Chalkbeat

Rooted School Indianapolis celebrates first graduating class

2024-05-20T11:00:00+00:00

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When Montgomery Brooks walks through the halls of Rooted School Indianapolis nowadays, it feels crowded.

Crowded, at least, to him and his fellow seniors who started at the charter school as the first freshman class of about 60 students. While some of the original students have left, Montgomery and his classmates have grown alongside the school, which launched in the fall of 2020 during the pandemic in a building shared with Eastern Star Church on the Far Eastside.

Now, they walk the halls as older siblings to a family of about 160 students in grades 7-12 — and will celebrate as Rooted School’s first graduating class on May 28. The 31 seniors are part of a wave of high school graduates celebrating over the next three weeks as students who entered high school during the pandemic’s early days.

“There will never be another first,” Ma’at Lands, the school’s founder, said of the graduating seniors. “We’re just appreciative that the parents and the students took a chance on us and stayed with us. It’s their school, they helped build this school.”

The Class of 2024 pioneered the school’s main focus on technology education and dual college credit.

The school serves a majority-Black student body with a mission to provide pathways to financial freedom by educating students ready to compete in high-wage industries such as technology, Lands said.

Launching in 2020 meant making tough decisions on how to open the school at a time when some were remote. Rooted alternated teaching its first class with virtual and in-person days. Those in-person days made a difference, seniors say, in their will to continue school post-pandemic.

Plus, the schools’ small size made it easier for staff to track down students skipping virtual class.

Graduating senior Aniyah Grant had a wake up call one day freshman year when her mother scolded her for not attending class virtually. That’s when she realized she needed to return to the self-disciplined student she had been before the pandemic.

“It hit me — I was like, ok, I need to stop slacking,” said Aniyah, who has been accepted to Central State University and plans to study criminal justice to become a prosecutor. “I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. And ever since I’ve been good.”

As the first graduating class, seniors had access to classes on building websites, computer programming, and Adobe Photoshop.

“Not only did they make sure that we had teachers who actually cared about our success and whatnot, but they also had a tech industry oriented curriculum that I was focused on,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery’s class paved the way for younger students. Now, the school’s seventh graders take technology classes for high school credit. And in high school, the dual credit courses Montgomery and his peers took their junior year are now available to freshmen.

Parents, too, appreciate the fact that the school has a majority of Black educators.

“He gets to see people who look like him and care about him,” Susan Sargeant said of her graduating son Dwayne Sullivan, who will start at Indiana University-Bloomington in the fall to study computer science and business. “Not that they wouldn’t in other schools, but they actually get to know the kids — like they know their names, they know their parents, and that’s a big deal.”

The senior class selected Scottish Rite Cathedral as the site of their graduation, which Aniyah considers a bittersweet moment.

“It’s like, ‘I don’t want to leave,’ but then it’s like, ‘I’m out of here,’” she said. “I get to finally be who I want to be and go off and see how my future, and the rest of my life, is going to be like.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS changes homework, discipline policies in bid for equity

2024-05-15T17:36:43+00:00

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When eighth grader Kelsey Aguilar is called from class to de-escalate a conflict between her peers, she heads to the Guided Learning Center at Harshman Middle School with a calm demeanor.

That’s where she’ll get to the heart of an issue between friends or couples, unpacking insults on social media or rumors that could lead to a fight.

The mediation program that Aguilar participates in as a peer mediator is part of the school’s restorative justice approach to discipline. It’s less punitive, aims to stop fights before they start, and focuses on healing transgressions between students.

It’s a disciplinary approach that Indianapolis Public Schools hopes to embrace district-wide through the adoption of a series of policies that aim to promote equity and reduce barriers to learning that affect certain groups of students. The policies, which the school board has been approving in batches, include a shift in how teachers should approach assigning homework and how the district should identify students for its gifted program. The board approved the latest round of policy changes — including one highlighting restorative justice in student discipline — on Tuesday.

The policies could address some of the district’s disparities that are common in education.

For example, Black and multiracial students in the district have historically been disciplined at higher rates than their white peers, according to district data. Some of the district’s most popular schools with specialized academic programming are disproportionately white.

And while the latest ILEARN state test scores show white students appear to have recovered from pandemic learning loss, Black and Hispanic students have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels of proficiency.

At Harshman, officials say the mediation program has helped reduce the number of suspensions both for Black students and for students overall.

And Kelsey believes it has definitely reduced the number of fights among her peers — even though some may see mediation by a classmate as a joke.

“I honestly think it’s a serious thing because we’re solving problems with other people,” she said. “I think that’s a great thing for us to do.”

Changes to dress code, homework assignments adopted

The policy changes were proposed by the Culturally Responsive and Equitable Education Committee, which the school board created last year. They reflect much of the district’s ongoing work around expanding academic opportunities to more students of color and those from diverse backgrounds.

The district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan, for example, will bring Honors Algebra, Honors Geometry, Honors Biology, and Spanish I classes to all middle schools. The plan will also expand Montessori, STEM, high-ability, dual language, performing arts, and International Baccalaureate academic models to more schools throughout the district.

Many of the committee’s proposed changes codify the district’s current equity efforts under Superintendent Aleesia Johnson, said school board member Nicole Carey, who led the creation of the committee. But the policy shifts will hold any future leaders of the district accountable to this equity mindset, she said.

Here are equity-focused policies that the board approved in April:

The district’s revised homework policy acknowledges that students come from “diverse backgrounds with different resources and support systems.” The policy says that, “Homework assignments must be equitable and considerate of these varied home environments.” In addition, the policy states that the assignments should also consider students’ academic needs and out-of-school responsibilities.
The district’s revised policy on its gifted and talented program commits the district to using culturally responsive, unbiased assessments to identify students eligible for its academically gifted program. That program is currently housed at the K-8 Sidener Academy but will expand to two separate elementary and middle schools in 2024-25. It also directs the district to actively inform families from diverse backgrounds about the gifted program. (Enrollment data from 2023-24 shows Sidener Academy is whiter and has fewer students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals than the district as a whole.)
The district’s new universal dress code provides less-rigid guidelines that aim to reduce disciplinary actions that keep students out of classrooms.

Below are some equity-focused policy changes the board approved Tuesday:

The revised policy on the use of seclusion and restraint requires all administrators, special education teachers, and school-based crisis teams to undergo training in de-escalation techniques and conflict resolution strategies. All incidents involving seclusion or restraint of a student must be documented and provided to the student’s guardian in a timely manner, and an annual report of these incidents will be presented to the board.
Another revised policy directs administration to develop clear, written criteria for the approval of student groups. It also encourages groups that represent diverse demographics and interests.

In March, the equity committee proposed a more comprehensive restorative justice policy that would require training for all staff members. But it’s unclear if that will come before the board.

Restorative justice at Harshman could be inspiration for others

Meanwhile, the new discipline policy says restorative justice approaches should be used as alternatives to traditional discipline “when appropriate.” It also says educators should collaborate with families on approaches to discipline.

At Harshman Middle School, officials say their mediation program has reduced the number of incidents of aggression or physical fighting between current eighth graders from the first semester of last year to the first semester of this year.

Sometimes, peer mediators such as Kelsey are called to oversee a mediation session with staff present. Other times, staff mediate. There are even sessions to resolve conflicts between staff and students.

Even the school’s hallways advertise restorative justice.

“Problem: Unresolved conflict,” reads one sign. “Solution: Peer mediation. Let’s talk about it!”

The school received support from the Peace Learning Center, funded through a grant, to provide mediation training for students and staff. Students are selected as mediators after an interview process.

School staff say the program has created a mindset shift in students, who will alert staff members of potential rising tensions between students or request mediation on their own.

“They don’t want to fight each other, they don’t want to argue, they don’t want to miss class, they don’t want to be suspended,” said Rockeyah Lord, a dean at the school.

Because the program aims to resolve issues before they devolve into fights, Lord said, suspensions overall have decreased.

Kelsey said she got involved in the program because she used to be involved in a lot of drama herself — but at times wanted a way to get out of it.

