South Bend takes next steps in John Glenn annexation. What it means for Greene Twp.

SOUTH BEND — School leaders in St. Joseph County are setting a timeline to advance a drawn out and at times controversial plan to annex part of the South Bend school district into the neighboring John Glenn School Corp.

Nearly a year after board members in both districts agreed to explore the change, school officials now say they hope to complete the annexation process by January 2024.

South Bend school board members on Monday initiated a series of next steps with their approval of a nine-page annexation resolution. John Glenn trustees are expected to approve a similar resolution in a board meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday night at the district’s administration offices.

The transfer would likely bring expanded bus service to students in the area already attending John Glenn and could see more than $1 million in property tax revenue redirected to the smaller corporation.

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“It puts both of our districts in a position to best serve our kids,” John Glenn Superintendent Christopher Winchell told The Tribune. “South Bend’s going to be able to continue serving their kids and hone in on the areas that remain, and John Glenn’s going to be able to expand what it’s providing its students and give Greene Township students additional programming that aligns with their township’s way of life versus South Bend city’s way of life.”

Those programs include robust agriculture studies not offered in the larger South Bend school corporation, Winchell said.

The decision, however, is not being universally praised. South Bend school board members split in their support for the plan with members Stephanie Ball, Oletha Jones and Jeanette McCullough voting against the annexation resolution.

The idea has been debated for years. Greene Township residents first sought to break off from the South Bend district along with Liberty Township in 1979. That interest found renewed purpose in 2018 after the school corporation closed its Greene Intermediate Center due to budget constraints and declining enrollment.

Indiana law allows a township to be annexed from one school corporation to another if both districts agree. But leaders in the South Bend district, standing to lose $1.3 million annually in property tax collection, previously opposed attempts to let the township go.

South Bend district leaders are moving forward with the annexation now, some officials in the district said, only to maintain control over some elements of student assignment and tax collection after state lawmakers repeatedly put forward legislation that pushed for a one-sided annexation that would allow John Glenn to advance without South Bend schools’ approval.

Although some South Bend school officials said they were grateful to deal with the issue locally, others expressed their feelings on the issue more directly.

“This is not voluntary,” Ball said Monday night. “This is thinly-veiled political bullying is what this is, and this is not in our corporation’s best interest. This is the beginning of a slippery slope in the annihilation of urban, public districts in the state.”

What will annexation look like?

The resolution approved Monday broadly details how students, taxes and transportation services would be divided between South Bend and John Glenn schools moving forward.

About 400 families with school-age children currently live in Greene Township — the southernmost St. Joseph County township served by South Bend schools — however, with open enrollment policies, only 72 of those students attend the South Bend corporation this year, South Bend Assistant Superintendent Kareemah Fowler said. About 130 attend John Glenn, and the remaining students attend other private and charter schools in the area.

With a finalized plan, the districts agree students currently enrolled in South Bend schools will remain South Bend students unless they are relocated, transferred or withdrawn by a parent or guardian. Both districts say they also plan to provide transportation in the coming school year.

The most noticeable change to families, John Glenn’s superintendent says, will be expanded bus services for those already enrolled in John Glenn schools as well as a possible decrease in tax rates for residents in the overall John Glenn corporation considering the taxes to be collected from Greene Township properties being absorbed into the district.

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The resolution discussed Monday night proposes a special taxing district in Greene Township in which South Bend schools will continue collecting a portion of taxes supporting the district’s 2020 operating and capital referendums and other debt service funds while John Glenn would collect remaining property tax — about $1.3 million — that Winchell says can help support the district’s planned transportation expansion as early as August 2024. Both districts will be responsible for working together to communicate changes to families.

The resolution also outlines steps John Glenn can take to purchase South Bend’s Greene Intermediate Center. The Greene building at 24702 Roosevelt Road is the South Bend district’s only property in the township. It closed as a school in 2018 and is currently used as storage in partnership with The History Museum, Fowler said.

Winchell said that John Glenn administrators would be evaluating the district’s needs before making any decisions about acquiring the building.

The resolution states that John Glenn must provide notice to South Bend’s superintendent by June 30, 2024, if interested in purchasing the building for the price of its appraisal.

“It’s hard to know what the future holds,” Winchell said. “We’re going to kind of evaluate our needs over time.”

Annexation not universally embraced

Leslie Wesley, the school board member elected to represent Greene Township, voted in favor of the plan, but voiced her strong disapproval of how the annexation came about.

Without naming individuals, Wesley said she was bullied, “assaulted and threatened” through text messages, emails and phone calls from legislators and some residents of Greene Township. She said some residents used racial slurs and expressed to her a desire to keep their children out of schools shared with students from South Bend’s west side.

“It was an insult,” Wesley said. “I’m not going to sit back and not voice my true feelings.”

Efforts to legislate the issue sparked outrage two years ago after Republican lawmakers shouted down Black colleagues who expressed concerns of discrimination in a floor debate over a bill that would allow smaller, less diverse school districts to remove students from larger, diverse districts like South Bend.

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Greene Township's population registered as 90% white in the 2020 census, while South Bend schools' overall student population is 37% Black, 24% Hispanic and 27% white, according to the Indiana Department of Education. The annexation could raise a flag with Indiana’s northern district court to ensure compliance with South Bend schools’ operation under a federal consent decree.

However, realizing the issue would not go away, South Bend administrators said they were given no other option but to move forward locally before state officials stepped in with their own plan that could have cut South Bend schools out of negotiations.

“We recognize through our legislators that this is something that is going to happen,” Fowler said. “So, we wanted to be proactive and ensure that the students and families that we have are not affected by this and also that we protect the interest of South Bend schools and the referendum dollars and the bond dollars that we asked taxpayers to go out and vote ‘yes’ for.”

A working group of school finance professionals, legal counsel, administrators, legislators and outside consultants have met over the last year to prepare the resolutions brought to school boards this week.

Other approvals will also be needed, including from state education officials and the federal Department of Justice, which oversees the district’s consent decree.

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Though acknowledging South Bend’s skepticism, Winchell said it’s important to consider the history of Greene Township, Indiana’s open enrollment policies and the interest of Greene Township residents. John Glenn, through open enrollment, is currently the district serving the most Greene Township students despite not being those students’ legally assigned school, the superintendent pointed out.

“Anytime there’s the possibility of losing some sort of tax revenue through the annexation of property, board members are wise and advised to be skeptical and ask questions,” Winchell said, adding in a separate conversation that “because the legislature allowed us to work on this locally, we really have put a plan in place that allows this to happen and is as fair as possible to all taxpayers involved.”

The proposed annexation will be advertised in local newspapers between Dec. 14 and Dec. 21, which will set off a remonstrance period during which taxpayers can state their opposition to annexation. If no one opposes the plan and it gains the needed state and federal approvals, the annexation should take effect in January 2024.

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: South Bend sets timeline to annex Greene Township to John Glenn schools