Tonight I had the opportunity to speak at the first meeting of the newly formed ILEA, an appointed body chaired by the mayor to provide recommendations re: transportation and school buildings. Here are my comments in their entirety.
Good evening, members of the ILEA, my name is Dr. Gayle Cosby. I am honored to serve alongside six other brilliantly capable women elected by our respective communities to represent Indianapolis Public Schools. However, this evening I ask you to hear me as an individual. An educator, a mother, and a taxpaying lifelong resident of Indianapolis.
I want to impress upon you the weight, the importance, and the significance that your decision making process will impart on the educational landscape of Indianapolis. This appointed body presides over a delicate fulcrum point in our city’s history. Your decisions hang in the balance of a history marred by segregationist practices, willful ignorance, and intentional disinvestment.
The advent of school choice, marketed as a solution to this dark history, has seemingly deepened systemic inequity. The educational landscape is deeply scarred; indelibly marked by years of gerrymandered boundaries and PAC funding, undergirded by an insatiable thirst of who-gets-what and who-goes-where. We have the opportunity here to remedy, to refocus our lens in doing this work.
In the face of what has become an educational marketplace overrun by the spirit of competition, I ask that you collectively seek clarity on the precise needs of the children served so that we can put an end to this environment of competition, once and for all…because in an environment of competition, there are inevitably winners and losers. And none of the children of Indianapolis deserve to lose. Not a single one.
As your work commences behind closed doors, I implore you to engage in this important work in the spirit of healing the deep scars that our communities, and our children have had to endure. Set us forth on a new chapter, hallmarked not by the bleeding out of competition and hollow partnership, but rather a determined intentionality on resourcing all of our schools, and all of our public school students, in the spirit of love and equitable distribution of resources that make ALL of our children winners.
The community is waiting and watching. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to you for your service.
Thank you.