“I knew that other people do want to get out of it too sometimes,” she said. “So it’s better to talk about it than to keep going with it.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Amid record-high youth homicides, New B.O.Y. tries to give Indianapolis teens something to live for

2024-05-15T10:00:00+00:00

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This article was co-reported by Chalkbeat Indiana and Axios Indianapolis as part of a reporting partnership about youth gun violence in Indianapolis.

How do you save the lives of teenage boys who act like they aren’t afraid to die?

City officials are looking into it. Police are asking for help. Kareem Hines and his mentors keep trying.

“We, unfortunately, lose kids a lot,” said Hines. “The positive stories, the successes that we see with the kids, keep us going.”

Hines’ New B.O.Y. program — short for New Breed of Youth — is one of several in Indianapolis trying to reverse an alarming statistic: the highest number of youth homicides in at least six years, the majority of which involve guns. Some young men he works with are saved. Others are not, and Hines sees them on the news. Last year, the program lost six participants who ended up dead or in prison.

Either way, week after week, Hines and his team of mentors try to give their young men something to live for.

New B.O.Y., which began in 2009 and works with about 125 boys, is based on the mantra of “connection before correction.” It’s built on consistency.

Kareem Hines practices boxing with a young participant during the New B.O.Y. Guns Down, Gloves UP Boxing Program meetup on April 27, 2024 at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Indianapolis.

Youth martial arts classes are on Tuesdays. Boxing classes are on Saturdays. There are field trips to go skiing or visit college campuses. And nearly every Wednesday, there are group talking sessions called “leaders circle” that bring children and parents together to review the week’s good and bad events.

Hines knows himself the power of a mentor and constant engagement from growing up in Harlem with a single dad. He met his own mentor at the YMCA, where he got his first job at 15. That mentor was the reason he moved to Indianapolis at age 20 in 1995, when he got a job at the Fall Creek YMCA that has since closed.

Since then, Hines worked in various mentoring and community outreach programs until launching New B.O.Y. in 2009.

But understanding just how challenging New B.O.Y.’s mission is means understanding the world in which the program operates.

It’s one in which teenagers pose smiling with guns on Instagram. Students “go 30″ — fight each other — in the school bathroom just to see who wins. Flyers circulating online promote parties that combine social media fights and guns in a confined space. “Drill” rap music describing shootouts with enemies is popular.

And embedded in all of this is the trauma of living in poverty, growing up in high-crime, under-resourced neighborhoods, or nursing broken relationships with adults.

Hines emphasizes that his program isn’t a cure-all.

“We’re just a piece of the puzzle,” he said. “We understand the plight of these young men, so we try to stand in the gap in every area, but we can’t be with them 24 hours a day.”

The program draws strength from youth like Patrick Collier who succeed.

As he’s grown in New B.O.Y. from a jaded pre-teen in foster care to a budding entrepreneur, Collier, now 18, has closely known four fellow participants who’ve been killed and two who’ve been locked up.

Losing them, he said, is more like losing a brother — and at times he did not want to come to New B.O.Y. activities for fear of learning of another person was dead or arrested.

“Ultimately, I realized that if I’m losing people this much, that just means that I have to do something,” said Collier, who hopes to study social work at Indiana University Bloomington next year. “I have to wrap my hands around the people that are in the program.”

Kareem Hines grew up in Harlem, where he spent many hours at the YMCA right across from his home. That's where he said he learned about the power of a mentor.

Talk sessions offer teens tough love, understanding

Hines is both a fiery preacher and understanding therapist. When he talks, these teenagers listen.

It’s a method of engagement with youth that he’s honed over decades of working with them.

In the leaders circle sessions that last for hours, he invites participants to describe the environment in which they live. He asks them to explain their poor decisions but celebrates their wins. And he tries to wrap it all up in a message of love and understanding.

The program’s participants are typically referred through the state’s Department of Child Services or the local probation department, but some can come from community-based referrals as well. The majority of the participants, like the majority of the city’s homicide victims ages 19 and under, are Black.

There’s the young man with a penchant for yo-yos who has lacked a strong female presence in his life and struggles with anger issues. But he celebrates his weekly wins at circle sessions — in January, he reported, he’d “been thinking about what I do before I do it.”

There’s the teenager in and out of juvenile court system who, under New B.O.Y.’s guidance, wrote a memoir sharing his family trauma.

During a leaders circle session in October, when Hines asks how easy it is for him to obtain a gun, he doesn’t hesitate: “It’s easy as 1, 2, 3.”

“I’m tired of that life” on the streets, he said. “I’ve been in that since I was nine. I’m 15.”

Hines frequently acknowledges the lack of fathers in the boys’ lives. He nods to the fact that adults have let them down. And he often asks the group questions that everyone knows the answer to. In this way, he and other mentors signal that they understand where these boys are coming from.

“Should you feel uncomfortable at a teenage party in this city?” he asks during one session in January. Yes, the boys nod, because you might get shot.

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“What’s ‘catching a face?’” he asks after playing a drill rap song through a loudspeaker at an April session.

It means killing somebody, they answer.

But these sessions also feature important life lessons.

Hines frequently passes out the latest articles of teenagers arrested for murder or killed in shootings, asking the boys to read it aloud and assess what the subjects should have done differently. In one session, he encouraged the boys to play chess, not checkers — in other words, to think critically about their decisions.

And during another session in January, the boys heard from JaMarcus Fields, who served 26 years in prison for murder.

“The system is not playing while we out here trying to play tough,” Fields said. He described his first night in prison as a scared 18-year-old.

“I literally went to sleep a little kid and had to wake up the next morning a grown man,” he said as the boys sat listening quietly. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Some boys still end up in prison — or worse

Still, not everyone makes it through New B.O.Y. alive or living life as a free man.

Hines uses every loss as a teachable moment.

In February, the boys stared at a text message about a former New B.O.Y. participant, now in his twenties.

“[He] has me reaching out to you to see if ur available to come to his sentencing Monday,” the message read. “He was fighting a murder charge but he’s pleading out.”

But Hines laments the fact that he hasn’t seen the young man come back to the program in a long time.

Kareem Hines speaks with students during a New B.O.Y. leaders circle session in February.

“He needs a few character references — can I give him a character reference?” Hines asks the group.

The boys shake their heads.

“Hell no. Hell no,” Hines said. “Hell no, I can’t.”

Still, Hines and the mentors keep going, even when participants stray from the flock. Stopping is not an option.

“I got about another 10 to 12 other young men who are still pushing, who made a different decision,” he said. “So we got to be there for them.”

Celebrating wins and giving boys ‘an incentive’

Collier was a frustrated middle school student when he met Hines at around 12 years old.

Years of being in and out of multiple foster homes left him standoffish, lacking trust in adults, and acting out in school. But the night that Hines showed up at his foster family’s house, wearing clothes that someone his age would wear, Collier was taken aback.

“He’s real,” Collier said on why young men respond positively to Hines. “There’s no facade he puts up. There’s nothing he tries to do that isn’t him. There isn’t an agenda oriented around profit that he works on.”

New B.O.Y.’s constant programming is what drew Collier out of his shell and ultimately earned his trust. He joined the program’s Young Entrepreneurs Program and launched a nonprofit with a fellow New B.O.Y. participant to bring food, clothing, and other services to those in need.

And like Hines, the programming felt authentic.

“It was never like, ‘Hey, let’s get this photo and then we’re going to drop him off,’” he said. “It was really genuine. I mean, there were rarely any cameras around. There were rarely people that weren’t always locked into the program.”

New B.O.Y. has played an annual flag football tournament against Evolve, another mentoring group, for the past few years. "None of y'all gonna be in the news," Hines said in a speech before the start of last year's tournament, referring to the news stories of murdered youth. "We gonna pour life into you today, like we try to do today and every day."

Outside of the tough love that New B.O.Y. participants get in the leaders circle, Hines and his team of adults are there year-around to provide the positive life experiences Collier had.

