IPS Officials To Propose Splitting Middle, High Schools

“My IPS” sign hangs in the school board chambers. (Photo Credit: Eric Weddle)

After a week of public meetings at four IPS high schools that could face closure, one student seemed to capture the anxiety and fear of the process.

Broad Ripple’s Jasmine Murphy says closing her school won’t just upend the lives of students but negatively impact teachers, staff and the surrounding community.

“I want to know what is going to happen to us. I don’t want you to be like, oh you are just another statistic, another number,” Murphy says. “I am not just 2-5-0-9-8-5, you know, I am actually a person and I’d like to know what is going to happen. If possible, I’d like to graduate here as the valedictorian which is what I’ve been working all my years for… so if you could tell me. Thank you.”

District officials say they know closing a school is a highly-charged issue, but they see no other options. Keeping middle schoolers, some as young as 11 years old, with high schoolers who can be as old as 19 or 20 is not safe. The basic operations cost of each building is more than a million dollars a year which is too much.

And then there’s enrollment. That’s IPS Deputy Superintendent Wanda Legrand says once middle grades are shifted to stand-alone middle schools or K-to-8 schools, it will leave each of the city’s high schools at 50 percent or a much lower enrollment capacity.

“Across all eight buildings, too add them up is 15,000 seats and we only have a third of the enrollment to fit in all those buildings,” Legrand says.

And there’s one more factor. Academics are also being reviewed at the schools that face closure: Broad Ripple, John Marshall, George Washington and Northwest.

At Northwest, the junior school has been rated F for four years. The high school is rate D. The graduation rate is 62 percent.

However, football coach Abe Tawfeek, a 1999 graduate of the school, says change is underway thanks to a new principal. Last week students and the football team cheered the coach as he told district leaders just that.

“Two years when I first got here, kids were saying, ‘oh, I hate Northwest, this is the worst school ever,'” Tawfeek says. “But now, we’ve got a lot of school spirit. So obviously we are doing something right.”

IPS administrators will present the school reconfiguration plan 6 p.m. Tuesday at an IPS Board work session at Arlington High School.