Community education advocates gathered Saturday to discuss the Purdue Polytechnic Charter High School coming to South Bend.
Purdue was granted a charter by the state to open a Purdue Polytechnic charter high school in South Bend. There are two Purdue Polytechnic High Schools operating in Indianapolis.
What’s up for debate is whether or not Purdue will partner with South Bend Community Schools to make the charter an innovation school that would operate within Washington High School as a STEM focused program.
An innovation school invloves the charter having an contractual agreement with the public district to provide some services (usually transportation, extra-curriculars, and the like) in exchange the school district can count charter students in their enrollment and take credit, or blame, for their standardized test scores.
Public education advocates stated many reasons to be against the partnership from the STEM magnet program that’s already at Riley High School to the absence of cultural competency training in the plan the charter provided to the state.
Dalila Huerta is SBCSC parent, education advocate and restorative justice educator.
“I can not stress this enough both as an educator and as a woman of color, recruiting students for the mere sake of diversity does not lead to equitable outcomes on its own.”
SBCSC Superintendent Todd Cummings says the choice is to work with the charter or against it.
“Will we compete with Purdue Polytechnic or will we partner with them?”
There are two community outreach meetings about the potential partnership scheduled for January 22nd. One begins at 10 a.m. at the South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, the second is at 6 p.m. at Washington High School.