On a sunny Saturday in November, uplifting music is bumping on the field next to what used to be Indianapolis Public School 11. The young men huddle in excitement with mentors as they review their plays in the annual flag-football tournament against Evolve, another mentoring group.

“I keep an incentive in front of them,” Hines told Chalkbeat. “No matter what, I want to keep them with some kind of hope.”

New B.O.Y.’s programming aligns with Hines’ philosophy of correcting poor behavior while still actively celebrating life and its successes. He dislikes grandiose celebrations of life that occur only after a child has been killed. And he laments when news crews come to him for interviews only after someone dies.

He frequently calls on parents to be more involved with their children, not only through the bad, but the good.

“If you don’t love yours, and wrap your arms around yours, the streets will,” Hines told families at New B.O.Y.’s annual awards ceremony in December.

“I need you to focus on the discipline," Hines told families who watched a martial arts performance at New B.O.Y.'s annual awards ceremony in December. "Forget the technique, because you’ve got young people up here at varied levels of experience. But just look at how together they try to be.”

At the ceremony, boys in the martial arts program came up to the stage. Like a drill sergeant, Hines made the students answer him back, repeatedly:

“Who do you believe in?” he shouts. “Myself,” they answer.

“Who do you love?”

“Myself.”

Read the Axios Indianapolis story here.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Arika Herron is a reporter for Axios Indianapolis. You can reach her at Arika.Herron@axios.com.

Christel House expands postsecondary support program to traditional public, charter schools

2024-05-10T11:00:00+00:00

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When JayLah Edmondson’s grades and mental health started to decline in the fall, the University of Indianapolis student reached out to the same counselor who helped her through high school.

She was failing her classes, she told Kara Moreland, a college and career administrator for the network of Christel House charter schools in Indianapolis. Edmondson remembers what she told her.

“‘You may be failing at this moment, but I’m glad that you reached out when you did so that way we can get the proper resources and help for the next semester,’” Edmondson recalled Moreland saying.

Moreland, the coach Edmondson had as a student at Christel House Watanabe High School, is part of Christel House International’s College and Careers program that follows students for five years after high school graduation. Its goal is to ensure that students are successful after they graduate high school. Now it’s expanding.

The Christel House International nonprofit network of schools — which runs schools internationally and charter schools in Indianapolis — will partner with four more Indianapolis schools to bring these coaches to their high school students.

The roughly $2.5 million investment — funded through Christel House International and other philanthropic support — will provide coaches at Lawrence North High School, Lawrence Central High School, Herron-Riverside High School, and Irvington Preparatory Academy.

The counselors will support students through at least August 2028.

The investment could help address students’ need for ongoing support after high school graduation in a state that has in recent years pushed to expand both college access and the postsecondary career pipeline.

“What we hope is that this is really building off the great work of these high schools and supporting these students and graduates — as well as supporting state and local goals for postsecondary completion as well as the needs that we see in the job market,” said Caitlin Teague, vice president of programming and services at Christel House International. “It’s really our holistic kind of contribution to be able to work across schools to do what works best for students and for the local community.”

Christel House hopes student counseling program replicates success

The College and Careers program began with Christel House’s school in Venezuela 18 years ago, and launched in its Indianapolis high school with the Class of 2014.

Coaches in the program check in periodically with students even after they leave high school. These check-ins can range from meetings over lunch to coaches visiting the students or students coming back to their high school.

Officials hope the program eventually reaches about 1,800 students. In Lawrence Township, one coach will work with students in the district’s AVID program at both district high schools. The other two participating schools will receive one coach each.

That could mean more support for students facing college or career crises like Edmondson, who worked with her coach to find mental health support and ensure someone on campus could hold her accountable. Because of the help, this spring semester has gone better for her.

“I passed all of my classes,” Edmondson said. “And the resources that we put in place ultimately helped me get to where I am now.”

The Class of 2025 will be the first cohort at these new schools to benefit from coaches that will guide them as they enter college or the workforce.

Christel House officials point to the positive outcomes of the program at Watanabe High School.

Officials point to state data showing that Watanabe graduates from the classes of 2014 through 2017 had higher average rates of employment five years after graduation than Indianapolis Public School graduates and the average for graduates statewide.

Watanabe High School graduates from the Class of 2016 who remain employed in Indiana five years after graduation also have a higher median income than graduates from all 11 Marion County school districts or statewide, according to state data.

The four schools partnering with Christel House are hoping it will help students post-graduation and provide a way to track the success of students long after they’ve left.

“When you’re focused on the day-to-day — we’ve got to get these kids across the stage, we’ve got to get these credits earned, we’ve got to get these tests taken — it can be hard to dedicate the time and the manpower that it takes to support students after graduation,” Deanna Dehner, chief academic officer for the Irvington Community Schools charter network, said at a kickoff for the initiative on Tuesday. (The Irvington charter network includes Irvington Preparatory Academy.)

“This is what we’ve been looking for — the thing we’ve been talking about for years, they’re doing it,” Dehner recalled telling her colleagues. “So let’s work with them and learn from them.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Voter guide: 4 Indiana districts are asking voters for funding in the May primary election

2024-05-01T19:34:29+00:00

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This voter guide was updated May 1 to include Fremont Community Schools’ referendum.

This May, four Indiana school districts will ask voters to approve funding to do things like raise teacher pay, continue programs supported by pandemic relief that will soon expire, and improve school safety.

These ballot measures seeking tax revenue will be on the primary election ballots on May 7 in Blue River Valley Schools, Brown County Schools, Fremont Community Schools, and the Metropolitan School District of Pike Township.

School districts can seek voter approval for referendums to pay for operating costs, as well as construction and safety expenses. They need a simple majority to pass.

The ballot language shows the percentage that school property taxes would increase from the base amount going to schools, not the percentage that property taxes overall would increase.

Additionally, a law enacted last year requires school districts in Marion, St. Joseph, Vanderburg, and Lake counties to share revenue from ballot measures for operating costs with charter schools. That law applies to one district on May 7, Pike Township, which is the first district in Marion County to hold a referendum since this law went into effect.

Here’s what to know about each district’s referendum:

Pike wants to fund pandemic programs, attract teachers

Rate: $0.24 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $14.5 million

For the first time, Pike Township is asking voters to help fund operations. The tax rate would be 24 cents per $100 of net assessed value for eight years.

The ballot measure would fund three key areas: continuing programs and staffing added since the pandemic, attracting and retaining teachers, and school safety and security.

Out of the total funding, $4.5 million would continue programming and keep staff who are supported by federal COVID relief.

The funding would cover everything from 1:1 computing devices and academic interventionists to social workers and a new curriculum to help students cope with traumas outside the classroom. It would support salaries and benefits for nearly 60 staffers.

“The funds are going away, but the needs are still very much there,” said Pike Superintendent Larry Young said.

Another $9 million would help Pike Township offer competitive salaries and attract top educators to the district, Young said. The funding would cover instructional staff, but also custodians and secretaries.

Finally, an estimated $1 million would pay for additional school resource officers and safety personnel to the district, although Young said there’s not a specific number. It would also fund security upgrades, including a security system that multiple people can walk through at once.

Pike must share referendum funds with charter schools that enroll a student living in the district and opt in.

However, 15 charters are seeking to receive money from Pike’s referendum, according to school board documents. If they ultimately do, the schools collectively will receive more than $412,000 annually of the estimated $14.5 million. The largest amounts would go to Indiana Math and Science Academy (roughly $81,000) and Herron Charter (roughly $71,000).

The average assessed value for a homeowner in the school district is $237,200, which means the referendum’s average tax increase would be $295.20 annually.

Property owners can also use this calculator on the Pike Township Schools website to see how much their taxes would change if the ballot measure passes.

Reviving career education, theater in Brown County Schools

Rate: $0.10 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $1,879,051

Brown County schools is seeking a renewal of its 2016 operating referendum, but at a slightly higher rate than before — 10 cents per $100 of assessed property value for eight years, rather than eight cents.

The referendum would generate around $1.9 million in annual revenue for the district, with the bulk of the funding earmarked for salaries, benefits, and programs, according to the district’s spending plan. Around $188,000 will be set aside for programming at a Career Resource Center.

