South Bend trustees decided to close Clay High School. How did each board member vote?

SOUTH BEND — In a highly anticipated decision years in the making, South Bend school board members voted Monday night to close Clay High School and begin consolidation in Michiana's largest school district.

The issue has been studied by two consulting firms — educational planners HPM and architects Fanning Howey — to seek solutions for a district that's losing students and looking to fix enrollment imbalances that have led to full schools in some parts of the city while others fall below half capacity.

5 things to know: About Clay High School closing, consolidation in South Bend

Given a rare influx of federal pandemic dollars awarded early in the pandemic and incoming referendum funds, administrators say now is the time to act to reduce operating costs and reinvest money in the classroom.

"I'm optimistic about South Bend schools and our future," Superintendent Todd Cummings said Monday night. "Having conversations about closing schools is difficult for students, staff and the community, but tomorrow we will move forward with planned continued investment in pre-K programming, in our teachers and leaders, expanding career opportunities for our students and providing equitable resources to achieve gains in literacy and increased graduation rates."

Many agreed steps are needed to establish clear elementary and middle school feeder patterns into South Bend high schools. Board members were split, however, on whether closing schools — Clay and Warren Elementary, included — would help stabilize enrollment and attract families back to the district.

How we got here: Previous coverage

After a lengthy, four-hour meeting — marked by more than two hours of community input and over an hour of board comments — trustees voted 4-3 to move forward with administrators' plan eliciting a strong reaction from Clay High School supporters who left the meeting in disgust and with threat to vote out trustees who supported school closures.

This January, the board swore in three members — Stuart Greene, Mark Costello and Kate Lee — to their current, four-year terms. Four of seven seats — occupied by John Anella, Stephanie Ball, Jeanette McCullough and Leslie Wesley — will be up next for election in 2024. Here's a look at how each board member voted.

President John Anella: Yes

Anella, speaking just before the board took its vote, took a moment to remind the hundreds watching the meeting in person and online about how the district came to this point. He criticized state lawmakers for playing politics with education, saying they've worked "to create the most under-resourced, under-utilized and under-performing schools as possible."

South Bend administrators have been studying their facilities amid a flurry of state proposals this spring that have encouraged making it easier for Hoosier families to receive state-funded scholarships for private school education and the sharing of public school corporations' property tax collections with competing charter schools. School officials often point to both of these educational alternatives as factors in why South Bend students are leaving the public corporation.

Anella also referenced declining birth rates and the district's own responsibility in allowing feeder patterns and efficient transportation to fall out of sync over a number of years. He noted a general consensus for the majority of the facilities plan, which seeks to expand pre-kindergarten opportunities and create clear geographic boundaries feeding into each high school.

"We need to focus on people and programs over physical objects," Anella said. "The facilities plan seeks to correct the errors of the past, grasp the reality of today and offers a path forward for a better future."

Vice President Stephanie Ball: Yes

After some speakers Monday night questioned the speed at which administrators brought their proposal to close Clay, Ball reiterated her confidence in the facility planning team, which began its work with the district more than a year ago.

Ball said the planners from out-of-town consulting firms brought an objective viewpoint to the conversation and helped "dispel the myth that a pre-determined decision had been made" about closure and consolidation recommendations.

She also pointed to a need to evaluate how some local policies — such as high school choice and magnet programs — have affected South Bend education and transportation and questioned whether it's time for the district to remove itself from its longstanding consent decree, given the city's changing demographics.

The corporation entered its consent decree — a federal order establishing that each South Bend school's enrollment of Black students should be within 15 percentage points of the district's overall Black student population — in 1980. But, over time, Ball said, demographics in South Bend have changed and the district after 40 years still hasn't met all of the requirements of the federal order.

"The board is doing our best to chart a course of success for our school system," Ball said. "Our public school system is all of the people, programs and properties and how they work together for the common good, a public common good, whether that be Portage Township, Greene Township, Clay Township, Center Township, et cetera, the entire South Bend Community School Corporation as an entity."

Secretary Stuart Greene: No

Greene, who represents much of Clay Township, questioned whether administrators provided enough detailed information about how they expect to implement the facility plan before seeking approvals from the school board.

He and the two other trustees — Mark Costello and Jeanette McCullough — attempted to delay the discussion before the consolidation vote was taken. That delay failed by a 4-3 vote.

Greene gave his thoughts on a question many have been asking throughout the facility planning process: why are families leaving South Bend schools? The trustee pointed to several factors, including concerns for safety and transportation, and a lack of high-quality curriculum, consistency and trust.

He specifically wanted to know what resources, like additional paraprofessionals to reduce class sizes and social workers to counsel students, would be made available through the transition, considering the remaining federal pandemic relief dollars still available to the district.

