The Lessons and Worries of Todd Cummings’s Departure

February 20, 2025

The Lessons and Worries of Todd Cummings’s Departure

by  Margaret Allen, Ph.D.

Not too many local residents are shedding tears over the departure of Todd Cummings from the South Bend Community School Corporation, but we all should be concerned about the process. 

Process and transparency matter, especially in jobs overseen by the public through our elected officials. 

Ostensibly, the immediate concerns over Cummings came from his bad decision to not cancel school on a day when most other places in the region did cancel for extreme ice and other weather-related events. Students and staff alike were hurt because of this poor decision. Cars and bus slide-offs were prominent on the morning in question, and students, faculty, and staff alike all had slip-and-fall accidents at various properties around the school district. This was terrible decision-making, but how only Cummings made that decision, if that assertion is correct, is problematic.

In the late 1980s, the school corporation had key figures who lived around the district that spoke with the Superintendent on mornings of potential cancellations. This was before ubiquitous internet usage, Google Forms, and cell phones. They utilized a ‘phone tree’ and got the weather information to the Corporation. This was important because the weather and conditions might be very different in different areas within the district. There was quick and efficient calling that was also collaborative. If indeed Cummings was making these decisions from his own in-town home and making them alone, there was a lack of leadership and process and certainly a lack of usage of modern tools to communicate around the district. However, that probably isn’t a career-ending offense. 

Over the years, growing dissatisfaction with Cummings throughout the school district could be heard, and the most recent iteration of the South Bend School Board perhaps showed the largest frustrations with Cummings. They showed their ire by physically moving his seat to the end of the row for school board meetings from the very start of this School Board term, taking away his position of prominence right from the beginning of the new school board regime. 

South Bend’s parting ways with Dr. Cummings isn’t a problem on the surface, but the process in which it occurred, over an issue like a snow day cancellation, should be chilling to everyone paying attention.  From the moment the 2025 iteration of the school board took office, they were determined to show their strength and power. Cummings needed to go, but how they got rid of him was akin to a 21st-century witch hunt. 

What we, as citizens, should fear most is that our government is radically changing processes and not acting with utter transparency and integrity. Instead of just telling Cummings that they would get rid of him and offering him a buyout package, they created mayhem, certainly acting in or adjacent to their given powers but not acting with integrity and transparency. If you think someone is not doing their job, you have to tell them, allow them the opportunity to change, and release them for cause if they do not make the necessary adjustments. Cummings was not given these opportunities, and that’s unfair, but more than unfair, it’s troubling. 

If we don’t stand up for Todd Cummings receiving due process in his public role, regardless of whether or not we like him or think he is doing his job well, then who will be left to stand up for us at our jobs when the whims of change come to our work? 

Process and transparency matter, especially in jobs overseen by the public through our elected officials and it would be worth letting your school board members know that you were happy or unhappy with their decision, but more importantly that you’re offended by their lack of transparent processes – especially as this school board begins assert authority in new manners than their predecessors. If you don’t like government overreach, this is the local place where you can speak to it, and I hope people will do so. You can find board members’ email addresses right here.  

I’m not sad to see Dr. Todd Cummings’s departure, and I certainly won’t miss hearing from him weekly during family times. Still, I am sorry to see the utter lack of real and legitimate due process and transparency from our elected school board. That said, without the weekly and obtrusive pre-recorded phone calls from Todd Cummings, I will presume that for the foreseeable future, ‘what I am currently reading’ from him will be mostly the classified ads. 

About the Author: Margaret Allen is the pseudonym of a local PhD professor who wishes to remain anonymous due to concerns about social and political backlash.

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