By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

INDIANAPOLIS – Indianapolis Public Schools will soon undertake its most critical education reform in nearly a decade: Replacing its inept superintendent.

IPS Superintendent Eugene White last week announced his intention to retire at the end of the school year, after seven years at the head of what was once the state’s largest school district.

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During his tenure, students fled to charter schools, private schools and whatever schools they could find, allowing Fort Wayne Community Schools to eclipse IPS as the largest district.

IPS’ plummeting student enrollment is one of a long list of serious problems that White has either helped cause, or been unable to solve. His departure should be a welcome signal for parents, teachers and community members who are desperate to move the district in a more productive direction.

Over the years White has repeatedly demonstrated he’s far more concerned about his own self- interests, and those of his massive stable of administrators, than he is about the students or teachers he oversees.

EAGnews has called on White to resign on numerous occasions, and we’re thrilled to see his reign in the district come to a close.

The move, however, comes with an unnecessarily expensive asterisk. He’s receiving a parting gift of $800,000 he clearly doesn’t deserve. The deal is designed to pay off White for the last two years of his employment contract, according to media reports.

He’s resigning before the end of his contract. Why is he being paid for two years that he will not be working for the district? Taxpayers should be screaming in the streets.

On the other hand, the expense might be worth it to move White out the door and start improving a school system that has suffered financially and academically under his leadership.

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A hypocritical leader

For roughly seven years as the head of IPS, White has enjoyed the support of a sympathetic school board that has rubber-stamped most of his boneheaded decisions. The situation resulted in a top-heavy administration filled with overpaid staffers and a budget filled with spending priorities that have nothing to do with student learning.

Through several public information requests in recent years, EAGnews has repeatedly highlighted White’s bloated bureaucracy and his hypocritical, ineffective management style. As IPS grappled with multi-million dollar budget deficits in 2009-10 and 2010-11, White routinely cut student programs, school safety officers and teaching positions, yet rewarded administrators with five-figure bonuses.

EAGnews revealed in November 2010 that 177 IPS administrators received compensation packages worth $100,000 or more in the previous school year, and all but seven of the district’s 258 administrators raked in at least $80,000 the same year. The top 10 administrators in the district were paid over $150,000 in 2009-10, according to our research.

White’s annual compensation at the time was nearly $250,000, but it has since increased substantially to about $374,000 annually, according to the Indianapolis Star. He also enjoyed a $900 per month car allowance, a $300 per month fuel allowance, bonuses for meeting embarrassingly low student achievement benchmarks, and other wasteful perks.

To add insult to injury, White often blamed the district’s academic failures on others.

In 2010, White told the Indianapolis Business Journal he estimated about 60 percent of the teachers at IPS’ five worst schools were ineffective, and blamed his highly-paid administrators for their failures.

“The teachers’ unions do get blamed for bad teachers,” White said. “But the real, real, real fact of the matter is the bad teachers exist because administrators fail to properly supervise them.”

It was a very ironic statement considering that White awarded all five principals at the failing schools substantial raises that same year, ranging from 3 to 14 percent, despite $23 million in budget cuts which eliminated teaching and campus safety positions, as well as art, music and other student programs.

Other failures and excuses

EAGnews research showed that White’s inept administration didn’t track payroll costs from year to year, or the amount the district paid to teachers in the form of automatic annual raises. Records also indicated that IPS paid out $13.4 million in retirement bonuses in 2010 alone.

Another unnecessary financial drain under White’s watch was taxpayer-funded cellular phones for administrators. Our research showed IPS paid nearly $25,000 per month for that expense, even as it laid off hundreds of teachers to cover its $20 million budget deficits for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years.

The free spending and misplaced priorities eventually caught up to White, who faced a state takeover of five failing IPS schools that could not improve academic outcomes for five consecutive years.

But instead of taking responsibility for the academic failures, White again played the blame game, and alleged the testing used to measure student progress was rigged against the schools.

Instead of working with state officials to revamp the schools, White threatened to cut sports programs for students in retaliation for the state takeover.

During the district’s budget process, White used the same finger-pointing strategy to deflect attention away from his fiscal mismanagement.

Students were fleeing IPS in big numbers, but White instead trumpeted the fact that a handful of students transfer back to IPS each year from charter schools.

The loss of students cost IPS thousands of dollars, but it wasn’t an expense that would make or break school finances. Regardless, White used the issue to grandstand against competing charter schools, and as another excuse for his inability to balance the district’s budget.

A new dawn

Thankfully, Indianapolis voters finally had their fill of White’s bumbling bureaucracy and voted in several reform-minded school board members in the November 2012 elections.

It became clear after the election that the new board planned to change the way the district does business, and White knew that change likely would start with 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 Crosby,” the Indianapolis 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.”

That was obviously an assessment White would rather avoid, and he announced his plans Tuesday to call it quits.

We suspect his resignation will be the best thing he’s done for IPS since he took the superintendent position seven years ago.