BEDFORD, Ind. — Fraud and unethical practices are just two of the accusations against North Lawrence Community Schools in Bedford.
Over 30 teachers have resigned from North Lawrence Schools, and more parents continue to pull their kids from the district.
It all began last year, when the school board voted to consolidate 5 schools down to 3 schools. Superintendent Ty Mungle tells WISH-TV that one of the biggest reasons behind the vote was bad finances. He says the district had a deficit of over 1-million dollars and on “the verge of a state takeover.”
“We are a district that the target is to spend 15% of our funds from the Education Fund. In operations. We were spending over 20%,” Mungle tells WISH-TV.
Superintendent Mungle also claims that low capacity was another reason behind the vote. But many former staff and parents say that the numbers don’t add up, and the district is being intentionally misleading.
Eric Johnson is a parent who recently pulled his children from North Lawrence Schools.
“Numbers weren’t adding up. They were saying they didn’t have the money to run all these outlying schools,” Johnson continues, “the same year after they shut down the schools, they were working on taking out bonds to put in a 1.2-million dollar turf football field.”
JoAnna Hackney resigned from Bedford Middle School after 17-years. She tells WISH-TV that she looked at the data herself, and things didn’t make sense.
She shared documents with WISH-TV, showing data points on capacity and enrollment.
“I started looking into the data, and I found that the data that had been presented to the visionary committee and to the school board was misleading data,” Hackney explains to WISH-TV.
“It [the data] was indicating operation capacities at significantly lower percentages than what were true,” Hackney tells WISH-TV.
Hackney showed WISH-TV’s I-Team 8 documents that explain student enrollment. According to the documents, with 621 kids and 20 kids per class, the capacity would be just over 73%. But she says if the data was taken from 30 kids per class, the capacity drops to below 50%.
Hackney explains, “First, it suggests each class size being 30, which is not appropriate for middle level education. Additionally, it suggests a teacher in every classroom at every moment, which is not something that in middle school happens. It just was not possible to have that many students.”
Hackney says it’s time to clear up the confusion and misinformation, and it’s time for more school officials to stand up for kids.
“They [students] are worth standing up for,” she tells WISH-TV, “and maybe losing a position that you’ve had for years, in order to do what’s right for them.”
