Living In Pike.com

Letter to the editor – The Indianapolis Star
Our View: John Brown, Steve Jones, Isaac Randolph and Ross Reller

The Metropolitan School District of Pike Township is perhaps one of the most diverse in Indiana. The birthplaces of students represent 32 countries. This produces a rich environment that strengthens the educational experience.

Student achievement in most of the Pike schools continues to improve; attendance and graduation rates are well above the national average. The Indiana Department of Education recently awarded its highest rating of exemplary to Pike for 2005-06. Yet, unfounded rumors that occasionally plague all school systems seem to stick when it comes to perceptions about Pike because for some our rich diversity makes the worst seem more believable. And inaccurate perceptions can unfortunately be perpetuated by poor journalistic practices, such as when an Indianapolis Star reporter recently quoted a Pike High School student as saying that he typically witnessed multiple fights in the hallways on a given day. Had the reporter checked with other Pike students, their parents, teachers, school administrators, school board members or community leaders, he would have learned the real facts.

This is what you would find when walking the hallways of Pike High School on any given day: students who are involved in rigorous programs, such as our International Baccalaureate Diploma, or one of our many academic academies. Perhaps you would see performing arts students rehearsing for another award-winning performance, or athletes hard at work training for a winning season, or maybe Science Academy students preparing for national competition in robotics design and construction.

Pike High School offers a rigorous course of study, requiring 48 credits to graduate as opposed to the 40 required by the state. There are 22 options for Advanced Placement coursework. From the graduating class of 2006, 93 percent have gone on to enroll in institutions of higher education.

For the 2005-06 school year, Pike produced a remarkable 21 National Merit finalists, Commended Scholars or National Achievers.

To sum up, Pike Township schools, with all of their rich diversity, offer some of the finest educational and extracurricular opportunities in Central Indiana.

Is everything perfect? Of course not. Sometimes diversity brings challenges along with benefits. But this is life. And our students do not need textbooks to learn about the people of other countries, cultures, races, and religions. They learn this from each other, in student clubs, athletic teams, the lunchroom, the school bus and the hallways. This diversity reflects the real world.

Pike schools are committed to this type of diverse environment while providing the safest schools with the finest educational and extracurricular opportunities. Those are the real facts about Pike.

Brown is the father of a Pike High School student and the vice president of the Pike Township School Board; Jones is a Pike Township resident and a professor at IUPUI; Randolph is the father of a Pike elementary school student and the City-County Council member for District One in Pike Township; and Reller is the father of a Pike High School student and vice president of the Traders Point Association of Neighborhoods.