It’s not the schools, it’s us
Following a chaotic debate over the future of high schools, it might be worth asking an uncomfortable question about St. Joseph.
If the community is this emotionally invested in its high schools, is that a healthy or an unhealthy thing?
Sure, there is nothing wrong with pride, with history. It’s your anchor in an unsteady world. But anchors don’t just keep you from going adrift. They weigh you down. No rough seas, but no new discoveries, either.
Is St. Joseph so weighed down by its past that it cannot embrace the future? That’s another question worth asking after the Board of Education decided to close Lafayette High School.
After months of agonizing back-and-forth discussion, it’s clear how everyone feels about the divisive issue: the St. Joseph School District administration, the Chamber of Commerce, the Facebook groups, the alumni, the parents, the kids, Ken Reeder and (finally) the school board.
For an outsider looking in, this whole saga might seem perplexing. We’ve always heard that the condition of the high schools is one of the reasons why St. Joseph is more adept at attracting workers than attracting residents.
There’s probably some truth there, when you look at Benton, Central or Lafayette compared to Park Hill South or Liberty North. But you have to be careful thinking that new schools will reverse the decades-long population trend in St. Joseph.
Those with a long enough memory in the news business might recall all the surveys and studies that suggested readers wanted “stories that make them smarter.” Then along comes the internet and its vast ability to track reader preferences.
It turns out what folks wanted were more stories about people getting shot and updates on all-you-can-eat buffets.
The point is that people lie. Not to the survey questioner, but to themselves. They want to sound smart and not superficial. They might say they don’t live in St. Joseph because of the schools when in reality they don’t live here because it’s too poor, too shabby, too insular.
Will high school consolidation change that dynamic? We’re going to find out.
But here’s a scary thought. Maybe it’s not the old buildings. Maybe people don’t want to live here because of us. Maybe they see the Facebook groups, the negativity and the gaslighting and say, “a 45-minute commute sounds pretty good.”
To outsiders, St. Joseph has become a meme, an Uncle Rico who’s still tossing the football and dreaming about the good-old days that are long gone.
They see what we can’t see because we’re too close to it. Adults who can’t get over high school are kind of sad.
Communities are like that, too.
