The future of Muncie Community Schools — and whether or not it will be in Ball State’s hands — will be decided by midnight Wednesday.
An amendment to House Bill 1315, proposed by Rep. Tim Brown (R-Crawfordsville) Jan. 17, would allow Ball State to assume responsibility for MCS.
The legislation would allow Ball State to have oversight over MCS, but it would not make Ball State legally or financially responsible for the corporation. Instead, Ball State’s Board of Trustees would appoint five of the seven MCS school board members and the president of the university will appoint two board members based off of nominations from the mayor of Muncie and Muncie City Council.
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Despite the bill making it through House and Senate and garnering support from Ball State President Geoffrey S. Mearns, board of trustees members Rick Hall and Mike McDaniel and members of the Muncie School Board, some are still wary of the bill.
“I think the idea of Ball State and Muncie community schools collaborating and working together for the betterment of the school district and Muncie Community Schools is a great idea and concept,” said Muncie School Board member Jason Donati.
“I mean, there are all these great programs that we already collaborated on and I just worry that this type of legislation and the way that they're going about it can sever the relationship building that we've worked on for the last 10 years.”
While Donati said the collaboration could benefit Muncie schools, he’s concerned the process is being rushed. He feels it doesn’t reflect Muncie because the legislation wasn’t written by local legislators and under the proposed legislation, only four members of the school board would be required to live in Muncie.
By removing the elected board, Donati said the community — in this case Muncie — becomes disenfranchised.
“I believe in democracy, and when you remove that piece [elections], that's just one brick that you're removing,” he said. “But when you keep removing all these bricks in that foundation, it's going to collapse.”
However, the appointed board is something Mearns said would be beneficial because it would ensure each board member has complementary skills.
In addition to having appropriate expertise on K-12 public education, Mearns said it would be important that the candidates have expertise on the history of Muncie and its community.
“I think one of the other important things, and this is somewhat less tangible or specific, but somebody who has the values that this community has,” Mearns said in a Jan. 29 interview with The Daily News.
If passed, the bill would go into effect July 1, though there isn’t a specific time frame for how long MCS would remain in Ball State’s control. An amendment to the bill proposed Muncie residents could vote to continue or end the arrangement after nine years failed in the Senate earlier in March.
Once passed, the university would spend two years formulating a plan for MCS, Mearns said.
“The reason we asked for that two-year period is because we recognize the need to engage the community actively in that first-year period,” Mearns said. “One of the successful ingredients in the programs that we have had in the Muncie schools is engaging the students, their families and the teachers and the community in those solutions. So, we’re not going to develop that plan in isolation on our campus, we’re going to develop that plan in consultation with the community.”
Donati’s concerns, however, span beyond his role as an elected official and into his role as a father.
“I’m not only the school board member, I’m a parent. I have a sixth grader and a freshman, and I got to wait for two years for Ball State to come up with a plan with the community while my kids are still going to school simultaneously while we don't know what we're doing,” Donati said.
Until July 1, MCS will be run by the emergency board the state appointed in 2017. After that, it is unclear who or what will have responsibility of MCS.
Contact Mary Freda with comments at mafreda@bsu.edu or on Twitter at @Mary_Freda1.
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