INDIANAPOLIS — Hundreds of people chanting “Save our kids” rallied at the Statehouse for the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home, urging officials Monday not to close the haven for troubled youths.
The Indiana State Department of Health said this month that the Knightstown home should be closed because it costs too much money to run and has outdated facilities in need of costly renovations.
But supporters at the Statehouse rally — some holding signs with slogans such as “Don’t destroy our roots” and “Don’t compromise the children for money” — said the home about 25 miles east of Indianapolis gives at-risk kids a loving, safe environment where they can flourish.
Channese Armour said she had behavioral problems and bounced among four different Indianapolis high schools before she came to the home two years ago. She said it gave her a second chance.
“They say we are children from broken homes and shattered lives,” the 11th-grader told the cheering crowd. “So why send us back to the community where we came from?”
The Health Department has said it costs about $90,000 a year to educate each student at the facility, which has below-average scores on statewide tests. State officials also say $65 million to $200 million is needed to renovate the 50-acre, 53-building campus. The department wants to move the 114 students at the home into traditional schools in May.
Supporters say the home’s costs wouldn’t seem so high if more children took advantage of it. And if children there are returned to their home environments, supporters said, they could get into trouble or end up in prison, costing taxpayers even more.
“There’s no home to go to in some cases,” said Rep. Tom Saunders, R-Lewisville.
Former resident Michele Perkins said her home life included physical abuse and alcoholism before she went to the Children’s Home. She learned how to type and later supported herself as a secretary before going to college.
“It saved my life,” she said.
State Health Commissioner Dr. Judy Monroe said she’s heard many success stories about the home, but she questioned the wisdom of spending $10 million a year to run the home — plus the cost of renovations — for only 114 students. There are troubled children all over the state, she said, and that money should go toward programs to help more of them.
“We just want to serve as many as we possibly can,” she said.
The home’s enrollment has declined over the decades and has numbered fewer than 200 since 1989. Monroe said the trend in recent years has been to keep at-risk children close to their communities, not to send them away to institutions.
Monroe said she was open to suggestions on ways to keep the home open, but the state already has considered several options such as changing its mission, converting it into a charter school or operating it through a management contract. The high costs of renovations has been cited as a major roadblock to those solutions.
The Indiana branch of the American Legion, which organized Monday’s rally, has asked the Health Department to release an assessment the agency has cited as the basis for the decision to close the home.
Private funders founded the home in 1865 to care for and educate orphaned and destitute children of Civil War Union Army veterans. The state took control two years later, and in the 1890s the school began accepting the destitute children of all veterans. Eventually, it opened its doors to other at-risk children.
State News
Children’s home supporters rally at Statehouse
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