Clay High School and the One-Dollar Law

2023–2026 — still open

Clay High School, opened in 1939 on the city's north side, was the largest single piece of the South Bend Community School Corporation's Facilities Master Plan, adopted by the school board on April 17, 2023, by a vote of 4–3: Clay would close as a high school after the 2023–24 year, at a projected saving of $16.2 million over five years, in a district losing enrollment. The opposition was sustained, organized, and documented across two years of packed meetings and petitions — alumni, parents, and the Clay community argued the school was the north side's anchor and the savings overstated. The board's majority held that the district could not afford its buildings. Both positions are in the press of record in the speakers' own words. What happened next turned a school-closure fight into a case about what a closure vote legally is — because the district never emptied the building: Clay continued in use as a career and technical education hub, and the corporation later rested a legal argument on exactly that.

The challenger was the Career Academy Network, the charter organization led by Larry Garatoni, which sought the building under Indiana's so-called dollar law (Ind. Code 20-26-7.1), which requires a school corporation to offer a closed school building to a charter school for lease or purchase for one dollar. The building's value was reported at $50 to $55 million. In the summer of 2024 the Indiana Department of Education ruled that the district was required to make Clay available. In February 2025 a court ruled for the school corporation: the Department had missed the statute's then five-day deadline for its determination, and the claim failed on that ground. The district also argued, in substance, that it had never voted to close Clay at all — the April 2023 vote had adopted a plan, and the school had never ceased operating.

On October 26, 2026, Judge Mark P. Telloyan of the St. Joseph Superior Court reversed the 2025 ruling and held for Career Academy: the Department's missed deadline did not void its authority, and the "no closure vote" argument failed on the record of what the board had done — the district must offer the building for lease or purchase under the statute. One wrinkle in the coverage deserves print rather than smoothing: the Tribune's account of the 2026 ruling dates "the vote to close Clay as a high school" to December 2023, while the Facilities Master Plan vote of April 17, 2023, is multiply attested in the contemporaneous record; the difference is noted here because the meaning of the board's votes was the very question in litigation. On November 2, 2026, the school board voted unanimously to appeal to the Indiana Court of Appeals. District programs continue to operate at Clay while the appeal proceeds. As of this record the case is open, and the building — high school, hub, and litigated asset at once — remains the district's.

Sources:

1. South Bend Community School Corporation, Facilities Master Plan — board vote of April 17, 2023 (4–3), and board vote to appeal, November 2, 2026
2. Ind. Code 20-26-7.1 (the "dollar law")
3. Indiana Department of Education determination, summer 2024; St. Joseph Superior Court rulings of February 2025 and October 26, 2026 (Telloyan, J.)
4. South Bend Tribune, coverage of the closure fight, the dollar-law claim, and the 2026 ruling, 2023–2026