The superintendent of Muncie Community Schools gave his third “State of the Schools” address to community business leaders today.  As IPR’s Stephanie Wiechmann reports, the speech is intended to highlight the positives of a district that’s now known statewide for being heavily in debt.

Muncie Community Schools Superintendent Steven Baule shared essentially an hour of positive public relations for the financially impaired district.  And he hinted that positivity is needed.

“Our enrollment projections have been going down, you know, projected to go down since 2010.  You know, some of our enrollment loss this year is just through all of the drama that’s happening with the Muncie Community Schools.”

And there are positives to report.  The number of students taking dual credit classes and earing college credits while in high school is up.  School discipline incidents are down.  Partnerships for services with community organizations are up.  MCS has added programs, like a kindergarten bilingual immersion, serving three hot meals a day in schools, and offering a preschool program with BY5 that’s full with a long waiting list.

“We hear a lot about all of the drama, but when you go into our buildings and you see what’s going on, there’ s a lot of really good stuff going on in our classrooms.  And I think that’s really important to remember.”

But being in debt could see programs and offerings endangered.  Though it will submit a 2018 balanced budget to the state for consideration, Baule’s figures show the district still has $44 million in long-term outstanding debt.

And the state-appointed emergency management team says that will mean cuts to programs.  A proposed list of cuts hasn’t been given to the public yet, and it’s unclear whether extra-curricular or academic programs will be included.  That’s because, as emergency manager Steve Edwards told the school board earlier this week –

“What we originally thought we could cut, we’ve kind of taken a second look at.  So that is a moving target.”

Still, Baule says some community rumors are just untrue.  He says MCS will continue to exist and schools will continue to remain open.