Band-aid or Be Bold – Urban Education Reform

If Indy didn’t spec stadiums and sports venues, would it be the amateur sports capital of the world?

If gaping holes didn’t appear downtown Indy (for years), would Circle Center Mall exist? Would there be a performance stage suspended over an intersection in the middle of the city? Really, we can do that?

How many more years of struggled East Side redevelopment would there be absent the NFL Legacy Project?

Now, if urban education system wasn’t broke, would it be the focus of every newspaper and politician? See today's news for the most recent action in this saga locally.

Now, what's the best approach? Being bold isn’t always about being exciting, sometimes it just requires avoiding the “band-aid approach” to achieve consensus for solutions to urban issues. In the short run, it’s cheaper, easier, politically smoother, and less risk to band-aid issues; however, this tactic prolongs and weaken solutions, and it often hurts far more than the band-aid savings. Indianapolis has done some great things over the last couple of decades, but like other major cities we have been band-aiding the education system while being bold with other priorities. This has caused generational, long-term systemic effects on our cities, country, and our world position. Education is paramount as we think about redeveloping our urban cores, and sometimes we need to just forget the band-aid, and use those resources to make stuff happen that may not be popular, may not happen quickly, and may not be the cheapest solution in the short term; but the long term viability of our neighborhoods and our urban cores depend on being bold with education just like we are with stadiums, malls and other redevelopment efforts. If we're going to compete at a global level, we have no choice but to enhance our urban neighborhoods so that families actually prefer them to the suburbs. The buildings, the venues, the shopping is all great. It's time we prioritize education or we risk losing the residents we depend on to fill all the spaces we have built.