LOCAL

Offbeat career paths bring veteran educators to the children at South View

David Penticuff
Muncie Star Press

MUNCIE, Ind. — Casey Smitherman made a nationwide name for herself while superintendent of Elwood Community Schools — maybe not in a way that, on reflection, she would have wanted.

South View Elementary Principal Casey Smitherman (left) and Assistant Principal Shawn Davis. Both recently took over as leaders in the southside school.

Now principal at South View Elementary in Muncie, Smitherman is widely known as the administrator who took a 15-year-old Elwood Jr.-Sr. High School student off campus in January 2019 for treatment of a sore throat. According to press reports, initially the pair went to a medical center but the boy was denied care because Smitherman was not his guardian. She then took him to a different clinic, where the district superintendent used her son's identity and insurance coverage to get the youth treatment. That led to her being charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor: Insurance fraud, identity deception, insurance application fraud and official misconduct.

"I know this action was wrong," Smitherman told The Indianapolis Star afterward. "In the moment, my only concern was for this child’s health."

Criminal charges were dropped through a Madison County prosecution diversion program, which amounted to her admitting to the charges and not becoming an offender again for a year.

But the story of an educator being arrested for using her family's health insurance to get treatment for a student in need became national news for The Washington Post, The New York Post, CBS, NBC, CNN and various social media outlets.

In the wake of the publicity, Smitherman resigned at the end of January 2019.

"I apologize to the board, the community and the teachers and students of Elwood Community Schools.  I sincerely hope this single lapse in judgement does not tarnish all of the good work I've done for students over the span of my career," she wrote in a statement announcing her resignation.

The good work she referred to included being a teacher and leader, serving as principal at Brown Elementary in Brownsburg and serving in the Indiana State Teachers Association Teach Plus Indiana program for leadership within schools.

Smitherman was known as an educator who could turn things around in classrooms facing academic and behavioral problems, according to Dr. LeeAnn Kwiatkowski, Director of Public Education/CEO of Muncie Community Schools. She was in the middle of doing that at Elwood too, until a line was crossed.

After Elwood, Smitherman went back to Brownsburg, ran her home décor store and flipped houses for a living.

"Until I got a call from Dr. K," she said.

Kwiatkowski crossed paths professionally with Smitherman while the MCS head worked in state government. South View was struggling in terms of performance, and in October last year Kwiatkowski brought Smitherman aboard to provide expertise to help in the administration of the southside elementary school.

Anthony Williams came to MCS in 2019 as something of a turnaround artist himself. He was hired as principal at South View after being principal of Allen Elementary in Marion, where he reduced student suspensions from 212 to 16 in one academic year. Between 2013-14 and 2015-16, the school climbed from an “F” academic rating by the State of Indiana to a “B” rating. The school was featured on NBC's "Today Show" for its success with Williams' leadership.

But academic performance at South View remained troubled after his arrival. The results of IREAD 3 testing —which measures student reading skills at the third grade level, considered a basic component for future learning — saw 57.3 percent of South View students pass the test in 2019, 53.2 percent pass in 2021 and 50.5 percent pass in 2022. Statewide averages for student passage of IREAD 3 in those same years — which included the impact of COVID-19 — never dropped below 80 percent.

Smitherman said when she arrived in October to help out, she tackled academic issues at the school while Williams handled student behavioral matters.

Smitherman and Williams got along well, she said. After Williams resigned and left the school in February. Smitherman was named principal. The assistant principal for Williams was reassigned within MCS.

Attempts to contact Williams to comment for this article were unsuccessful.

The assistant principal assigned to work with Smitherman is a star from the past in Muncie schools: Shawn Davis, who had been principal at Longfellow Elementary.

"I love Muncie," said Davis of the city where she was successful as an administrator at Longfellow.

In 2014 she piloted Longfellow's move from a "C" to an "A" in state rankings of public schools at that time. In 2015, Davis left Muncie for Arizona where she led a school at the Autism Academy for Education and Development.

Davis wanted to come home where she would work with teachers and students to overcome challenges at South View.

Adding to the changes in leadership is an ongoing remodeling at the school, which had been designed in the once popular "open concept" by building schools with few internal walls. Walls are now going in at South View as they recently have at East Washington Academy. The hope is that students will better be able to focus and learn in an environment not so open to the sometimes seemingly chaotic atmosphere of youngsters crowded together.

Every student at South View is on free or reduced-price lunches. On Wednesday, Smitherman and Davis were preparing for Family Night at the school, in which the administrators were going to discuss and explain services for families of students in the school's district. Everything from clothing to food to health care will be extended in some manner, not only for the kids but for the whole family.

Connecting with families will be key, they said. South View has never, in recent memory, had a Parent Teacher Organization.

"Give me a year," Smitherman said, with a defiant timbre to her voice.

There will be engagement with the homes from where her students come. She plans on working to get parents involved with the school, eventually getting a parent-teacher organization up and running.

On any given day, Smitherman said, about 10 percent of the students don't show up for class. She and MCS as a whole are working on attendance.

MCS now has a group of volunteers going to door to door at the homes of truant kids asking parents and guardians where their children are and finding out why they aren't in school, said Andy Klotz, chief communications officer for the district. The group is called the Community Engagement Council, which arose from the school system's partnership with Ball State University that began in 2018.

The partnership between the schools and Ball State is growing deeper, with each university school interacting with Muncie Community Schools in some way, said Kwiatkowski.

The impact of the pandemic and the period of no in-class learning still weighs heavy on the schools, said Smitherman, and is likely a factor in absenteeism now. She is determined to reestablish normal.

South View has one recess a day; that might increase to two-a-day next year.

The principal said, contrary to the trend when recess disappeared in the effort to train children for success on standardized tests, recess is back in favor. Children need to get outside, she said, especially at South View.

Some parents keep their kids inside when they are home because they fear for their safety in the neighborhoods where they live, Smitherman said. She is also intending to get more students on field trips to provide them with different experiences as part of school.

Davis said that behaviors are better and students more attentive after the children get to go outside and burn off some energy.

The biggest practical challenge at South View and other schools is finding teachers, Smitherman said. South View has 31 now and she hopes to hire six intervention teachers next year. The intervention teachers will identify students who need help in math and/or reading skills and meet with them once or more a day.

Instructional assistants, who do not require a teaching degree, are being hired throughout the district for $17.50 an hour to support teachers in the classroom.

Parents need to know that South View is a place where students are safe, loved and taken care of, said Davis.

Smitherman and Davis appear comfortable in their roles at a school with no shortage of challenges. The two said they come from hardscrabble backgrounds themselves.

"We have a great family," Smitherman said. "And a great community."