Save Clay group seeks county council's help to ask for new school district, accountability

SOUTH BEND — A group frustrated over the impending closure of Clay High School in 2024 brought their case Tuesday to the St. Joseph County Council.

In June, the nonprofit group Save Clay had already sent their plea to Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, asking her to explore making a new district here that would serve Clay families that feel left behind — that is, those in the unincorporated parts of St. Joseph County.

Jenner hasn’t replied yet.

So, on Tuesday, local attorney Pete Agostino and Save Clay’s eight board members came to council with a proposed resolution. In it, the council would urge Jenner to explore the prospect of a new district.

But the resolution also would invite the South Bend Community School Corp.’s superintendent to a council committee meeting to answer questions about finances and plans for closing and opening schools.

June 22, 2023: South Bend schools to hire transition team to prepare for closure of Clay and Warren

Everyone who spoke for the measure Tuesday reiterated that they cannot get clear answers from the school corporation about how money is being spent. They were talking about the $220 million dollar bond referendum that voters in the district approved in 2020, which raised taxes to generate money for building upgrades, teacher raises and new literacy specialists, among other things.

“South Bend has a windfall of money and is making bad choices,” Jean Prichard said. “We have no power to hold South Bend schools accountable.”

“There is something wrong when 40% to 50% of tax dollars come from the unincorporated county and there’s no school,” Agostino said of Clay.

South Bend plans to close both Clay High and Warren Elementary schools in 2024. That would be part of large-scale revision of school structures across the district to solve for years of under-enrollment.

On Wednesday, South Bend school board President John Anella responded to The Tribune that it wasn't "sustainable" to keep Clay High open while hundreds of student seats are open, especially if it meant pouring millions into building upgrades.

He also said that Clay Township still has Swanson Traditional School as a National Blue Ribbon School and that Darden Elementary and Clay International Academy are "thriving schools."

Given that, he said he didn't think creating a new school district is "in the best interest" of Clay Township and its existing schools.

April 24, 2023: What comes next now that South Bend has decided to close Clay High School and consolidate?

The corporation is also seeking to open up new pathways of pre K-8 education as an alternative to the traditional elementary-to-middle school path.

The plan requires major investment to renovate existing schools to take on new students, draw geographic boundary lines and align transportation routes to new feeder patterns. In June, The Tribune reported that South Bend school officials planned to hire a temporary transition team to shepherd the consolidation and redistricting and to oversee large capital projects.

Agostino wrote in the resolution that the South Bend school board has voted to close, consolidate, repurpose or merge 10 schools in the past seven years.

Robert Smith, a former assistant principal at Clay who retired from South Bend schools in 2022, echoed those who’d believed that the referendum would help to save Clay.

“I stood by and asked, ‘When is our time for improvements?’” Smith recalled, having worked 38 years in South Bend schools, 12 of them at Clay. “'It’s coming one day.' It never came.”

Agostino submitted the resolution to the council on Monday, but it failed to get the unanimous vote that it needed to put it on Tuesday’s council agenda. It was a 7-2 vote, with Diana Hess and Mark Catanzarite voting against it.

Instead, council President Mark Root said the resolution will come to the council’s committees meeting on Aug. 22, then to the general council on Sept. 12.

Council member Amy Drake, in whose district Clay falls and who has been meeting with Save Clay members for months, introduced the measure.

“Everyone has stressed to me that the South Bend schools simply don't feel accountable to anyone," she told The Tribune. “This is affecting the parents, students and taxpayers we represent. If we can help get them some answers, we think this effort will be worthwhile.”

“It behooves us to find out where all of the referendum money has gone,” council member Dan Schaetzle said.

About the financial questions, Anella said, "I'm not sure where that's coming from."

Anella said most of the information about the referendum spending has already been discussed in public meetings and in documents shared at the school board's website.

June 8, 2022: Could Clay Township become its own school district? Here’s what it would take for a split.

This follows on court filings this summer by Agostino’s law firm, alleging that Clay’s closure could violate the federal court-ordered consent decree, which governs the racial balance in South Bend schools. Members of Save Clay and South Bend school board members Jeanette McCullough and Mark Costello have supported the legal action.

The school district has since made a court filing to oppose the claim. And its administration has told news media that its goal is to maintain the racial balance.

But Agostino said 42% of students at Clay are minorities, posing a challenge because, he noted, 33 of the school’s 61 teachers have left since the corporation decided to close Clay in April. Meanwhile, he said, the racial makeup of the school’s faculty has to fall within 15% of the community’s census demographics.

“Why didn’t they make a plan (beforehand) for this and lay this all out?” he said to The Tribune. “That’s a bad way to do business for the kids.”

“I am devastated,” Marcia Hummel, who’d served on the South Bend school board for 16 years until 2010, told the council. “South Bend schools are headed in a very bad way. It’s up to you to stop it. Soon you will end up with no grade school.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Save Clay group asks county council help for new school district