Searching for Hope: Life at a Failing School in the Heart of America

13. We Just Couldn't Get Anything Started

+ + + 13 WE JUST COULDN’T GET ANYTHING STARTED. The leaves were falling, and the Indiana weather was turning colder as early November arrived. Manual had settled into its routines, both good and bad, and teachers and students were already looking forward to the winter break that was seven weeks away. The school had spent the year under a microscope. The district was watching it closely. Superintendent White spent many Monday mornings questioning Manual leaders about something he’d read in the paper, something that bothered him or, occasionally, even something that pleased him. But the close examination of the school was not due solely to the weekly front-page columns I was writing. White had long had deep concerns about the indifference that plagued the school and was pondering big shake-ups. Over at the statehouse, meanwhile, the state’s new superintendent of education had ordered the deepest look the state had ever taken at the school. It all resulted in November being a month of big changes at Manual with warnings of even bigger changes to come. Early one Wednesday, Principal Grismore sat in his sprawling suburban home. He was eating a bowl of Cheerios and reading that morning’s edition 132 searching for hope of the Indianapolis Star. He had breezed through the front page and metro section on his way to the sports section. The city was in full swoon over the Indianapolis Colts, who had won their eighth consecutive game the previous Sunday and were headed toward an epic showdown against the New England Patriots the following week. The city’s rabid football fans were starting to talk aboutthepossibilityofanundefeatedseasonandanothertriptotheSuperBowl. But Grismore’s calm morning slammed to a halt when he turned from the front page of the sports section and came across a short story about White’s decision to eliminate football programs at three Indianapolis high schools. The headline didn’t specify which schools were losing their teams, and Grismore hadn’t received a courtesy call from the district boss, but he had no doubt he would see his school on the list. The team hadn’t won a game all season, hadn’t been able to field a full roster, and White had come into the job five years earlier with a promise to do whatever it took to restore his district’s once-strong tradition of stellar athletic programs. He was tired of programs that always lost. Grismore dug into the story, and there it was. Manual was one of the teams on the list. A football program with nearly a century-long tradition was history and had already played its final game. He knew White well enough to know that this decision would be final, regardless of complaints, protests, or rallies in favor of the Redskins. Grismore was melancholy in his office later that morning, stung by the idea thatasportsreporterhadgottenthenewsoutofWhitebeforehehad.Evennow, as teachers and students began asking about the news, he didn’t have much to tell them. All he knew was that a school that was already missing many of the basic elements of American high school life was now losing another. “We’re trying to build extracurricular programs,” he said. “We really are. But here we are now, losing a major piece of that.” He wasn’t in much of a mood to talk. “I’m surprised,”hesaid.“I’mdisappointed.ButIknew[White]waslookingintothis.” Thehardheadedsuperintendenthadmadethatclearmanytimes,includingtwo months earlier when he’d spoken to Manual’s students in the auditorium. Still, the reality of the loss stung, and it sent another message to the school that it was second-rate. How could a public high school not have a football team? This wasn’t math, or English, or science, or any of the classes that were unquestionably more important to the future of Manual’s students than football. But this was nonetheless a big loss. In a building filled with apathy and few activities that pulled students in, this would only add to the problem. White’s argument was solid in some ways. He said it wasn’t safe to have students forced to play every minute of every game because the rosters were so We just couldn’t get anything started. 133 thin. He said having teams that lost all or most of their games, and that were routinely destroyed by schools from more affluent districts, sent an awful message to the student population. He said...