One of the largest expenditures — around $650,000 — is a plan to increase teacher salaries by $5,000 in order to make the district compensation more competitive, according to a district presentation. Their salaries in Brown County schools start at just over $40,000 a year.

Another $255,000 is earmarked for a 5% pay bump for non-certified staff to increase retention, and $356,000 would go to sustaining current and future salary levels.

The remaining $423,000 would fund new positions in special education, career and technical education, arts, and work-based learning. Some of this funding will allow Brown County schools to reinstate career and technical education classes, as well as theater at Brown County High School.

The district enrolled around 1,500 students in 2024 — a drop of over 300 students since 2018. A presentation from the district says that the enrollment drop has meant a loss of $2.3 million in funding, but that costs don’t necessarily decrease when the number of students decreases.

Brown County voters rejected the district’s most recent operating referendum proposal in 2022.

Blue River Valley seeks increase in teacher pay

Property tax rate: $0.19 per $100 of assessed value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $359,594

Blue River Valley Schools, which serves a portion of Henry County, plans to make its teacher pay more competitive if the first ballot measure for operating costs it’s ever put to voters gets approved.

Declining student enrollment and a state-mandated limit on property tax revenue has created a financial strain on the district — particularly in its quest to attract and retain high-quality teachers, the district said in a presentation to voters. Recent enrollment figures from Superintendent Trend McCormick indicate about 570 students, compared to the nearly 700 students it had in 2018-19.

Meanwhile, the $40,000 starting salary for teachers is the lowest among school districts in Henry County and neighboring Wayne County, according to the district.

The district’s average salary of $49,995 is also below the state’s average of $58,531 for 2023.

The district plans to use the additional revenue to increase pay for its roughly 41 teachers by at least $5,000 over two years; it would increase starting salaries to $45,000, McCormick said. The district hopes to offer a $2,500 raise in the fall of 2025 and another $2,500 raise in 2026.

The referendum would be an annual tax increase of $111.27 for a property valued at $138,100, the average residential value for homes in the district, according to the district’s referendum calculator.

Fremont Schools want to attract, retain teachers

Rate: $0.15 per $100 of assessed property value for eight years

Estimated annual revenue: $2,384,719

After voters narrowly rejected the district’s attempt to renew its referendum in 2023, the Fremont Community Schools in Steuben County is trying again with a lower rate.

The district received enough signatures from voters to hold another referendum without the waiting period required by Indiana law.

Due to the district’s debt reduction efforts, many voters may actually see a decrease in their property taxes earmarked for schools, said Superintendent William Stitt, who added that his own taxes would decrease by $60 annually.

The bulk of the 2024 referendum — around $1.66 million — is earmarked for retaining and attracting teachers and staff.

That’s the district’s top priority, Stitt said. While many districts have struggled with labor shortages, Stitt said Fremont schools started the last two years with every position, from teachers to bus drivers, filled.

Without those funds, teachers may face layoffs leading to larger class sizes, according to the district’s referendum materials. Science, special education, and English as a second language positions would be at risk, and programs for at-risk students and gifted and talented students would be reduced.

“We want to keep those people, and that means being competitive and having competitive salaries,” Stitt said.

The district enrolls just under 1,000 students and has 158 teachers and staff, according to its website.

Referendum funds will also help the district maintain its after-school and extracurricular programs, and allow schools to hire new teachers.

Approximately $424,000 will go to academic programming, while the remaining $300,000 is needed to enhance school security according to the district’s spending plan and other materials.

Stitt said this may include an emergency alert system for teachers and staff that does not depend on cell service, which can be spotty in Fremont, he said.

Correction May 7, 2024: A previous version of this story gave an incorrect figure for the annual revenue that Brown County schools’ referendum would raise. It would raise around $1.9 million.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Messy breakup at Indianapolis charter school tees up fight over students, teachers

2024-05-06T21:26:01+00:00

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A charter school is squaring off against its operator in what could turn into a fight over students and staff on the Far Eastside of Indianapolis.

The for-profit operator National Heritage Academies (NHA) is seeking to run Creek Point Academy, a charter school that — if approved by the Indiana Charter School Board — would open in the building that’s currently occupied by Andrew J. Brown Academy.

Meanwhile, Andrew J. Brown has cut ties with NHA in favor of a local nonprofit, and plans to move to a new building in the fall if ongoing attempts to lease the building from NHA fail.

But Andrew J. Brown’s staff are NHA employees, and NHA owns the building that’s currently home to Andrew J. Brown. That could give Creek Point Academy a leg up and simultaneously hamper the charter school named after a local civil rights leader.

The face-off is exacerbating the acrimonious split between NHA and Andrew J. Brown’s school board. The board dropped NHA as the school’s operator amid increasing scrutiny of NHA from the school’s authorizer, the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation. The dispute also underscores how shifting relationships between local charter schools and the groups responsible for them can affect students in different ways.

Charter school boards that oversee their schools can tap operators to run schools on a day-to-day basis. Authorizers provide accountability for the school board and determine whether to renew a school.

Richard Hailey, the chair of Andrew J. Brown’s board, said NHA’s application to open Creek Point represents an attempt to “cannibalize” the existing school. Andrew J. Brown’s board has offered to lease the building from NHA, which has rejected these offers, he said.

“This is hardball,” he said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “This isn’t playing polite.”

NHA said in a statement that the idea that Creek Point and Andrew J. Brown are competing for students does not pass muster, and that children win when there are more successful schools operating.

“While we hope families and staff continue to choose NHA, it is disappointing that the AJB board would want to make that decision for these stakeholders,” NHA said.

Over a dozen current NHA-employed Andrew J. Brown staff members and families spoke in support of Creek Point at a public hearing last week. They argued that keeping a school open in the current facility would provide stability for students.

Terri McLucas, a staff member whose step-children attended the NHA-operated Andrew J. Brown, likened the divide to her own parent’s divorce.

“We’re fighting over the kids,” she said at the public hearing. “And who gets hurt are the children. The adults, y’all gonna be alright. But it’s these babies that come in this building every day looking for us to be there.”

The Indiana Charter School Board’s staff will make a recommendation on whether to approve the authorization of Creek Point ahead of the board’s May 21 meeting. The board, however, rarely approves schools to open in the same year that they apply.

Charter school operator’s management practices scrutinized

Creek Point Academy, which would be a nonprofit, would pay $800,000 to lease the building annually from NHA, according to Creek Point’s application.

That cost, which Hailey said was about the same for Andrew J. Brown, is one of several concerns Andrew J. Brown’s board has highlighted about its partnership with NHA.

Since March 2022, the Office of Education Innovation has twice put the school on notice for deficiencies, including for an Indiana Department of Education investigation that found violations of state special education requirements.

The state later closed the file on the school after the school took corrective action.

Hailey has also expressed concerns about NHA related to financial transparency, staff turnover, academic performance, and a lack of local control.

But Lindsay Lux, president of the Creek Point nonprofit’s founding group, said the board will hold NHA accountable. The board will also be able to select an auditing firm to examine academic and financial practices, she said.

“You don’t have a for-profit business that operates for 30-plus years with 65,000 students if you’re not doing something right,” said Lux, who previously worked with NHA as a consultant.

Andrew J. Brown’s board has also questioned NHA’s ability to boost academic improvement.

As an NHA-operated school, its proficiency rate in math on the 2023 ILEARN exam was 22%, a slight increase from 2022, while the English proficiency rate remained about the same at 21%. These rates were higher than results of many nearby schools, according to Creek Point’s application.

Proficiency rates for the third grade IREAD test, however, dropped from 63.2% in 2022 to 46.8% in 2023.

At the hearing, staff expressed indifference about NHA’s for-profit status, which has also been a point of contention.

Renae Bosserman, a social worker at Andrew J. Brown, said she has received supplies that she said she would have never been able to afford in a traditional public school system.

“Just because you may be a for-profit school, please know we love and care about our babies,” she said.

