Jones, a former education chair for the St. Joseph County NAACP, served for one term. She was unseated by Mark Costello, a retired school superintendent. Challengers LaQuita Hughes, who works for a local early childhood center, and Gabrel Kempf, an 18-year-old candidate and recent Riley High School graduate, also campaigned for the seat.

Costello, a somewhat unexpected choice, jumped ahead Tuesday night with nearly 48% of the vote. Even Costello said he was surprised by the result.

“I didn’t think I was going to win,” Costello told The Tribune. “I was running against three pretty good candidates and I felt that all of us have something to give to the positions if we won.”

New board members elected Tuesday are likely to play a pivotal role in deciding the future footprint of Michiana’s largest school district.

Administrators, over the last year, have entrusted a group of consultants with exploring ideas for reshaping school programs and “right-sizing” the district’s physical presence following years of declining enrollment.

Though no formal decisions have been made, it’s likely administrators will ask board members to consider some form of consolidation or school closure. The shrinking South Bend corporation has lost more than 10,000 students since 2007 and expects to see its enrollment decline by nearly another 1,000 students by the 2026-27 school year, according to projections from the district.

Only one of the district’s four high schools is near full capacity, though facility planning teams this spring directed their attention away from secondary consolidation and shifted instead to explore preK-12 feeder patterns across the district.

Their eventual recommendations could help the South Bend board decide how to direct about $32 million remaining for the district’s $54 million capital referendum.

New trustees bring education experience

Lee and Costello — the two new candidates elected to the board — both bring experience in public education and an understanding of school consolidation.

Lee, in addition to her work with the chamber, is a member of a community task force formed by South Bend administrators and their consultants several months ago to explore ideas for future facilities use. Her husband, Milt Lee, is the district’s director of community programs and K-12 athletics.

Kate Lee will serve South Bend’s first district, which covers much of east-central South Bend, including the neighborhoods nearest Adams High School. She said she hopes to bring a practical approach to exploring future use of schools and is interested in the concept of a county-serving career center — an idea introduced in the spring.

But, Lee said, her mind is not made up yet on what decisions the board should make on potential consolidation. She said she would like to spend more time reviewing student enrollment patterns and explore how spaces are being used to advance new educational practices, like STEM-based learning, within physical spaces designed decades ago.

Costello is a retired superintendent of Eau Claire Public Schools in Michigan and has spent many years in the South Bend district as a paraprofessional, teacher and administrator, both before and after his time in Michigan.

Costello, who worked in the district’s former Central and Kaley schools as they closed, said he’s experienced change in South Bend and that the big decisions coming before the board are what motivated him to run.

He’ll serve South Bend’s second district, currently represented by Jones who has advocated for justice, inclusion and antiracism initiatives throughout her time on the board.

Jones said she’ll continue to push for transparency surrounding the district’s compliance with its federal consent decree in her final weeks on the board. She also plans to work on rebuilding the presence of Community Action for Education, or CAFE,  with a focus on raising awareness of privatization of services traditionally conducted by public employees in South Bend schools.

Her advice to new board members is to be attentive to and engaged in the district’s discussions about reorganization. She expressed her concern that administrators may already have their mind set about closing schools, though she said she’s not sure which schools specifically are under the microscope.

Costello said he’s not attended many school board meetings since retiring as a superintendent, but that he plans to spend time listening to the community before forming an opinion on what should happen next.

“I’ve always believed that when you make a decision, you should always have two or three or four options about what to do,” Costello said. “I just don’t want to make mistakes now that will affect us 15 to 20 years from now.”

Incumbent welcomes questions about Clay

As the representative for the Clay Township area, Greene’s campaign came to be defined by questions over the future of Clay High School.

And Smith, who challenged him, is still asking questions following his Election Day loss. Smith said he and other residents want to know how Clay Township residents’ tax dollars are being spent, what renovations are anticipated at Clay High School and how the district plans to address student behavior, test scores and enrollment loss in the area.

Smith, a former assistant principal at Clay High School, characterized Greene as a “flip flopper” after seeing Greene’s comments that Clay would stay open in an interview just before Election Day. Smith said that despite losing his election, he will continue to advocate to “Save Our Schools” in Clay Township.

Greene’s comments last week, in an interview with WSBT22, are not his first about school closures. Sitting next to Smith in an ABC57 forum in September, Greene said the high school wouldn’t be reconfigured into a career center — another idea broadly discussed in the spring. Greene also expressed that he’s against school closures during a South Bend Tribune forum in October.

As he campaigned this fall, Greene said, he found many residents were not aware of the corporation’s ongoing facility planning. He said he hopes to change this through community meetings and further outreach to families.

Greene was the only one of South Bend’s seven board members to organize a meeting in his district in the spring just after facility planners presented their first ideas for restructuring within South Bend schools. Even at that time, administrators made clear that no ideas discussed were final.

More:What's coming next in South Bend facility planning?

As the district moves into its next stages of planning, Greene says, he wants to hear the community’s thoughts on what the future of South Bend schools should look like. Other issues, such as transportation, outsourcing, teacher retention and safety, also are all at the front of mind.

“There is every intention to put money toward Clay, the question is, 'Toward what?'” Greene said. “There should be lots of questions about whether the corporation is supporting any of our schools … I would hope now the election’s over that the community would come together at some of these fora that I want to host with constructive ideas.”

Email South Bend Tribune education reporter Carley Lanich at clanich@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @carleylanich.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Incoming South Bend board members talk facility plans, community input