Despite outcry from teachers and parents, the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) board approved a pay increase and contract extension for Superintendent Lewis Ferebee.
Under the new agreement, Ferebee’s total potential compensation increased by about $64,000, for a total of $287,000. The superintendent’s term with IPS was also extended to 2019.
At the meeting where the measure was passed, Board President Mary Ann Sullivan praised Ferebee’s work and reiterated the contract changes are nothing out of the ordinary.
“(The new contract) offers compensation that is in line with past practice and other local agreements,” she said.
The meeting notes posted on the IPS board’s website detail further the reasoning behind the pay bump, noting first the rate of Ferebee’s raise (6 percent) was comparable to the recent teacher pay raises. The document goes on to list the completion of teacher salary negotiations as one of several accomplishments the district has seen from Ferebee.
Other listed accomplishments made under Ferebee’s tenure include improvement in state accountability grades; revamping the schools’ meal programs; reducing the number of student suspensions, expulsions and arrests; expanding preschool availability; increasing the graduation rate; and encouraging “legislation allowing the creation of innovative solutions for IPS’ chronically low-performing schools.”
However, comments from IPS teachers and parents indicate the board’s accolades for Ferebee have been misguided.
Andrew Polley, a teacher at Arsenal Technical High School, spoke publicly at the board meeting in opposition to Ferebee’s new contract terms.
“Teachers are leaving IPS like rats from a sinking ship,” Polley said. “Meanwhile, the rats that chewed a hole in the boat to begin with are congratulating each other and voting to give the biggest rat of all enough cheese to feed all of us.”
Polley acknowledged teachers had received pay bumps after a stretch of frozen salaries, but he said the raises weren’t even enough to cover the cost of living increases that occurred during the freeze.
Educator Pam Griffin, who has been with the district for 20 years, told the board at the meeting her raise amounted to 52 cents per hour.
Polley continued: “In short, we are disrespected, underpaid, overworked labor in an environment that is unsafe, and charged to teach kids that are not invested in their own education, due in large part to the incredible amount of disregard the central administration has for them…
“You have forsaken us, the students, teachers and community of IPS. Shame on the board for retaining this man. Shame on the board for throwing money into an inferno. And shame on the superintendent if he has the gall to accept it when so much real good could be done with it.”
Merry Juerling, who has an eighth-grader in IPS, said she thinks the district’s funds could be better spent elsewhere.
“I’m concerned that the district is spending more of taxpayers’ money on highly compensated employees when we haven’t paid our children’s teachers equitable wages,” she said. “And we’ve got classrooms, even in the magnet programs, of 30-plus kids…
“When the PTA has to donate toilet paper, copy paper and the basic needs of schools, and we’re asked to raise money for computer infrastructure for standardized testing, I’ve got to object to that.”
Juerling said she sat on a parent engagement committee, and she noted the board was difficult to work with. The strategies and ideas proposed by the committee had to be in line with the board’s beliefs, which Juerling said were problematic.
In one case, she said, the committee submitted a strategy to the board and “the board did prepare a statement back to the committee; the bottom line just told us to shut up and it wasn’t up for debate.”
Juerling said the district is missing an opportunity to confront issues that truly matter.
“None of the things that truly affect academic performance of students are being addressed — poverty, disability status, classroom size, competitive wages for teachers,” she said. “Yet we’re seeing huge fat-cat salaries for the management of IPS.”
Meanwhile, Juerling said parents are being tasked with raising money for sports and recess equipment, and art and music programs have been cut.
“I would like to see Dr. Ferebee take a stand and say, ‘Thank you very much, but you all need to take this money back,’ and put it into reducing classroom sizes or funding music programs or something else we all know truly affects the academic performance of students,” she said.
Tracy Heaton, who has two children enrolled in IPS — one in sixth grade, one in eighth grade — cited the cuts to arts programs as one reason she’s pulling her children out of the district.
“We are leaving IPS to go to a district where, in my kids’ school, my kids have access to music programs and theater programs, arts programs and sports programming that they do not have now,” she said.
Heaton said she did not want to share the name of the school her children currently attend, because she fears repercussions against the school.
“I want to leave my school out of it, because we’re already getting squeezed. There is that kind of pettiness in the district,” she said.
Heaton said from the start of Ferebee’s tenure, she’s had the perception that the superintendent doesn’t have the students’ best interests in mind. She mentioned a meeting the PTA had with Ferebee at the beginning of his tenure as a defining moment in creating that perception, one anecdote that speaks to the bigger picture. Heaton’s two children were at the meeting, but Ferebee didn’t acknowledge them.
“I can tell you that, had that been (previous superintendent) Dr. (Eugene) White, he would have made a point to say something to them. Dr. Ferebee ignored my kids. That image has stuck in my mind for his entire administration … My little brown children don’t matter to him.”
As for Ferebee’s raise, Heaton’s opinion falls in line with Polley’s and Juerling’s: the money could have been better spent elsewhere.
“I think it is unconscionable that he got a raise when staff morale is so low in IPS, when we have schools imploding as we speak … we have the wholesale giving off IPS schools to for-profit charter operations, and I find it, frankly, sinful to make money off of poor children.”
Heaton said she is looking forward to the opportunities her children will have at their new school district, but she is sickened by the realization that many IPS families don’t have the option to seek a better situation.
“My stomach hurts for the parents who don’t have those choices. It really hurts my soul that we’re just giving up on our kids like this.”
