State votes to close Gary's Dunbar-Pulaski Middle School

Board member Tony Walker, who represents Northwest Indiana, made the motion to close the school saying "it's the right thing to do for long-term austerity."

Walker said he wants the Gary Community School Corp. to cement a partnership with EdisonLearning Inc., the state-chosen operator of the Roosevelt College and Career Academy.

By next fall, Walker said Roosevelt should revert back to the Gary district's control, but run jointly with EdisonLearning. Walker said the 700 students who attend Dunbar-Pulaski can move to Roosevelt next year. No such agreement has been made yet, but both sides say they are willing to become partners.

Walker said Dunbar-Pulaski and Roosevelt are a mile apart and keeping both open doesn't make financial sense.

"I don't see any reason to stretch out limited monies," he said.

State school chief Glenda Ritz opposed the closing, telling the board it took a "bad vote."

Ritz's staff has been working with the school district at Dunbar-Pulaski for more than a year to turn the school around.

Gary Superintendent Cheryl Pruitt stood silently at podium while the board voted to close the school.

"We will survive," she said afterward.

Pruitt said she wasn't aware of how the process to close the school would take shape. "Probably, by the time I get back everyone in Gary will have heard," she said of the closing.

Pruitt had taken steps to turn the school around, bringing in a new principal this year and replacing 50 percent of the teachers.

The closing was one of the options for the state board under a state accountability law when a school posts a failing grade for six straight years. The board could have kept the school open under Pruitt's internal plan to transform it.

State Sen. Earline Rogers, a retired Gary teacher who helped craft the accountability law, urged the board to keep the school open. She called Pruitt's plan was a good one.

"The school corporation is still viable and it has teachers who want to teach."