IPS CHIEF SAYS HE'D STOP BUSING IF HE COULD

When late August rolls around, so do those big yellow school buses to mark the beginning of school. For Shirl Gilbert, superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, those buses have an additional meaning.

Gilbert says he would eliminate busing. "I think the IPS kids ought to go to IPS. And I think the Warren kids ought to go to Warren. . . .

" I don't really have a whole lot of opinions about busing because busing is real. It's a reality. And the federal courts control it. And there's not much this little superintendent can do about it."

Gilbert says just over 6,000 kids are bused to and from IPS every year, and busing is something he has just learned to deal with: "So what I'm going to do as superintendent is make the best of what I've got. And what I've got is a court order that says I must bus youngsters. So what I want to do is do the best job I can of educating the youngsters in whatever way the law requires me to educate them." IPS lacks purpose, clarity

Gilbert, who describes himself as "very committed," has concrete ideas on how to do this. First, he has identified IPS's major problem as a "lack of clarity and purpose."

"This organization has not had a clear sense of its purpose," he said. "There has been no focus, no vision and no direction. . . . Organizations must have clear focus, clear direction, clear goals, clear visions when you have this many people working together."

Gilbert feels the reason why IPS does not have a clear sense of purpose is because, "what happens when everybody does their own thing well rather than the same things well, we dissipate our energy and the system doesn't benefit from the thousands of good people who want to make it better."

He believes a wide range of people must be involved in defining IPS's purpose. "We know where we want to go and now we have to come together as a staff, as parents and as students _ 'cause all these students ought to be in this process _ and say, `OK, that's where we want to go.' "

Gilbert says another problem he has taken on is changing the community's poor perceptions of IPS. "I think we probably have (done) about as good a job as we needed to do to make public the very good things that go on in IPS.

"We haven't beaten our own drums, if you will, as much as we should have. This is an outstanding organization with thousands of outstanding people who care about kids, who have dedicated their lives to the education of young citizens. And unfortunately, we haven't spent enough time as an organization helping this community see that that is in fact the case. We want to do a better job of that for the future." `Important that youngsters involved'

Gilbert believes, however, that it will take more than a dedicated staff and community to change IPS _ he can't do it without the IPS students. "Students are a very real part of this process, and they ought to be there with us as we lay out the plan and we (IPS administrators) say, `Well, we ought to make this turn.' And kids ought to be able to say, `Well no, if you make that turn, this is what's going to happen.' . . . It's important that youngsters are involved.

"I think that urban public education can be as good as its private and parochial counterparts if we challenge the organization to be better," he said.

To that end, Gilbert is implementing in the fall three alternative schools for students who don't fit into traditional schooling. Two of these schools _ one a junior high and the other a high school _ are for students who don't do well in large, impersonal environments.

The third school, dubbed "New Beginnings" by Gilbert, is for students who find themselves on the wrong side of the rules. "Instead of putting the kid out on the street, I want to put him in my New Beginnings school," he explained.

"I want to give him one more chance to have a new beginning in his educational career," Gilbert said. "I'll put him in a school that is very highly structured. That means he won't have the kind of freedom he usually has in a high school or junior high school."

Gilbert said students in the school will be continuously supervised and be kept from extracurricular activities. "It won't be a very pleasant environment because I want them to want to get out of there."

"My modus operandi has always been to challenge every youngster no matter where they are along the achievement spectrum to reach their full potential. Never to accept that youngsters simply because they have not had a family environment that is consistently a success, never ever accept that they can't be successful as well, because they can be," he said. "But we have to accommodate the needs that they bring to school with them in order to allow them to be successful."

"I tell everyone all the time that I don't have all the answers, but we do. I understand that I am the superintendent of this school system. I have a big responsibility, but my responsibility is really no more or less important than the teacher or the custodian or the bus driver. . . . I just have a different role to play than they do, and their role is just as important as mine, but very different."