Eugene White

Superintendent of the Indianapolis Public Schools

"Manual High School is a white-majority high school, but even there, because of the socio-economic impacts on these young people, they are dropping out of school in big numbers. We have found it to be so that minorities, regardless of which race, tend to have more dropouts. That’s just a fact that we’re working with, and that may not be unique to IPS. But we have seen that at IPS. Now, what that means is we have to get better communication, better support and more intervention to those minority groups that are in those schools. For instance, Arlington High School is going to be a community high school starting next year. Arlington has to know that and go out of its way to keep open communication with their minority white students to ensure that they are satisfied, they are pleased, they are involved. And so that’s what it means for us. Once you have the data, you have to do something about it, and so we need to intervene and make sure that those parents are involved, those parents understand what’s going on and that they are an active part of the school because, if they are an active part of the school, chances are their students are going to be doing OK."