In a Thursday letter, the Office of Education Innovation urged the Indiana Charter School Board to reject Creek Point’s application.

In addition to concerns about academic performance, OEI director Patrick McAlister also argued that NHA’s funding model leaves unclear how much state funding directly benefits students.

“Coupled with enrollment declines and principal turnover, it’s not clear NHA’s practices prioritize local students and staff over its bottom line,” McAlister wrote.

Andrew J. Brown will offer jobs to classroom faculty

Meanwhile, Andrew J. Brown’s board is trying to assure families and staff that it will continue operating in the city’s northeast side.

The board has secured an alternative facility if negotiations to lease the building from NHA ultimately fail, Hailey said, but is not prepared to make the location public.

A local nonprofit organization, Paramount Schools of Excellence, will manage the school instead of NHA.

The board plans to offer jobs to current classroom faculty but will replace the school’s administration.

It will also host two forums, one for parents and one for staff, later this month to explain its plans.

This story has been updated to include comments from National Heritage Academies.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS adopts new, looser universal dress code in post-pandemic shift

2024-05-01T11:00:00+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools students will have a less-rigid dress code next school year under a new policy designed to reduce disciplinary actions that keep students out of classrooms.

The universal dress code, adopted by the school board last week, states that students in all grade levels must wear closed-toed shoes, pants, shorts, skirts, or dresses that are free of tears and are at least fingertip-length, and a top with sleeves that covers the midriff. Like the current dress code, it includes some restrictions on inappropriate clothing.

The new three-page policy is far less restrictive than the 10-page code last revised in 2018 that dictated acceptable clothing colors and styles in separate rules for elementary and secondary students.

The new code eliminates the old policy’s requirement that elementary students wear collared or turtleneck shirts in solid colors that are tucked into khaki, black, or navy blue pants, skirts, or shorts at all times. In addition, next year’s code will no longer require secondary students to wear solid-colored collared or turtleneck shirts tucked into solid-color pants, shorts, or skirts that aren’t jeans.

The move to change the dress code follows a post-pandemic shift away from dress code enforcement. It also aligns with the board’s recent efforts to adopt policies that promote equity across all student subgroups. The policy states that dress code enforcement should not create disparities or reinforce marginalization of any group, and emphasizes that students should not face unnecessary barriers to classroom attendance due to the code.

“It looks like us prioritizing learning as opposed to what a student is wearing,” Chief Learning Officer Lela Simmons told the school board in February. “Unless there is something that is extremely distracting or potentially unsafe, then we’re not going to prevent a student from learning because of what they’re wearing.”

Since returning to in-person learning, some schools were still enforcing the district’s old dress code while others were more lenient, Simmons told the school board in February. But some schools have also gotten into unnecessary disputes with students over clothing violations that detract from learning, she said.

“I think overall most leaders would prefer not to lean into that because we do want kids to be learning,” Simmons said.

What are the new IPS dress code’s restrictions?

The new dress code still has some restrictions. Students may not wear clothing, jewelry, or personal items that:

are pornographic, contain threats, or promote illegal or violent conduct.
demonstrate an association with a hate group or use hate speech.
intentionally show private parts.
cover the student’s face to the extent that the student cannot be identified (except clothing or headgear worn for a religious or medical purpose).
demonstrate gang association.

The policy allows head coverings worn in observance of a student’s religion. However, bonnets, durags, hats inside the building, and wave caps are not permitted.

Hoodies are allowed provided that staff are able to see the student’s face, Simmons said in February.

Students will not face out-of-school suspension for dress code violations, the new policy states.

For a first offense, a parent or guardian is contacted and the student is directed to cover, change, or remove non-complying clothes.
For a second offense, a parent or guardian is called and the student is once again told to cover, change, or remove non-complying clothes.
For a third offense, a parent or guardian and the student are required to attend a “restorative conference.”

The policy states that students should not be removed from class for a dress code violation unless the clothing creates a “substantial disruption to the educational environment,” poses a hazard, or is part of a student behavior rule violation such as harassment, intimidation, or bullying.

The district is also working on a dress code for staff, according to a spokesperson.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

School 87 parents share prior worries about building’s culture in wake of ‘fight club’ lawsuit

2024-04-26T01:48:25+00:00

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Parents of George Washington Carver Montessori School 87 students demanded more accountability from school board members on Thursday, after sharing that the school’s administration had dismissed concerns about safety and staff morale for months.

Board members for Indianapolis Public Schools on Thursday also agreed to create a special task force that will review each school’s emotional health and culture.

The concerns follow a lawsuit alleging that a teacher encouraged and allowed other students to abuse a 7-year-old student with a disability. The lawsuit references a video of one student attacking another until he begins to cry, with a voice — identified in the lawsuit as that of School 87 teacher Julious Johnican — encouraging the fight. That video has sparked widespread community anger.

The lawsuit refers to the situation as “fight club” discipline. It also alleges that the school’s administration, a substitute teacher, and a behavioral specialist failed to report the abuse that the child repeatedly suffered dating back to August.

Parents at the school board meeting called for mental health services for the students in Johnican’s class who witnessed the alleged abuse. They also brought up multiple instances in which they said concerns over their child’s safety were dismissed, highlighting a problematic culture at School 87.

Kiya Isom, whose daughter was in Johnican’s class, said she reported constant bullying of her daughter to the principal, vice principal, and staff, yet never got any follow-up. Last year, she said, her daughter was pushed on the playground and had to have surgery.

“I’m very upset and I’m disgusted because my job as a parent is to protect my child,” said Isom, who eventually pulled her daughter from the school after another incident. “And I did not do that sending her to School 87.”

Kristen Phair, president of the school’s parent-teacher association, said she saw firsthand Principal Mary Kapcoe’s lack of respect for staff.

“This fall, after HR complaints from parents regarding staff attrition, she pulled me into our office and told me parent negativity was harming our school,” Phair said. “She made it clear that parents’ complaints were irritating and not something she took seriously.”

Over 1,000 people have signed an online petition calling for Kapcoe’s removal.

“As a former public school educator myself who was once a first-year teacher like Johnican, I do not believe this would have happened if we would have had competent school leadership properly supporting, supervising and training our teachers and staff members,” parent Kelly Mosesso told board members.

IPS said in a statement that DCS was notified immediately when it became aware of the behavior alleged in the lawsuit, and that it takes reports of potential abuse and neglect seriously. Kapcoe did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

But as community outrage spread over the past week, the district announced the creation of a student safety task force, a review of policies, clarification on how staff should communicate incidents at school, and an external review of the culture of School 87.

The principal and vice principal will not be on campus during this review, which will feature input from families, the district told families in emails this week.

IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson also sent a direct apology to School 87 parents in an email before the meeting on Thursday.

“You should not have heard about the appalling incident in Mr. Johnican’s classroom from the news — you should have heard it from IPS,” she said in the email. “This apology is long overdue for all of you, but especially for those of you whose children were in Mr. Johnican’s class last fall.”

Johnson outlined other steps that IPS is taking, including a year-long focus group that will help the school transition from K-8 to K-5 and create a positive school climate.

The special task force approved by the board Thursday will be led by independent community leaders and mental health professionals, board member Hope Hampton told parents after their comments.

“The idea is simply to find out the temperature in every building so we don’t find it out another way,” she said, standing to face the parents directly. “And to set a course for how to address what we find.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS board president announces safety task force following School 87 lawsuit over ‘fight club’

2024-04-24T02:12:24+00:00

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The Indianapolis Public Schools board president said the district will create a task force focused on student safety, following the widespread circulation of a video that is part of a lawsuit alleging that a teacher encouraged attacks on a 7-year-old student with a disability.

Board President Angelia Moore said in a statement at Tuesday’s board meeting that the board was shocked and upset by what the video showed. The statement did not reference the lawsuit.

Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said in a video released Wednesday that the district would also have an external partner review its policies and procedures.

“We will further clarify our guidance for all staff, teachers, and administrators regarding follow-up communication of incidents in schools, which is a place where we fell short in this instance and have regrettably caused some families to question their trust in us,” she said.