"Tracking the distribution of resources and making this information public is especially important," Greene said. "After all, among the many assumptions made about the plan is the belief that changing boundaries and consolidation, among other potential decisions, will ensure that children will flourish."

Trustee Mark Costello: No

Costello, a retired educator elected to the board last fall, spoke uninterrupted for nearly 45 minutes — a time that eclipsed the length of all other trustees' comments combined.

He characterized the facility planners' focus on studying high schools early this year as unexpected despite numerous public statements from administrators going back to at least January 2021 saying high school consolidation was possible.

He explained in great detail the lengths he went to in visiting each school in the corporation to develop an alternative plan keeping Clay High School open. He provided no detailed information, though, after his public presentation of this plan in March, about how he would fund the more than $16 million consultants said would be needed to keep Clay operating over the next five years. Instead, he criticized local media and administrators for not asking enough questions of him about his ideas.

"Keeping Clay High School open is not a mistake," Costello said. "I begged the other board members to give Clay High School a real opportunity for success."

He further asserted the superintendent specifically directed consultants to close Clay, which drew cheers from an auditorium of Clay supporters. After the meeting, however, administrators and representatives from both HPM and Fanning Howey emphatically denied that was the case. Consultants Scott Leopold and Mary Krupinski told The Tribune that Cummings "wasn't even involved very early in the process."

Trustee Kate Lee: Yes

Lee, who also joined the board as a new member this January, began her remarks addressing some Clay supporters' calls for her to abstain from voting on the high school decision based on her participation on a community task force convened before her time as a trustee.

"I did not join with any agenda beyond advocating for feeder patterns and ensuring strong schools for all of our children. My voice had no more influence than other taskforce members," Lee said. "My participation does possibly give me a different level of understanding and encouraged me to run for the school board, so I will vote based on the facts presented and what I feel is best for all of our students."

Like Anella, Lee pointed to external factors, such as staffing shortages and changes in state education funding, weighing on the district. She expressed a desire to publicly communicate the value of South Bend programs and build up a reputation for having strong schools across the corporation.

"There has been much public blame, shame and rock throwing at those currently working hard to meet the needs and expectation of our students, families and communities," Lee said. "I ask you to acknowledge it's not just South Bend schools being impacted by policy and expectation shifts, and demographic, systemic and societal challenges. We aren't the only corporation to seek a referendum or close buildings to make up for the funding losses created by this dilution of government support in our county, in our state or across the country."

Trustee Jeanette McCullough: No

McCullough has long vocalized her opposition to closing Clay or any other school in the district.

She called for financial transparency regarding the district's spending of referendum money, federal pandemic relief funds and other dollars saved through recent decisions to outsource food services and maintenance and custodial workers. She also drew attention to the corporation's investment in its five west-side Empowerment Zone schools, which includes Warren Elementary, and asked whether it's wise to continue duplicating some overlapping administrative resources in the separate district and Zone school structure.

"We must earnestly study the out-of-classroom changes we can make before making these decisions. We cannot keep closing our schools and not have a plan. What we see before us is not a plan. We don't even know what's going to happen to these kids when we close these schools."

Administrators have not specifically described their plans for the Zone after consolidation. The schools' autonomous structure and board were created in 2019 with an initial, five-year intervention plan. The last year of that plan — coming during the 2023-2024 academic year — now aligns with the last school year before South Bend administrators say they will close schools and begin enforcing new attendance boundaries.

The Zone's current contract with the South Bend district allows the intervention to renew automatically for another five years if local leaders take no action. The Empowerment Zone's own board, which is separate from South Bend district trustees, meets next at 6 p.m. Monday at the corporation's downtown administration building.

Trustee Leslie Wesley: Yes

Wesley left the board's table several times and could be seen pacing slightly off centerstage during her colleagues' extended comments Monday night at the LaSalle Academy auditorium.

The trustee spoke only briefly just after the vote was taken before she was interrupted by an outburst from Clay High School supporters as they made a beeline to exit the meeting. Some of them shouted over Wesley, "Nobody wants to hear it! This meeting's over!" and "Mr. Agostino's going to get a lot of money," referencing a local attorney some Clay residents say they hope can help reverse the decision.

Wesley expressed gratitude toward Cummings, Assistant Superintendent Kareemah Fowler and their consultants for their work on the consolidation plan and encouraged the administration to do all they can to ensure a smooth transition for Clay students.

"Those who are listening, those who choose not to listen; this is a tough decision and it's been over years in the making," Wesley said. "All of the energy that's been spent here this evening, I hope people go downstate and spend that same energy with the lawmakers that make a lot of the decisions about education."

Have a question or story idea related to South Bend's school consolidation? 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: Clay High School will close. Here's how each South Bend trustee voted