Broad Ripple Middle School (BRMS) is back in the news these past few weeks. We did a deep dive into the problems families and staff presented to the IPS board some months back. Today, under new leadership, many of those problems have been alleviated. But recent reporting also indicates hundreds of students didn’t stick around to experience the improvements. And it’s not clear that the district learned the right lessons following this breakdown in services. 

Changes at Broad Ripple

First, credit where it is due. The situation at BRMS for staff, students, and families does seem markedly improved based on recent reports. Long-time IPS principal Jeremy Baugh was installed as the new school leader at the end of September and he described the difference in the school to WFYI as “like night and day.” I have every reason to believe him since he’s backed up by parents and students who have little reason to play defense for the district. Here’s a snapshot of some changes he’s made:

• Implementing a staggered bell schedule to reduce the amount of students transitioning between classes at any given time
• Switching breakfast from the cafeteria to first period classrooms to cut down on tardiness
• Enforcing the no cell phone policy (this already existed, it just wasn’t properly enforced until Baugh took over)

Those are all great, commonsense improvements. If you go back to the original complaints though, it’s unclear to me the sufficiency of those improvements. Though of course, Baugh may have discussed more than what WFYI included in their coverage, so the gap between the original problems and the implemented solutions may not be large.

Regardless, what is true is that hundreds of families didn’t stick around to see day follow night. They left, many of them for Washington Township. More on that in a moment.

A Timeline of the Student Exodus

Recent reporting from WFYI indicated that BRMS enrolled 753 students at the end of August (one month into the academic year). The district told them that as of early October that number was 621. Meanwhile, TC Howe Middle School (a similarly-beleaguered but not as highlighted in the news school) lost 10 students over that same timeframe. 

But there’s a problem here. The issues at BRMS didn’t start at the end of August, over one month into the school year. They became public knowledge at that point, which is when IPS as a district started paying them real attention. However, the issues were present from the very beginning of the school year. 

So the timeline to consider is the start of the school year until now (not some arbitrary late August to early October window). There’s not a perfect answer here. But we can piece together a relatively clear picture of the actual enrollment decline BRMS experienced.

Consider reporting from Mirror Indy back in August where “IPS officials told Mirror Indy that Broad Ripple had signed up 862 students, far surpassing its goal of 400 to 500 students in its first year.” 

That 862 number dates, per reporting, from two weeks before the start of the school year. Anyone who has worked in a school knows the number of students you have enrolled in late summer is never the same number that shows up on day one (or sticks around through week one, week two, etc.). There’s always natural attrition. But even for a school of BRMS’ size, that attrition is typically pretty small. A few students, give or take. And the ones you lose are often replaced by ones you gain from other schools such that you tend to net out in a place that isn’t far from end-of-summer numbers.

Thus, I’m compelled to use 862 as the starting point for BRMS enrollment. If we compare that to IPS’ self-reported number from early October (621), the school lost 241 students. Not the 132 reported by WFYI. That’s over 25% of its student body in a little less than three months. That’s a precipitous enrollment decline that can’t just be waved away. We also know a large chunk of them (71 per WFYI’s reporting) landed in Washington Township Schools. Others enrolled in independent charter schools or innovation schools.

What About Howe?

Howe doesn’t get much attention in the news, even if they got slightly more in the recent stories that bubbled up. According to IPS, they’ve only lost 10 students. But again, due to their timeframe shenanigans, they’ve lost 10 students from the end of August to early October. Chances are they lost more students than that early in the year. We should find out more conclusively when the state releases enrollment data (hopefully sometime this month). 

Whatever their enrollment situation turns out to be, by all accounts the start at Howe was just as rocky as it was at BRMS. Still, families and staff never came out in mass to an IPS board meeting. They never got widespread media coverage. And that’s fine in some ways. I’m not saying we should be putting Howe on blast. But it is interesting to note where these two schools are in the district. It’s also interesting to recognize which families created a public outcry while others engaged in a potentially more “quiet quitting” or just put up with things as the wrinkles got ironed out.

What About IPS Leadership?

I’m unimpressed with IPS’ dodginess over enrollment statistics and unwillingness to be transparent with a simple data request from WFYI. Those limited numbers are all WFYI got, with the article noting, “IPS officials declined to provide WFYI with enrollment data of schools directly managed by the district.” For a different story a few days later, Chalkbeat Indiana used a similar line about the district not playing ball. Thus, IPS was unwilling to be transparent about enrollment across their seven middle schools and only provided a misleading glimpse into enrollment at BRMS and Howe. 

Meanwhile, a formal statement from the district is quoted by WFYI saying, “Parents have raised valid concerns this school year, and we are listening. When problems arose at Broad Ripple Middle School, our school leadership team took immediate action.” Except they didn’t. Problems persisted until it blew up into a public brouhaha. 

These are not the actions of a district interested in accountability or an authentic relationship with its family and community. It does not seem to me to be a district interested in making sure this doesn’t happen again. It does not seem to me to be a district fully invested in providing what it promised to students unless pressured. Their statement is the corporate non-speak of trying to hope a reputational hit dies by allowing it to fade from public awareness. 

I’m sure many will think I write this just to attack IPS. Or because I have some secret charter school supremacy agenda. You’re allowed to think what you want. I think it’s worth taking such a critical eye to stories like this because IPS explicitly made their middle school reconfiguration a keystone of the Rebuilding Stronger plan. By all accounts, that keystone has been one of the weakest elements so far. 

Moreover, the reality is I want every kid in our city to receive a great education. IPS must play a role in that. They are too big and they serve too many students not to. But what happened at BRMS to start the year, the district’s slow response, and the tepid statements about how everything is better now in recent weeks, all reek of a tired old story of a system protecting itself rather than prioritizing the families and kids they supposedly serve. 

We need systems in society. I’m not a tear it all down guy. I think we need school districts too. I’m not an every school should be a standalone entity guy either. But we, the collective we, need better systems and better school districts. And they only get better when the adults running them start making better choices. Not just by pretending that everything is fine now, actually.