The lawsuit claims that first-year IPS teacher Julious Johnican orchestrated a “fight club” style of discipline at George Washington Carver Montessori School 87, in which he encouraged and recorded physical abuse that the student — identified as “O.D.” — suffered at the hands of other students.

The complaint references a video that the family’s attorneys say was taken by Johnican and that they believe shows an incident in September.

The video shows one student hitting O.D. repeatedly until he begins to cry, according to the complaint.

“That’s right,” says a teacher, which the lawsuit identifies as Johnican, in the video. “You get him.”

Johnican, who resigned from his position in early November and no longer works in IPS, could not be reached for comment.

Johnican told the Department of Child Services, which the lawsuit states investigated the claims of neglect after O.D.’s mother discovered the video, that O.D. and another student had had issues all year. He said he spoke with administration on what to do with classroom behaviors and management and was told to “utilize all of the resources available,” according to the DCS report.

IPS said in a statement that DCS was notified immediately when it became aware of the behavior alleged in the complaint, and that it takes reports of potential abuse and neglect seriously.

News of the lawsuit sparked an outcry among IPS parents as the video circulated last week.

“This behavior was alarming and hard for anyone to watch, but we know it’s especially close to home for parents and caregivers of IPS students — which includes four of us on this board,” Moore said on Tuesday. “Every Indianapolis family should be able to send their children to school with full confidence that caring adults are looking out for their well being.”

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that it’s investigating an incident at School 87 at the request of the prosecutor’s office.

School 87 parents told Chalkbeat that they did not know about the allegations until media outlets reported it. Some also say that longstanding concerns brought to the school’s administration over teacher turnover, staff morale, behavior, and communication issues have gone unaddressed.

An online petition launched last week demands new leadership at the school.

Moore thanked the community for their input and said it has driven “crucial” conversations on next steps for the district.

“You have been heard, your voices are valued, and ensuring our children’s safety is all of our most important jobs as adults,” Moore said.

On Sunday, the district also informed parents that the principal and vice principal will not be at school while the district gathers information about school climate. Executive Director of Schools Adrienne Kuchik is serving as the school’s leader in the meantime.

The district is also reviewing protocols on how principals communicate with families, Moore said, and is bringing on an “external partner” to interview families at School 87.

“Our promise is to report back to you on this work in 30 days and continue to share ways in which you can get involved,” Moore said.

This story has been updated to include comments from Superintendent Aleesia Johnson.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS plans to transfer school building to charter network in unique facilities deal

2024-04-24T00:39:07+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools hopes to renew its agreements with three KIPP Indy charter schools that are part of the district’s network of autonomous Innovation schools, although officials have identified some academic areas needing improvement.

Additionally, in a unique collaboration between charters and IPS, the school board will vote Thursday on a plan to transfer ownership of the Julian Coleman School 110 building to KIPP Indy. IPS would also provide $10 million for a building expansion at the site, with the remainder of the cost to be covered by KIPP Indy.

The report by IPS officials recommends renewing its Innovation Network agreements with Unite Elementary, KIPP College Prep Middle School, and KIPP Legacy High School. Their renewals, which the full board will vote on Thursday, would last for five years. The schools’ state exam results and other academic indicators were mixed when compared with similar schools and IPS as a whole, the report found.

The transfer of the School 110 building, where Unite Elementary and College Prep are located, represents a striking collaboration between IPS and local charters. That’s because school facilities have frequently been the subject of disputes between the two parties. In recent years, IPS enrollment has dipped and the district has closed several schools, while charters in general have sought new space as their enrollment has grown.

KIPP Indy officials say the building addition will provide space for a school that has long offered a stable educational option in a community where multiple schools have closed. Right now, the building is operating at 140% of capacity.

The two schools in the building serve around 1,100 students combined.

Both IPS and KIPP Indy officials say the agreement represents a strong collaborative partnership.

“IPS is going to leverage unique sources that they have access to to invest, and we’re going to work hard on our end to identify resources as well,” KIPP Indy Executive Director Andy Seibert told Chalkbeat, referring to the agreement for the School 110 building. “And together we’ll do it.”

KIPP hopes for more classrooms, common areas

The School 110 building, which was rated in poor condition based on an analysis of district facilities, is already set to receive roughly $18.5 million in capital improvements funded through the referendum that voters passed last year.

That funding will cover deferred maintenance needs such as electrical and mechanical updates, roof repairs, gym improvements, and new flooring.

But Seibert hopes the proposed building expansion will add about 10 classrooms and more common spaces like a “cafenasium” — a combined gym and cafeteria. He anticipates construction to begin in the spring of 2025.

Plans and details of the building addition — including its total size, layout, and number of stories — have not yet been finalized. KIPP Indy would need to meet several obligations — including operating at at least 50% capacity and remaining in good standing with its authorizer — in order to be eligible to retain building ownership.

Math, English, and literacy results are mixed

The IPS staff report on the three schools’ academic performance found some areas where they outperform their peers, but other areas where they fell behind.

At Unite Elementary, the percentage of students reaching proficiency in both the math and English section of the state’s 2022-23 ILEARN exam was just above the average proficiency rates of schools with similar demographics, the report said. Proficiency for Unite’s Black and Hispanic students, in particular, was higher than similarly situated schools.

Yet the school’s IREAD proficiency rates fell below the average of comparative schools for both the 2022-23 and 2021-22 school years.

ILEARN proficiency rates at College Prep are also lower than the comparison school average, including for Black students.

Suspensions at both Unite Elementary and College Prep are also higher than the district and comparison school averages.

Seibert acknowledged a need for improvement, but said he hopes the network’s track record in student growth will lead to increases in proficiency.

Legacy High School, too, has a graduation rate higher than the IPS and statewide average.

Brian Dickey, the district’s executive director of portfolio strategy, pointed to the elementary and middle school’s increasing enrollment as a positive.

“The overall sustainability from an enrollment standpoint I think is just a testament to the work that the leadership, the board, has put in to building that trust within the community,” he told the IPS school board Tuesday.

KIPP Indy’s Innovation agreement with IPS is the first to come before the board since lawmakers changed how much the district can charge Innovation schools for goods and services.

It also comes as the district prepares to lose an estimated $4 million in property tax revenues to charter schools under another state law passed last legislative session.

KIPP Indy’s renewal agreements say IPS will provide transportation for Unite and College Prep students who live in Zones 2 and 3 of the district’s new enrollment zones. IPS will also provide districtwide transportation for Legacy High School.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Parents worry about student safety in IPS after classroom ‘fight club’ video emerges

2024-04-19T14:45:48+00:00

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Parents are demanding more transparency from Indianapolis Public Schools following news of a lawsuit alleging that a former teacher at George Washington Carver Montessori School 87 encouraged “acts of violence” against a 7-year-old student with a disability.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Marion Superior Court by Corrie Horan on behalf of her minor son identified as “O.D.,” claims that first-year IPS teacher Julious Johnican orchestrated a “fight club” style of discipline in which he encouraged and recorded physical abuse that O.D. suffered at the hands of other students.

Sparking parent concern is a video included in news reports in which one student is on top of and hitting O.D., who eventually begins crying as the other student says “don’t mess with me” repeatedly. (The story was first reported by Fox 59.) Attorneys for Horan believe the video is of an incident recorded in September.

“That’s right,” says a teacher, who is identified in the lawsuit as Johnican, in the video. “You get him.”

Attorneys for the student framed the lawsuit as an attempt to eradicate abuse in Indiana’s schools, and emphasized the importance of teacher training and oversight. Some School 87 parents, meanwhile, say it adds to longstanding concerns they’ve had about teacher turnover, behavioral problems, and communication — and that they are planning to withdraw their students from the school next year.

Johnican, who resigned from his position in early November and no longer works in IPS, could not be reached for comment.

IPS said in a Thursday statement that it does not tolerate the type of behavior alleged in the complaint and takes complaints of potential neglect and abuse seriously. The district did not respond to questions from Chalkbeat about concerns raised by parents about issues like teacher turnover and transparency.

