2024 Award for Urban School Excellence

Indiana’s South Bend Community School Corporation Board of Education earns top honors for its commitment to thoughtful, stable governance

The Annual CUBE District Award recognizes distinction in school board governance, academic improvement, educational equity, and community engagement.

January 15, 2025

Representatives from South Bend Board of Education with NSBA Leadership

C. TODD CUMMINGS, CENTER, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE SOUTH BEND COMMUNITY SCHOOL CORPORATION, AND JOHN ANELLA, 2024 BOARD MEMBER, ACCEPT THE CUBE 2024 AWARD FOR URBAN SCHOOL BOARD EXCELLENCE FROM GILL GARRETT, CUBE STEERING COMMITTEE CHAIR, VERJEANA MCCOTTER-JACOBS, NSBA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CEO, AND STEVE CORONA, NSBA BOARD MEMBER.

PHOTO CREDIT: ILIAN RIVERA

Leading with an emphasis on equity, transparency, community engagement, and student outcomes, Indiana’s South Bend Community School Corporation (SBCSC) is achieving new levels of success. 

Its work is far from complete, say leaders of the 15,000-student school system in north central Indiana. However, driven by a commitment that every student will have an opportunity to thrive and flourish and be supported by thoughtful, stable school governance, the district has amassed an impressive list of achievements. Those include improved academic outcomes, enhanced educational equity, and deeper community connections.

For its accomplishments, the South Bend School Board was recognized in October with the 2024 Award for Urban School Excellence by the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE). The award, which honors distinction in school board governance, academic improvement, educational equity, and community engagement, was presented during the 2024 CUBE Annual Conference in Las Vegas. 

The school system’s commitment to these goals “serves as a beacon of excellence in urban education,” said Gill Garrett, CUBE chair and board member of Michigan’s Pontiac School District. “The South Bend Community School Corporation not only embodies the values and mission of CUBE, but [it] also inspire us to continue striving for excellence in urban education.”

The district’s success “is a shining example of what can be achieved when education leaders work together to elevate the potential of all students,” said Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs, NSBA’s executive director and CEO.

SUBSTANTIAL STRIDES 

Several of the district’s accomplishments took root in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “One of the most important things we did during that period was to make sure that every child got fed, that families could pick up meals for the week,” says Stuart Greene, the 2024 board president. To help combat ongoing issues of food insecurity (about 70% of district students are classified as economically disadvantaged), the district now provides free breakfast, lunch, and a snack to every student every day via the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Eligibility Provision. 

South Bend was already a one-to-one technology district before the pandemic. During the crisis, it quickly moved to distribute mobile Wi-Fi hotspots and dispatch Wi-Fi-equipped school buses to neighborhoods so that all students could connect to the internet and continue the virtual learning that had become essential. 

Post-COVID, the board decided to expand connectivity by building the district’s own LTE wireless broadband network to provide free, high-quality internet to all district students and families. Currently, about 80% of students and families are connected, and “we are doing everything we can to make sure that every child, 100% of our children, have access,” Greene says.

South Bend likewise has made substantial strides in enhancing student literacy and increasing graduation rates. Approximately 62% of district third graders read on grade level in 2023-24. Additionally, the district achieved its highest graduation rate in a decade, reaching 85% overall, with a 15% increase in graduation rates for Black students (up to 87%) and a 14% increase for Hispanic students (up to 85%). 

South Bend Graduates
SOUTH BEND SCHOOL DISTRICT GRADUATES.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SOUTH BEND COMMUNITY SCHOOL CORPORATION.

Investments essential to reaching these achievements were made possible through a $220 million referendum approved by voters in 2020. It helped fund facility improvements, teacher raises, increased support for student mental health, and other initiatives focused on student success. 

In listening sessions and surveys, community members were very clear about their priorities, especially the desire for clean, safe, and secure schools, third grade students reading on grade level, and high school students graduating, ready for college or career, says Superintendent Todd Cummings. (A 2024 Indiana state law now requires most third graders who don’t pass the state reading assessment to be held back a grade.)

For both graduation and literacy improvement, Cummings instituted a “student-by-student approach” focused on identifying each individual student’s needs and aligning resources to meet them. 

Greene notes that “I can walk into any high school and see the data literally on the walls,” so that students always know where they are in terms of credits, what they need to do to get additional credits, and what they need to do to get support and ensure graduation.

At the elementary level, during weekly and sometimes biweekly meetings, teachers and principals review literacy data, “examining attendance, Lexiles, DIBELS,” Cummings says. “My board has allowed me and my team the time to be very granular in our student data; it’s made all the difference in the world for us.” 

Both Cummings and Greene have joined some 175 volunteers who have received specialized training through a partnership with the University of Notre Dame to tutor district third graders. A six-week summer program integrating literacy and sports is planned to continue supporting students this summer.

FOCUS ON INCLUSION 
When Greene was elected in 2018, the board spent many hours working with a consultant on its strategic plan, including “the metrics to evaluate our work and the commitment to academic achievement in every way you know,” he recalls. 

That focus helped lay the groundwork for the board’s equity statement, which identified equity, inclusion, and justice as central to a strategic plan “aimed at fostering academic excellence, financial stability, and community partnerships.”

Greene says, “I know that people these days don’t want to use the word ‘inclusion,’ but I think that the equity statement we passed was really about inclusion, so kids could see themselves in the curriculum, so they could identify with what they were reading, so that they could have a voice to believe in as they were going through the curriculum materials.” 

The focus on inclusion also has been “significant in framing the ways that the board has thought about community partnerships, making sure that we were beginning to partner with organizations who may not have been part of the resources that the corporation had drawn upon before,” he says. The attention to inclusion helped establish “some best practices” for the district, Greene adds.

Shortly after joining the district as superintendent in 2019, Cummings established a department of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “I’m a firm believer in what gets measured gets done,” he says. “We needed someone that could measure (our efforts) and hold us accountable. It’s been a terrific investment.” 

That department’s portfolio has recently expanded to include social-emotional development, managing, for example, student care teams, supporting wraparound services, increasing student voice, and training students in restorative practices.

Steve Corona, secretary-treasurer of NSBA’s Board of Directors and an officer with the Indiana School Boards Association, observes that Cummings’ nearly six-year tenure leading the district has provided much-needed cohesion: “After too many years of constant leadership changes, the South Bend school board and its superintendent have provided stability. That unity has helped in its efforts to make difficult decisions while advancing student achievement in the classroom.”

‘WHAT THE PUBLIC NEEDS FROM US’

As the district looks toward the future and meeting student and family needs with a focus on educational equity, one new piece of that effort is the proposed St. Joseph County Career Hub, a Career and Technical Education (CTE) center offering expanded programs and resources for students throughout the region. A career center was a central commitment of the district’s 2020 voter referendum bond, the district notes. Its implementation would ensure students’ access to in-demand CTE opportunities, top-of-the-line teaching, and experiential learning spaces.  

Whether the topic is the CTE hub or a major facilities redistricting plan, public engagement, listening sessions, and spending more time outside the boardroom in the community have provided “moments and opportunities for us to understand better what the public needs from us,” Greene says. Still, it sometimes can be “a challenge to make sure that we’re listening in ways that the public would like us to.” 

The objective must remain “making sure that not only are kids doing well, but that we’re responding to what the community feels are priorities,” he says. Even now, “we have to listen better than we do.”

Michelle Healy (mhealy@nsba.org) is senior editor of American School Board Journal.