Any plans to close two of Gary’s public middle schools are off — for now.
Bailly STEM Academy and Gary Middle School for the Visual and Performing Arts will remain open through this school year, as the district prepares to exit a yearslong state takeover and return to local control.
The Gary Community School Corporation’s appointed school board and incoming superintendent, who starts on July 1, will determine the future of the district’s last two middle schools.
The decision is a small victory for parents and community members, many of whom have passionately voiced their concerns about the closures since they were proposed last October. However, some residents remain on high alert about the long-term future of the schools. They say they’ve seen this dance before, and their wariness hasn’t gone away.
Vanessa Nobles, once a Bailly student herself, now drives to the same school to pick up her seventh-grade daughter. She was confused when she learned of the proposals early in the school year, and little has changed since then. She sees no need for any closures but is bracing for what she fears is inevitable.
“I want to say it’s heartbreaking, but we know it’s coming,” she said.
Listening to the community
The district’s emergency manager, Mike Raisor, had proposed closing both middle schools and adding sixth grade to elementary schools while incorporating seventh and eighth grade into West Side Leadership Academy, the district’s only high school. When he first introduced the closures in October, Raisor said it would save the district $4 million and prevent it from going financially underwater again.
Sheila Russell, whose daughter is a freshman at West Side Leadership Academy, believes decisions should be given at least 12 years to run their course before changes are made. Since she moved to Gary in 2013, Russell and her daughter have weathered several district moves, including other consolidations. She thinks it’s time for officials to give the schools room to stabilize.
“They always say, ‘We want what’s best for the children.’ Well, you need to define that … because what you feel is best, the next person may not,” she said.
As a middle school teacher herself, Russell feels it is necessary to have a designated space for preteens and early teens to belong to. If consolidation of middle and high school were to take place, she worries about inevitable mingling and how it could affect the children.
During last month’s board meeting, Raisor looked squarely at attendees and explained how leaving the decision up to the board and superintendent was a response to people’s concerns.
“We said we would listen to the community,” said Raisor, who is part of the Florida-based MGT Consulting Group. “We did listen to the community. The feedback was really clear: If a decision like this has to be made, we want it to be a decision made by the community, not made by MGT.”
MGT and Indiana’s Distressed Unit Appeal Board have managed Gary public schools since 2017 after the district fell into financial disrepair and was taken over by the state. Raisor’s meeting comments prompted applause from the crowd and gratitude from board members, though not everyone was assuaged.
“It’s just kicking the can down the road without addressing what the community really desires, and it’s an emphatic, ‘No,’” said Sidney Savage II, a parent of former Gary Middle School students.
Savage said he is extremely proud the district has reached financial solvency, but he does not like that closures have not been completely ruled out.
Raisor predicted that failing to close the schools within two years would plunge the district into a deficit or negative balance by 2028. But Savage isn’t convinced closures will guarantee a fiscally sound school district.
“I’m tired of seeing that over and over and over and over again — everything surrounding the dollar,” he said. “We look at our students like numbers, instead of actual people, when it comes to things like that.”
As the district’s focus shifts to the search for a superintendent — which is currently underway with opportunities for community feedback — Savage encouraged parents and residents to remain active in the district and continue to advocate for alternatives to middle school closures.
The pause on decisions about Bailly and Gary Middle has offered folks a moment to breathe, but Gary’s school board chairman, Michael Suggs, wants people to know that this doesn’t point to an “all-clear signal.”
“This is an opportunity to know that we are getting better, we’re doing better, but we have some work to do, and there’s probably going to be some tough decisions ahead,” Suggs said.
Russell’s 15-year-old daughter, Mikayla Russell, said hearing about the proposed closures last year made her feel “a little frustrated.” Transitioning from Gary Middle to West Side was exciting for her, and she thinks removing that would take away a formative adolescent experience.
If she were to speak to board members, Mikayla said she’d tell them closing middle schools would be a “very bad decision,” and she said her classmates agree.
“Some of them said if that happened, they would move.”