“When IPS learned of the teacher’s conduct, the Department of Child Services (DCS) was immediately notified, and the teacher was removed from the classroom and suspended,” the district said. “The teacher had no further contact with students.”

But the lawsuit claims that the school’s vice principal, a substitute teacher who witnessed the attacks against the child, and a school behavioral specialist in whom O.D. confided all failed to report the abuse that O.D. began recounting as early as the first month of school.

Parents at School 87 say they were not made aware of the allegations against the teacher when he resigned in November and found out through the news on Wednesday.

“My trust in the school was betrayed,” said Samantha Engdahl, whose daughter was in Johnican’s class at the beginning of the year. She said the school did not send out notice of Johnican’s departure until Nov. 21, weeks after his resignation.

“You think that your kid is going to school and that that’s a safe place,” Engdahl added.

Lawsuit claims repeated concerns about abuse were dismissed

O.D. came home reporting abuse as early as the first few weeks of school, according to the lawsuit. O.D’.s mother also reported concerns of her child being attacked and bullied in the classroom to Johnican beginning in August.

“His teacher, Johnican, dismissed these accounts when he was repeatedly contacted by the parent as behavioral issues and indicated that O.D. was lying and/or mentally ill,” the complaint states.

Johnican inadvertently showed O.D.’s parents a video of one attack during a parent-teacher conference that took place around Nov. 1, when he was trying to show them a video of the classroom environment, according to the lawsuit. O.D.’s mother reported the video to the school secretary, and the Department of Child Services later opened an investigation, per the complaint.

During the DCS investigation, O.D. reported two other instances in October — one in which Johnican held him down while a first grade student hit him in the face, and another in which he said Johnican held his shoulders while another student punched him in the stomach and kicked him in the legs.

“The environment created by IPS manifested in escalating symptoms of anxiety and depression, deeply affecting this disabled seven year old’s educational journey,” the complaint states.

The district said in its statement that it was unaware of any fights sanctioned or encouraged in this way until the parent emailed the principal at 6:58 p.m. on Oct. 30. Upon reviewing the email the next morning, Principal Mary Kapcoe contacted DCS and IPS human resources, the district said. Johnican was removed from the building that day.

Personnel records show Johnican resigned Nov. 2, the day the district said it interviewed him as part of its investigation.

“The employee resigned during that meeting before IPS could initiate termination proceedings, which the district was prepared to do based on the information received from the internal investigation,” the district said.

On Thursday, IMPD said there is an open investigation of a teacher at School 87 allowing students to fight and filming it.

IPS stresses commitment to student safety

In emails sent to School 87 parents on Wednesday evening, both Superintendent Aleesia Johnson and Kapcoe stressed that student safety is a top priority.

“I share your outrage at this video, and assure you that IPS schools maintain an unwavering commitment to keeping our students safe,” Johnson said in the email.

In her email to parents, Kapcoe said administrators took immediate action when they first learned about the incident on Oct. 31.

“Student safety is a top priority at George Washington Carver School 87 and at all Indianapolis Public Schools. We expect all IPS employees to ensure the well-being of all students,” Kapcoe said in her email to parents. “Our teachers remain committed to ensuring all our kids feel loved and cared for at school. Our hearts go out to the families involved.”

But the messages have not been enough to quell concerns from parents, some of whom plan to speak about the issue at the IPS school board meeting next week.

Some parents say they’ve brought other concerns to administration in previous months over behavior and teacher turnover at the school that have not been addressed.

On Thursday, School 87 parent Megan Kriebel was trying to decide where to send her two younger children next school year. (Her children were not in Johnican’s classroom.)

“I know so many families that have met (with staff over concerns) about their kid’s classroom and they were kind of gaslit. My heart just breaks for that family,” Kriebel said.

Laurie Pierce said she had just made the decision to pull her kids from School 87 right before news broke of the incident.

Pierce said she also met with the principal last school year to express concerns about teacher turnover, as well as the lack of staff attention and behavioral issues she saw while volunteering at the school one morning. Those concerns were also not addressed, she said.

Like other parents, Pierce was concerned about the lack of communication.

“She did not detail anything that she did for the children. That’s what is so hard,” she said about Kapcoe’s Wednesday email. “I feel like it’s all about policy and protocol and test scores and we’re never hearing about how we’re taking care of the children. What was done for this classroom immediately after this happened? Were those parents communicated with?”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

State approves Indianapolis school’s switch from charter to private, making it eligible for vouchers

2024-04-10T20:07:01+00:00

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An Indianapolis charter school with a checkered academic record will operate as a private school this fall, a switch that will allow it to accept state tuition vouchers while skirting its previous accountability standards.

With no discussion, the State Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to give provisional accreditation to the Genius School, which serves a little over 100 K-6 students on the city’s east side, as a private school.

The approval is another lifeline for the charter school, which was initially named Ignite Achievement Academy and tasked by Indianapolis Public Schools to improve an underperforming school near the city’s Riverside neighborhood. It also means the school won’t have to follow accountability standards set by charter authorizers, which are tasked with overseeing charters and holding them accountable.

The move by the Genius School also comes at a time when the number of students using vouchers to attend private schools is skyrocketing. Indiana lawmakers changed the state’s Choice Scholarships program last year to significantly expand the number of eligible students.

The school did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

State Board of Education member Scott Bess said in an interview with Chalkbeat after the vote that he was aware of the school’s history, but said state law provides a narrow set of criteria that the board can use for deciding whether to accredit a private school. He said now the school’s fate will essentially be left up to parents and the school choice market.

“I do know they have a very loyal subset of parents and students who would follow them anywhere,” Bess said of the Genius School, adding that the key question now is whether the school will be able “to get enough parent and student retention and expansion to make sure that they’re viable.”

The Genius School’s transition to operating as a private school was made easier several years ago by state lawmakers. In 2017, legislators changed Indiana law to allow the state board to accredit a private school as soon as it begins operating, allowing them to begin accepting state-supported vouchers faster.

State law also requires voucher-eligible schools to administer state tests.

The state’s “performance-based” accreditation system has not been fully developed. Instead, the state has been using an application review and submission process outlined in a 2021 memo while it drafts rules for this system, granting schools “provisional” accreditation that still grants them access to vouchers.

A school still must apply for and be approved to participate in the voucher program, according to the Indiana Department of Education. The application window for 2024-25 is open and closes on Sept. 1.

The school plans to operate at New Life Worship Center in Pike Township, charging a tuition of $9,010, according to a memo from the department’s Office of School Accountability.

But preliminary voucher amounts for students in the Metropolitan School District of Pike Township, where the school will be relocating, and Indianapolis Public Schools — where the school currently is and where families may choose to transfer from — will probably provide much less than the Genius School’s planned tuition.

Each Pike Township student will receive an estimated $6,829 in voucher awards in the first award period for the 2024-25 school year. Each IPS student will receive an estimated $7,233.

A majority of the Genius School’s current students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, an indicator that they come from low-income families. So it’s unclear whether it will continue serving a similar student population in its new location and with its new tuition cost.

Ignite’s turnaround work in Indianapolis did not go well. IPS eventually removed Ignite from its autonomous network of Innovation Schools, citing low academic performance and staff turnover. The school also faced a discrimination lawsuit that it eventually settled.

The school remained open but relocated, and in 2022 it changed its name to the Genius School. On probation from its authorizer, the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation, the school sought charter authorization from Education One at Trine University instead. That authorizer rejected the school’s application late last year.

The school eventually plans to enroll a maximum of 250 students by its fifth year, according to the memo from the Office of School Accountability.

The school said in its accreditation petition submitted to the state board that it will likely serve “predominantly minority children.” It will also prioritize a “holistic curriculum” that will “encompass socio-emotional learning and cultural enrichment.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Transportation changes are coming to Indianapolis Public Schools next year. Here’s what to expect.

2024-04-09T18:47:30+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools parents can’t just assume their child’s regular school bus will show up at the bus stop next year.

That’s because families in the school district will be required to opt in to transportation. IPS hopes this move will create more efficiency as it switches to four broad enrollment zones that allow families to choose from more schools with more specialized academic offerings. (See which zone you reside in here.)

