Greene Township residents want to secede from South Bend School Corporation

GREENE TOWNSHIP, Ind. -- Residents in Greene Township want to secede from South Bend Schools.

They met tonight to find out if people want this and if it’s even possible.

The members of the community that did attend the meeting unanimously agreed they want to secede from the South Bend City Schools.

Residents in attendance laughed when the question “is there anybody here who would want to stay in South Bend School Corporation?” was posed to them Wednesday evening.

The answer was clear; no residents at the meeting wanted to stay in the South Bend School District.

Residents have grown frustrated that the education at South Bend’s schools has declined significantly over the last 50 years.

They believe by joining the John Glenn Schools, their kids will get a better education.

Not to mention, it would help residents that worry about transporting their children to outside school districts.

“The advantage for us to withdraw from South Bend is we would have transportation for our children and they’ve already gone anyway,” said Sandra Ort, who is the Greene Township Trustee. “They’ve already gone anyway with the voucher system.”

As for the meeting, the general attitude was one of support.

“I was very pleased that it was pretty much unanimous that everybody wanted to support the move of moving forward and getting into the John Glenn School Districts,” said Jan Hooten, a community member.

Acording to Ort, because ‘Focus 2018’ was passed, the South Bend School District closed the Greene School.

The South Bend School District now has two years to decide whether they want to reopen the school at some point in that time frame, if they want to sell the property, or if they want to lease it to a charter school for a fee of $1 dollar per year.

“I want to keep this a public school. That is my main objective, I want our kids to stay in a public school,” said Ort in an emotional way.

Peter Agostino, the Greene Board’s lawyer, was also present at the meeting Wednesday evening and gave a presentation on what seceding from South Bend’s schools would look like.

Agostino says the tentative timeline to have the Greene School reopened is 2 years, which he says is an aggressive goal. The full presentation Agostino gave is attached below.