IPS chief infusing hope where most see despair

Eugene G. White has already done what many skeptics surely considered impossible: He has much of the city excited about the future of Indianapolis Public Schools.

With that accomplishment, the new IPS superintendent has set expectations for himself at a daunting level. He is promising to deliver "one of the best, or the best, urban school district in the country in five years." He insists that "you have to stop giving in to this idea that if it's urban, it has to be deficient."

He wants to bridge one of the cruelest gaps in America -- the education gap between students in cities and those in the suburbs. And there is a sincerity in the way he makes his case that has much of the city buying in.

"We have to turn things around right away," he said. "They didn't bring me in to be safe. They brought me in to be a change maker."

So he has tossed out troublemaking students and offered ambitious plans for historic schools Crispus Attucks and Shortridge. He's demanded more from all, from teachers to students to janitors.

White has been the city's top newsmaker since becoming superintendent of the state's largest school system July 1. He seems to have commandeered space on the front page.

Amid all this, talking with the 57-year-old former Washington Township Schools superintendent seemed like a good way to spend a recent morning. In his seventh-floor office Downtown, White gave me an inspired one-hour lecture that left no doubt why so many people are so excited about him.

He doesn't complain about the competition for good students coming from the mayor's growing charter schools network. He considers those schools a challenge. He likes a challenge.

"We can't sit back and maintain status quo because we're in an era of choice," he said. But "I don't think anyone, any group, can organize a school better than I can. We can do it better than anyone else, so why don't we?"

That question drives him. Why can't things be done better?

He envisions a more challenging curriculum, while understanding the need to support struggling kids. He is planning a program to connect with new IPS parents from the day their children are born.

That's particularly crucial in a district where so many kindergartners arrive already trailing children in suburban districts.

"When the children reach 4 or 5, not only do we want them connected to the school district, we also want the parent connected," he said. "We're going to grow and raise our own involved parents."

White talks like a motivational speaker, with a dose of Dr. Phil's "get real" attitude. Much of what he says is not new. But perhaps it connects because White, raised in Alabama poverty by a young, single mother, understands the life of many IPS students. He's been there. And he credits his good life to a good education.

That's why he is at IPS, facing the challenge of his career, when he could be easing toward retirement. He wants to work with "young people that are like me."

"If there has ever been a group whose education we should value," he said, "it's poor students who have no other future than the one we help them make."