Denell Howard is outraged by the Indianapolis Public School (IPS) board’s latest decision involving the closing of Shortridge Magnet High School for Law and Public Policy. Instead of complaining, he is putting his anger into action.
“I am planning a peaceful protest this Friday morning at 6 a.m.,” said Howard. “Our plan is to band together, arm in arm around the building and block access to every entrance.”
Howard is neither a Shortridge alum nor does his children attend the school. Despite this, he quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s thoughts on justice as his driving force behind this effort.
“A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, right? The problem I have with people is that we’ve gotten out of our community concept and now it’s just, ‘well it doesn’t affect my house,’” he said. “If they can displace kids at Shortridge, what stops them from doing it somewhere else?”
This week, the IPS board voted to move about 300 Shortridge students to Arsenal Technical High School to make room for 164 International Baccalaureate students from Gambold Prep High School. The plan passed with a 4 to 1 vote. Board member Samantha Adair-White was the only member to oppose.
“The school board should be ashamed,” Howard said of their nearly unanimous decision. “We can’t just sit around and allow them to just take kids and move them because other kids, parents or those with money want the facility.”
As reported by Chalkbeat Indiana, about 75 students, parents, and members of the community signed up to speak at the recent school board meeting. Several of them shared they felt the decision was racially motivated and would primarily benefit affluent white families. Some believe IPS superintendent Dr. Lewis Ferebee didn’t give any credence to those concerns.
“It is important that we not embed or insert the issue of race or equity into this conversation,” he said. “This is a conversation about access and also ensuring a rigorous option for our students.”
“To bring those people in and have them plead and cry and beg for three hours is making a mockery of the intelligence of those people,” added Howard on the meeting. “(School board members) knew they were already going to vote that way, they just wanted to make a mockery of these people’s pain.”
Howard said if the current decision is not reversed, he is prepared to do more peaceful demonstrating, and is willing to be arrested for doing so.
“When you think of the history of a school like Shortridge and what it was designed to be for the community it serves, at some point we have to stop talking and start doing,” he said.
