Our first column of the New Year deals with leftover issues that will be major issues in 2014.
Let’s start with that proposed combined jail and courthouse complex being pushed by the administration of Mayor Greg Ballard and Sheriff John Layton. Seems they want to place the project in the worst possible location any responsible Indianapolis leader could propose.
Late last week, a slew of documents were posted on the city’s website to buttress the argument why Indy needs a new justice center.
Among the documents was a feasibility study by the private real-estate company CBRE, which evaluated 14 different locations within Indianapolis-Marion County as possible justice center locations.
Only one location is near downtown – the old Chevrolet Truck and Bus Plant at White River, Washington and Morris streets. Other locations include the Lafayette Square area, the old Western Electric Plant, Eastgate Mall and Ford plants along Shadeland Avenue. Even the old Citizens Gas Coke facility on Southeastern and Rural is considered.
But CBRE recommended the airport location.
When I first learned that the justice center project might be at the airport, I was led to believe that it would be placed where the old airport terminal was – High School Road at the Sam Jones Expressway.
Even though I strongly oppose an airport justice center location, at least the old terminal area was familiar to many.
But CBRE’s recommendation is to place the justice center on an alleged 35-acre site at the airport’s northwest corner where Perimeter Road turns south from the east. Here’s the kicker – this site is 3 to 5 blocks east of the Marion-Hendricks counties line.
Mayor Ballard (and Sheriff Layton) want to put Marion County’s combined adult jail, juvenile jail, community corrections, probation and the criminal courts as far away from Marion County residents as possible.
According to MapQuest, the new justice center would be 4.7 miles from Plainfield, 6.75 miles from Avon, 10.8 miles from Brownsburg.
Conversely, it would be 9.56 miles from the City-County Building; 16.3 miles from the current Juvenile Center location; 12.6 miles from 56th Street and Georgetown Road; 16.7 miles from Stop 11 Road and U.S. 31 South; 17.5 miles from Post Road and Washington Street; 18.4 miles from 79th Street and Ditch Road; 23 miles from 42nd street and Post Road.
Why is Indianapolis hell-bent on building such a critical facility closer to the next county and so far away from those the facility’s supposed to serve?
If people had to use public transportation to get to this new justice center, even assuming an improved IndyGo bus system, it would take longer for most city-county residents to get to the justice center, than it takes to ride MegaBus to Cincinnati or Louisville.
I might be able to accept the county jail at the outskirts of Hendricks County. But placing Marion County’s Criminal Courts and the infrastructure that supports it, on Marion County’s outskirts is absurd!
Under this scheme, the majority of Indianapolis’ population would live more than 12 miles from the justice center. Now virtually the entire city-county lives within that range.
In many cities, the county jail isn’t located next to the courts complex.
In other cities, like Chicago, jails and a court complex are together, not downtown, but not in the farthest reaches of the city-county.
One other aspect of this plan troubles.
Do you think the Ballard administration would be so set in moving Indianapolis’ criminal justice system to Indy’s farthest extremity if the majority of the defendants and victims were white?
What I’m hearing
in the streets
about A-F school grades after ISTEP
Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett’s vaunted A-F system for grading and evaluating Indiana’s schools got its second big test in 2013. Like 2012’s controversial grades, Bennett’s system again fell flat on its face.
In 2011, Bennett and his cronies, supported by the school reform crowd, pushed through an evaluation system for public and accredited private schools that would emulate A-F grades so that the community could, in Bennett’s and school reformers’ words, honestly evaluate how schools were performing.
Problem was Bennett and his staff created a system so complex and complicated that Harvard (or Purdue Ph.D.s), not to mention ordinary Hoosiers, couldn’t comprehend or explain it.
The 2013 ISTEP fiasco helped contribute to the 2013 A-F grades, released just before Christmas, being a big hot mess!
Statewide, more Indiana schools received As and less Fs in 2013 than in 2012. In Indianapolis-Marion County, the picture was a little different.
Indianapolis’ 11 public school districts saw a sharp increase in schools receiving a “B” grade – up 13 schools from 2012. The number of “A” schools declined by one.
Schools graded “D” fell by five; schools graded “F” declined by eight.
Of Indianapolis’ 185 public traditional public schools, 22.7 percent got “A”; 21.6 percent got “B”; 22.7 percent “C,” 17.8 percent “D” and 15.1 percent were “F.”
After the results were released, school reform groups were oddly silent. So was the charter school industry because Bennett’s Frankenstein monster grading system evaluated charters more harshly than expected.
StateImpact Indiana, the public broadcasting journalism consortium, reported charters statewide performed below private and traditional public schools.
Only 21 percent of charters received “A,” compared with 44.2 percent of all public schools and 51.6 percent of private schools.
Indianapolis’ charters had an unstellar performance based on Bennett’s A-F system.
Ball State’s six Indianapolis charters performed abysmally, with one school receiving a “C,” three receiving “D” and two getting “F.”
Mayor charter schools, had six schools earning “A,” (31.6 percent), none had “B,” five “C” (26.3 percent), and four each earning “D” and “F” (21.1 percent each).
In 2014, new Superintendent Glenda Ritz, the State Board of Education, under pressure from the Legislature, will supposedly unveil a more coherent evaluation system for schools.
Let’s hope so. Because Bennett’s failed system absurdly labeled one of Indiana’s most expensive high schools with a 100 percent graduation rate of top notch students (Park-Tudor) equal in quality to an inner city high school with a 61 percent graduation rate (Arsenal Tech). It strains credibility that Christel House charter school has the same lack of educational quality as the state’s five takeover schools.
Indiana’s got to do better.
See ‘ya next week.
Email comments to acbrown@aol.com.
