Kevin Shaw, 17, and Lionell King, 19, take down the flag after a day at the New Horizon Alternative School on the Eastside.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard said that the city, United Way of Central Indiana and a local foundation will launch a major educational reform program early in 2009.

The program, which will be piloted in two schools at first, will track students in grades 1-8 to discover what extra help each one personally needs. “There’s literally dozens upon dozens of programs in the schools right now,” said Ballard, pointing to nonprofit agencies like the Boys and Girls Clubs.

He declined to provide the name of the foundation joining in the coalition because foundation officials don’t want publicity now. “I don’t know why they’re trying to stay under the radar … But it’s a pretty well-funded foundation,” Ballard noted.

The mayor wants to build this coalition because he doesn’t think these youth organizations are reaching enough kids and those who need them most. And the best time to reach kids and prevent students from dropping out of high school occurs before they even enter high school, Ballard said.

The high school drop-out rate is a national problem, and Indianapolis Public Schools have one of the worst rates in the nation. In 2006-2007, about 46.1 percent of IPS students graduated in four years.

Individual nonprofits can become more effective, explained the mayor, if they work as a team to tackle the drop out problems. "They're all doing great work but they're all kind of disjointed and there's nobody tracking the individual kids," he said.

A group of high school and middle school students in Indianapolis Public Schools said the program sounds like a good idea, but will be difficult to implement.

They said that’s because many teachers and administrators don’t see their students as individuals.

"Some teachers just go to work to get their little paycheck, but they don't care what students think,” said eighth grader Patrick King, Jr., now at John Marshall Middle School. He formerly attended Pacer Academy.

These teachers give up on kids, he added.

“Like some of them look at your history…they think you’re a bad, bad kid,” said the 15-year-old. “The next year, you’ve probably changed and you want to get down to business and they still look at you as a clown or troublemaker, and they treat you different from everybody else.”

But Patrick and the six other IPS students said they’ve had dedicated teachers, too. They agreed that the mayor’s tracking program might work if caring teachers were available at each grade to recognize individual needs and match needy students with the right programs.

Last April, the mayor told Y-Press that he planned to start the pilot in fall 2008, but it has since been delayed until the spring.

“It’s just taken longer than we anticipated to put the program together,” said Marcus Barlow, the mayor’s press secretary.

The pilot will begin in a couple schools and continue for one or two semesters. One school will be in IPS and another in a township district.

City officials can’t provide cost estimates for the project yet, Barlow said.

The United Way of Central Indiana will also be an important partner.

Jay Geshay, United Way’s senior vice president for community planning and strategic initiatives, noted that one United Way program that the mayor sees as a key part of his educational reforms is “ReadUP,” a tutoring program for fourth and fifth graders in 15 IPS schools to help kids raise their reading levels. After its first year, students showed tremendous improvement, Geshay said.

United Way is also working to implement a similar tutoring program in math with mayoral support.

“For its expansion, we will need to rely on corporate sponsorship for dollars as well as for volunteers because the ReadUP program puts one adult with one child at a table, reading back and forth to one another. So money is one piece of it, but volunteer time is another,” Geshay said.

Ballard said other government leaders will help promote this coalition between schools and nonprofits. "We've got a former lieutenant governor; we’ve got a former state representative; we’ve got a lot of people coming in to help with this program to put it together," he said. He also hopes to involve a U.S. senator.

Another mayoral educational reform would involve implementing a character education program for fifth-graders.

Kids would learn the difference between right and wrong and appropriate behavior to help keep them out of trouble, said Ballard. Teachers and parents used to teach these skills, but many don’t now.

The IPS students debated whether character education is necessary in schools.

Some believed such teaching should be left up to parents, but others said moms and dads have few chances to be with their kids.

“The parents are working all the time,” said Judge Hatchett, a ninth grader at Meridian Transition High School. “There’s nobody to tell them right from wrong. So there should be a program that teaches them morals. So if they don’t have anybody at home to talk to, they’ll have somebody at school or somewhere to talk to.”

Students suggested that character education is needed earlier than fifth grade. It should be for second or third graders instead. Several noted that they’d been in multiple fights by third grade. Another student said he started using illegal drugs by third grade.

And the IPS kids aren’t sure the mayor will get the buy-in he needs for any of these initiatives from students themselves.

"Some people just don't care,” said Patrick. “They, like, don't let it scare them. The teachers aren’t going to scare them, or their moms don't really care.,"

Several of the IPS students have been in tutoring programs. Sometimes they dropped out after a couple days because it seemed too hard. Other times they dropped out because they hated the subject. Some wished educators would have forced them to stay in the programs, but they know they can’t do that after school.

One of the students is motivated to go to after-school study sessions because the teacher hands out candy. And some of the other kids have even gone to tutoring programs because they were paid to do so.

Ballard insisted adamantly and loudly in his interview with Y-Press that public schools don’t need more funding. Too much is wasted, he said, pointing to administrator salaries and sports facilities.

“This is real money,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta pay up. And I’m here to tell you, there’s a lot of money in school systems.”

But the IPS students said they need more desks, overhead projectors, computers and books in their schools. Some don’t have gyms or lunch rooms at their schools, they said. Textbooks are often tattered with missing pages.

“We ain’t got nothing,” said Lionell King, 19, a senior at New Horizon Alternative School. “He (the mayor) don’t know what the reality is.”

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Nick Greven, 17.

REPORTERS: Aaron Johnson, 11; and Nimisha Kumar, 14.

A group of IPS students, all who’ve attended alternative schools because they had difficulty in regular schools, discussed the type of teachers who help them learn best.

A sampling of their comments:

“This teacher named Miss Frye, she is motivated. She helps you in class and out of class. She speaks to you and stuff. She tells you that ‘You can do this.’’’

-- Judge Hatchett, 16, 9th grade, Meridian Transition High School

“I’ve had a teacher named Miss McCray. She’s one of those teachers we should have more of. ’Cause if you’re down, if she thinks you’re having trouble with a subject or if she thinks you’re having trouble with this person or that person, she’s the one who sits down and talks to you about it.”

-- Patrick King, Jr., 15, 8th grade, formerly at Pacer Academy, now at John Marshall Middle School

“Miss McCray, she was our science teacher. She related her life to the subject so we can understand more.”

-- Jerel Wilhite, 13, 8th grade, formerly at Pacer Academy, now at Gambold Middle School

“This [teacher] he was, like, hands-on, with the kids. He really taught it right. He stayed after every Tuesday and Thursday just tutoring and stuff on his own.”

-- Kevin Shaw, 17, 10th grade, New Horizon Alternative School

“I had a teacher named Mrs. Jackson. She stayed after for a math program and tried to help students every day.”

-- Judge Hatchett, 16, 9th grade, Meridian Transition High School

“My favorite teacher works at 112. He teaches social studies. He was kind of mean, but he was my favorite teacher because he stayed on people who were slacking. He stayed on their case.”

-- Tiffany White, 16, 11th grade, Washington Mall School

Copyright 2008 Y-Press