What’s next for South Bend Schools’ proposed career center?
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In the spring of 2020, voters in South Bend passed a $220 million property tax referendum to fund a series of facilities upgrades and teacher raises for the South Bend Community School Corp.
Included in the school district’s promise for referendum spending was the construction of a career center that would offer technical and career-focused courses to high school students around Michiana.
More than four years later, the district has yet to even finalize a site for the center as delays in planning, opposition from some board members and failed lease negotiations with the owner of the Studebaker building, Kevin Smith, leave the prospect of a center in doubt.
St. Joseph County is the largest county in Indiana without a designated career center, and employers are anxiously watching as the school board votes on the district’s latest proposal to put the career center in Coquillard Elementary School on the west side of South Bend next week.
“I think the business community…is disappointed to hear several school board members questioning the validity of such a center, and whether we need one or not,” South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Jeff Rea said. “That’s been disappointing after all the leg work and ground work we’ve done to show the need.”
In the spring, the district projected $5 million in funding from the city of South Bend for the Studebaker site. The district’s presentations on the Coquillard site now show only $2 million in municipal commitments.
School board President Stuart Greene did not respond to a phone call from Inside INdiana Business.
Fellow board member John Anella, who was board president at the time of the referendum, said the lack of progress is “frustrating.”
“Is where we are ideal? Probably not. But is anything ever ideal? You have to weigh the pros and the cons and what you think is the best thing for the community,” Anella said.
Failed negotiations
Since 2020, the district has considered multiple different sites. This summer, the district was on the verge of signing a lease for a 53,000 square feet space in the Studebaker Building near downtown South Bend. The district had budgeted nearly $13 million and was set to sign a 20-year lease.
Assistant Superintendent of College and Workforce Readiness Chad Addie said disagreements over who would be responsible for renovation work was ultimately where the district and Smith couldn’t come to terms.
“There were questions relative to funding that the district and leadership at Studebaker were not able to come to an agreement on who would be responsible for different portions of the buildout. My understanding is that’s where the lease agreement was stalled,” Addie said.
But when asked by Inside INdiana Business why negotiations failed, Smith cited a divergence in vision between himself, the district, and in a surprise turn of events, the Career Academy Network of Public Schools. This is the first time the charter school has been mentioned in relation to the Career Center.
“[The district is] trying to use a model that is broken; they’re trying to hold to a traditional model that, if they’re rational, doesn’t work. Then you have the charter schools that want to be revolutionary…but if a charter school just usurps or pulls all the people that want to change away from this system, you have some really unusual dynamics,” Smith said. “I thought I could provide that metamorphic change, and I was wrong. I was wrong because they were too dynamically opposed, and I stood in the middle and I got shot by both of them.”
Smith speaks about the impasse he said happened between the South Bend Community School Corporation and Career Academy Network of Public Schools. He also restates his commitment to the community.
Smith buttressed his stance by pointing to the fact that more than 40% of South Bend students, according to an investigation from Indiana Public Media, were opting to enroll in private schools or attend other districts, under Indiana’s school choice mandate.
An advocate of metamorphic change, Smith, who is involved in several capacities with higher institutions across the state, said he’s still hopeful for a future collaboration, especially as generative AI continues to push the needle on what education can look like in the coming years.
“Education is no longer going to be constrained in a building or a school system. I can learn more from my iOS device than I did at Notre Dame in graduate school,” Smith said. “Wherever I can jump in and help, I will, because it’s not about an institution, it’s not about a methodology. It’s about the next generation, it’s about the kids, it’s about our community, and I’ll never walk away from our community.”
Addie said students at Career Academy would have been free to send their students to the South Bend Schools’ Career Center for classes, but he said the district never discussed a formal partnership with the charter network about the operation of the center itself.
South Bend school board member Kate Lee said she served on the planning committee for the center and never heard Smith mention any desire for the charter network’s involvement with the Career Center.
Larry Garatoni, founder of the charter network, said while he originated the idea for a “county-wide” career academy, there was never a point where either schools were working together to achieve it.
Garatoni provides insight into his supposed involvement
“There are some courses that don’t have enough students interested in them for any one school to offer the course,” Garatoni said. “The thought was, let’s have this central location and we’ll offer these courses that the other schools can’t afford to or there’s not enough demand in one school, and then we can all work together and provide skills training for the employers in our area.”
As far as he knows, Garatoni, who is friends with Smith, said that while he does not have all the details, at some point, the two parties, South Bend Schools and Smith, figured out the lease agreement would not materialize and threw in the towel.
“The intent was for South Bend Schools to open a career center and then invite all these other students to come in there,” Garatoni continued. “There really was not a partnership in the true sense of a partnership.”
West Side Solution?
When it was clear the Studebaker building was no longer an option, the district turned its attention to Coquillard Elementary School, where leaders are now proposing a $10.5 million build out for the Career Center.
Addie highlighted Coquillard’s proximity to the western edge of the county—where Amazon Web Services and General Motors are building multibillion-dollar facilities. The move would mean current students at Coquillard would have to change schools, but it would let the district maintain ownership of Coquillard in the face of Indiana’s $1 law.
The district projects around 500 students would take courses at the center in its first year. A key success metric would be how many students from outside the school district attend classes once opened.
Anella said he has concerns about the Coquillard site being able to draw students from Penn-Harris-Madison and Mishawaka, who are about as far from the Elkhart Career Center. But, he added that the western location might draw more students from the New Prairie United School Corp.
From his conversations, Rea said business owners are mostly concerned about the programs the center offers, not so much where it is located.
“I think a lot of it depends on what gets built,” Rea said. “If it has the right course offerings, if it has the latest state-of-the-art equipment, people will be willing to go a little bit further.”
Garatoni said the Coquillard location is “not ideal.” Adding that the reason the Studebaker building would have been a perfect location was because of its equidistance to many of the other school districts that South Bend Schools hopes to attract.
But like Rea, he believes it comes down to two things.
“To some extent, we have career centers in both of our high schools already. We have a very robust career and technical education,” Garatoni said. “But if they offer the right courses at the right price, we will certainly consider sending out kids there.”
Renaissance District Progress
Meanwhile, Smith, who is also the man behind the Renaissance District, said that work on the project was progressing “quite well.” Highlighting the sale of the Union Station data center, Smith added that the district—in which the Studebaker building is located—is expected to see up to $750 million in new investment.
“I recently sold my data center to allow a bigger national data center to grow it, because I was kind of a constraining factor. Sometimes to move things forward, you have to step back and let others come in,” he said. “So they’re going to spend another $40 million to enhance the connectivity, integrate what AWS and Microsoft are doing.”
Smith bought Union Station in 1979 after he got wind of the city’s plan to demolish the abandoned train station, and reimagined the space as a data center. More than four decades later, the city has bought the station back from Smith, in hopes of attracting Amtrak back downtown. Already, Smith is on to his next project.
“I’m going to close on the Studebaker Admin Building, because there’s a lot of historical value there. You don’t have to lose your past to find your way forward,” Smith said. “I’ve been able to work efficiently and well with the city to make that arrangement occur. So I think we’re moving nicely ahead.”