INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Indianapolis parents are petitioning for change at the city’s chronically failing John Marshall Community High School after more than a decade of disappointment.

A group of mothers confronted the Indianapolis Public Schools’ board of education this week with 500 signatures from the community demanding that district officials take action to improve the school, which has been plagued by violence and dismal academics, Fox 59 reports.

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The parents group, assisted by the nonprofit Stand for Children, wants district officials to work with the community to fix the school’s chronic academic failures – the school has received a ‘D’ or ‘F’ rating for the last 10 years and was nearly taken over by state officials for poor performance in 2012.

“I would like it to improve and my daughter have an opportunity to go there because it’s directly up the street, it’s in our neighborhood,” said parent LaToya Tahirou, who led the parent effort.

Tahirou’s daughter is in sixth grade, and she’d prefer to send her to Marshall next year but is concerned about the ongoing academic issues and other problems.

Tahirou presented the signatures to board members alongside Krystale Massey, who currently drives her daughter to Lawrence Township Schools every day to avoid Marshall.

“I attended John Marshall, which at the time back then it was actually a really good school, but I knew now that it was not going to meet the needs that I wanted for her,” she told Fox 59.

Three former Marshall teachers in August highlighted a long list of problems at the school that eventually convinced them to quit. In each of the last two years, more than a quarter of the school’s teaching staff has left because of the toxic environment, according to the Indianapolis Star.

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The teachers told the news site they were instructed by Marshall administrators to pass failing students, said they’ve concerned about the school’s terrible special education program, and complained about chronic absenteeism that made learning nearly impossible.

“When I left, I said to some of the kids, ‘You need to leave. If you want the things you want out of your life, you have to leave here,’” said teacher McClain Musson, who quit after the 2013-14 school year.

“To feel that level of guilt — to go into a school where you want to teach and want to be and tell your students they shouldn’t be there — it’s not fair as a teacher, because you want the education you’re giving a student to be enough,” Musson said. “What we were doing as teachers was never going to be enough.”

The school’s principal, of course, denies all of the teachers’ allegations.

“I have never said that teachers must pass a majority of their students, but I do require intervention documentation to show that steps and supports have been put into place to involve parents and provide additional supports for students who are struggling academically,” principal Ashauna Short said in a prepared statement provided to the Star by IPS officials in August.

Musson and her former colleague Victoria Huber contend Short is a liar.

According to the Star:

We were directed as teachers that our fail rate couldn’t be a certain height. I can’t fail more than 10 percent of my class,” said Huber, who is now teaching at Lighthouse College Preparatory Academy in Indianapolis. “It was clear if you fail a student there had to be a lot of documented evidence as to why. We were actively discouraged from failing students.”

Musson said it was commonplace for teachers to be scolded by Short for failing students, even if they didn’t attend class or complete course work. One reason the school wanted to pass students is to improve the graduation rate, she said.

“She called in teachers who had meetings with her and said, ‘If you can’t get to this percentage, you’re gone,’ ” Musson said. “She said, ‘What you’re going to do is make-up work for all of the kids. I don’t care what they come back to you looking like. They could be done, they could be correct, they could not be correct, you’re going to give them credit and pass them.’ ”

IPS is holding a public meeting on the future of Marshall at the school on August 10 at 6 p.m., and Massey and Tahirou said they plan to attend.

“I’m going to continue to be a part of it and make sure that our kids get good schools,” Massey told Fox 59.

“Like they say, it takes a village to raise a child. Everybody has to come together and get on one accord because at the end of the day, these children are being failed,” Tahirou said.