By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

INDIANAPOLIS – Students and parents of Indianapolis Public Schools – rejoice!

IPS Superintendent Eugene White announced he will quit at the end of the school year. His decision comes one week after a new majority of reform-focused school board members took office, StateImpact reports.

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White’s decision to retire will cost taxpayers $800,000 to cash out the remaining two years of his contract.

The payout is far more than he deserves, but perhaps a good investment to get him out the door, once and for all.

The big money deal is consistent with White’s free-spending ways at IPS. Through numerous public information requests in recent years, EAGnews revealed that White has maintained a top-heavy administration filled with overpaid staffers.

During times of massive budget deficits at IPS, White advocated for four and five-figure raises for school administrators while cutting student programs and safety officers. Teachers and students made due with less while White’s bloated bureaucracy enjoyed lavish benefits. The worst part is he was rarely questioned about his spending by school board members.

White took home more pay than the governor of Indiana in recent years, as IPS student enrollment plummeted and failing student test scores  remained the norm. Thousands of Indianapolis students continued to receive a very poor education while White resisted efforts by the state to take over and improve its worst schools – most of which are in Indianapolis.

Throughout his seven year tenure at IPS, White’s base pay steadily increased to $194,000. He also received numerous other benefits like a car allowance, pension payments, insurance and retirement costs that “drive the annual cost of his contract to about $374,000 annually,” the Indianapolis Star reports.

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Despite the absurdly high salary, White was prone to pointing fingers at others when criticized about the district’s lack of academic progress. The IPS superintendent once blamed the failures of the district’s worst schools on administrators who didn’t properly supervise teachers, but then awarded those administrators hefty raises despite a dire budget situation.

When push came to shove, and state officials insisted on taking over several IPS schools, White made excuses. He alleged the testing used to measure student progress was rigged against his schools, and threatened to cut sports programs for students in retaliation for the takeover.

Now he’s decided to retire before the new school board does it for him.

“White’s future has been in doubt since the Nov. 6 election, when a majority of the board that strongly supported him disintegrated. Longtime board members Mary Busch and Marianna Zaphiriou retired and were replaced by Caitilin Hannon and Sam Odle. Another White ally, Elizabeth Gore, was defeated by Gayle Cosby,” the Star reports. “Hannon, Odle and Cosby all favored reforms that differed from White’s approaches. They joined three other board members — Diane Arnold, Samantha Adair-White and Annie Roof — who also back reform, creating a new majority.

“At their swearing-in last week, the new board members said they planned to craft a strategic plan by month’s end that would include an assessment of White and leadership in general in the district.”

Clearly White saw the writing on the wall.

While nobody should be ecstatic about cutting this bumbling bureaucrat a check for $800,000, the money represents a drop in the bucket compared to the price city residents have paid under White’s leadership, both in terms of unnecessary and illogical school spending and – most importantly – lost educational opportunities for thousands of Hoosiers students.