Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 22

Mark Ervin, told me. " If you have a chance to make a
difference, you take it. You don't have that many chances. "
Brittany Bales, the special-ed teacher, had taken
her young children out of the Muncie schools but
brought them back. " It's a mirage that it's better somewhere
else, " she said. " It's more diverse and interesting
within MCS. "
The turnover happened four years ago. This year,
Mearns gave the Ball State board an update on the experiment:
Enrollment is stabilized. Finances are dramatically
better. Teacher pay is up by nearly 40 percent.
Teacher retention has improved from 67 percent to nearly
90 percent. There's still a long way to go, as Mearns
and others emphasize. But the changes have been in the
right direction.
After Mearns's presentation, the board approved his
proposal to reappoint the community school board members
whose terms were expiring. " If you look at what we've
done here, it's an extraordinary connection between university
and city-the city council, businesses, not-forprofits,
and all others, " one board member said. " I think
with Ball State stepping up to take the lead in this case,
it's shown how we in Muncie can be an example of working
together. "
As far as I can tell, Ball State's commitment to Muncie
schools has never been featured in the national news.
The education press is the only place it seems to have
been mentioned at all. A billion stories about " polarization
in the heartland " ; a million on the plight of public
schools. Few or none about a dramatic and creative attempt
at reform.
Ball State has other community projects. One is the
development of a nearby struggling area called " the Village. "
This follows a pattern seen in many college towns:
using the economic leverage of a college to begin the
process of reclaiming left-behind districts. Obviously, it
could bring risks of gentrification and related ills. Those
are genuine problems, but they're better problems to deal
with than those of decline.
There is also a region-wide consciousness to Ball
State's plans. The higher ed business is going through
profound economic dislocation. Some of the most vulnerable
institutions are the small private colleges that do
not have the brand name of Oberlin or Amherst. Many
are across the Midwest, including in Indiana. Mearns believes
that Ball State can extend its " college town " alliance
to include the biggest research universities in the
area, which means Indiana University and Purdue; the
community colleges, which across Indiana are all called
Ivy Tech; and a number of the endangered smaller private
colleges.
" In a way, we're competing for students, " Mearns said
of these institutions. " But in a bigger sense, we can all
help one another, and the state. "
22 September/October 2022
5) A trend, becoming a movement
This is one story about one institution, in one community,
that has plenty of work ahead. I can't say that it yet represents
a movement. There are too many wealthy colleges
that try to wall themselves off from their communities.
But colleges' commitment to their communities could become
one more way we assess them. And it should.
Some examples we've learned about firsthand, for
upcoming reports:
* In Watertown, South Dakota, the Lake Area Technical
Institute's student body is mainly first-generation college
students-virtually all of whom are employed after
graduation at wages far above the national median.
* In Waterville, Maine, Colby College was considering
moving out of town a century ago, probably to Augusta,
to expand beyond its cramped location between the
railroad tracks and the Kennebec River. Citizens of Waterville
somehow raised $100,000-a fortune in those
days-for a new plot of land for the college, where it has
been based ever since. Now Waterville has struggled as
mills have closed and jobs have disappeared-and the college
is investing in the community's recovery. " When the
chips were down, the community really came through for
the college, " Colby's current president, David Greene, told
me. " For us, this is a moral obligation and a sense of our
future. You're in partnership with your community, and
you need to be there in bad times as well as good. "
* In Dayton, Ohio, one of the nation's oldest community
colleges, Sinclair, and the Catholic-run University of
Dayton have pooled their efforts to create jobs in an area
where factories have closed, and to revive a long-struggling
downtown. " Our communities need institutions
that are anchor institutions, " Eric Spina, the president of
the University of Dayton, told me recently. " These colleges
are some of the few institutions left standing that care
about place, that care about home. " In upcoming reports
we'll hear more from him, and many others like him.
6) We fly.
America's oldest college has the motto " Veritas, " for truth.
Its second-oldest Ivy has the motto " Lux et Veritas, " light
and truth. I'm in favor of both ideals.
But at this moment, I welcome colleges whose motto
could be " Communitas. " Or, since some schools already
have that motto, I'll loosely mistranslate it:
Together, we fly.
James Fallows began his magazine career at the Washington
Monthly in the 1970s, later serving as editor of U.S. News & World
Report and as a White House speechwriter. He has written 12
books, the most recent being Our Towns, coauthored with his wife,
Deborah Fallows, which was a national best-seller and the basis of
a 2021 HBO documentary.
Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2022