The change to transportation policy and new district enrollment policies are some of the major changes taking effect for the 2024-25 school year, as the district continues to roll out its Rebuilding Stronger strategy.

While many districts have faced transportation staffing challenges in recent years, IPS reports that it is fully staffed with bus drivers this year. The district recently renewed its agreement with First Student, which provides student transportation, for another three years.

Still, district officials anticipate a short-term challenge in transportation next year, when they predict more students will take the bus. This is in part because the district will offer transportation to certain eligible families who live outside of their school’s zone for next year only in an effort to curb instability for students.

Here are some answers to questions about IPS and transportation next school year.

How do I opt-in for IPS transportation?

When families register for their IPS school for 2024-25, there will be a section to fill out an opt-in form. Parents can access this on their PowerSchool portal account.

Do Innovation school students need to opt-in for transportation?

Some schools in the district’s Innovation Network of autonomous schools use transportation services through IPS. Families at these Innovation schools will also need to fill out an opt-in form. Check here to see whether your Innovation school uses IPS transportation.

Does my IPS student have to walk to school?

Students who qualify as “walkers” will not be eligible for IPS transportation and so will not be assigned a bus stop. A student is a walker based on how far away they live from their school. The parameters for qualifying as a walker are:

K-5 students living 1 mile or less from school.
Students in grades 6-8 living 1.25 miles or less from school.
High school students living 1.5 miles or less from school.

Students who do not qualify as “walkers” but live in the same zone as the school they are attending will qualify for transportation.

Will my IPS student get transportation for before- or after-school care?

Students in grades K-8 will receive transportation to before- or after-school care sites only if they live in the same zone as the school. The site must also be in the same zone as the school, and the bus stop must be at the same location in the morning and the evening.

Is my IPS student eligible for transportation through IndyGo?

The district is still reviewing eligibility parameters for students who would take the public bus IndyGo system to school for 2024-25. The district should have more details on who qualifies in late April.

Currently, high school students who walk no more than 0.7 miles from their home to the IndyGo bus stop to school are eligible to ride IndyGo — as long as there are no transfers and the bus ride is no more than 30 minutes. There are about 500 IndyGo riders this school year in the district’s four traditional high schools, which have roughly 5,500 students this year, according to state enrollment records.

But IPS Chief Operations Officer Wililam Murphy said the district wants to explore widening those requirements so more students can qualify.

Will I get transportation if I transfer to an IPS school mid-year?

Families transferring to an IPS school in the middle of the school year can still receive transportation if they qualify.

However, the district cautions that it could take four to eight weeks to receive a bus assignment.

“The closer we are to the start of the year, the harder it will be to route you quickly,” Murphy said, adding that early October and January tend to be “bottleneck periods” when more families enter the district. In those periods, it may take longer for a bus placement, he said.

Can I get IPS transportation outside of my school’s zone?

Families that live outside the zone of their school may still qualify for transportation only for the 2024-25 school year if they meet one of two circumstances.

Students who live outside of the zone of the school they currently attend may receive transportation for 2024-25 if they plan to attend the same school next year. They must already receive transportation to their school, where they must stay enrolled for the remainder of this year. They also must remain at their current address.

Students who plan to attend the middle school that their current school automatically feeds to under the Rebuilding Stronger enrollment patterns — even if they live outside of the zone for that middle school — can also receive transportation for 2024-25.

For example, a seventh grade student at Butler Lab School 60 living in Zone 2 can receive the one-year reprieve for transportation to Northwest Middle School, the Zone 1 feeder school for School 60.

These exceptions are to ensure students can stay with their classmates and experience as few transitions as possible.

“The north star is: how can we avoid forcing to have a child to have two changes in the course of two years — a move to a different middle school, and then a move to a high school?” Murphy said.

Beyond 2024-25, however, families eligible for these exceptions will not receive transportation.

Where do I get more information?

The district says the quickest way for families to get the most accurate transportation information is by contacting your child’s school directly. Families can also contact their child’s school for help enrolling in transportation. The district also has a frequently asked questions page on its website.

Families can also call the IPS Service Center at 317-226-4000 or submit a transportation inquiry on the district’s Let’s Talk web page.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

With no school, Indianapolis students gather to watch total solar eclipse

2024-04-08T22:27:54+00:00

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Raki Dem rolled up to the Crispus Attucks High School parking lot with her friends before traveling to watch the school’s baseball game Monday evening.

Before balls and strikes, though, came glasses, which Dem — a senior — and her classmates pulled on to safely watch the total solar eclipse.

“Look at it!” junior DaRhonda Woods shouted at the group just two minutes before the moon completely blocked the sun. “Look! You got to.”

Crispus Attucks High School students, Nyla Marshall, DaRhonda Woods, and Aunesty Williams, view the total solar eclipse in the parking lot of Crispus Attucks Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana on Monday April 8, 2024. The solar eclipse event at The Crispus Attucks Museum gives a free lesson to students at Indiana Public Schools (IPS) in history and astronomy while honoring Crispus Attucks legacy.

The eclipse emptied out many schools in the Indianapolis area on Monday — in fact, all 11 of the Marion County school districts were either closed or had a virtual learning day. But students across Indianapolis still found ways to enjoy the event.

Across the parking lot from Dem and her friends, junior Jabreel Abdullah watched the eclipse with his younger brother and sister, eighth grader Maijeur and fifth grader Eryss. They were among the roughly two dozen attendees who celebrated the eclipse with a program at the Crispus Attucks Museum that paid homage to African tradition and heritage.

Eryss Abdullah,10, left, and Maijeur Abdullah, 14, poses for portraits wearing solar eclipse viewing glasses at the Crispus Attucks Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana on Monday April 8, 2024. The solar eclipse event at The Crispus Attucks Museum gives a free lesson to students at Indiana Public Schools (IPS) in history and astronomy while honoring Crispus Attucks legacy.

During the museum program, Yoruba priest Anthony Artis cleansed the atmosphere hours before the eclipse with a gourd covered in beads, known as a “shekere.” He encouraged attendees to call out names of ancestors in a type of invocation.

As the moon crept closer to the sun, 10-year-old Eryss slipped out of the museum and slid on her glasses. She and her brothers, who are home-schooled, waited for the moon to blot out the sun at precisely 3:07 p.m.

As downtown was covered in darkness, Dem and her classmates pulled out their phones, shouting in excitement.

Crispus Attucks High School students view the eclipse before totality outside of the high school in Indianapolis, Indiana on Monday April 8, 2024. The solar eclipse event at The Crispus Attucks Museum gives a free lesson to students at Indiana Public Schools (IPS) in history and astronomy while honoring Crispus Attucks legacy.

“Oh that’s tight!” one exclaimed as fireworks rang off in the distance.

As totality ended and the parking lot grew brighter, Artis reflected on the importance of remembering ancestors who experienced similar eclipse events in many years past. What happened today was just a continuation of what happened many years ago, he said.

Total solar eclipse in Indianapolis, Indiana on Monday April 8, 2024.

“It’s a new beginning. The putting out of the old, the old sun has been put out, figuratively speaking. And then the new sun comes up,” he said. “And so what are you going to do with that newfound energy?”

For Dem and her friends, that new energy was spent packing up from the Crispus Attucks High School parking lot to cheer on their friends at the baseball game.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis charter school seeks to go private so it can accept vouchers

2024-04-05T15:04:48+00:00

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An Indianapolis charter school with a checkered track record wants to become a private school that accepts students who use state vouchers.

The Genius School, a K-6 school on the city’s east side, is petitioning the State Board of Education for accreditation as a non-public school. State law requires private schools that accept vouchers to be accredited by the State Board of Education or a recognized accreditation agency.

The board has the item on its agenda for a meeting on Wednesday.

Following a meeting of the school’s board of directors on Thursday, Genius School Head of School Shy-Quon Ely II confirmed that the school is exploring its options as a “non-public” school.

The move is the latest attempt by the school to stay open despite its rocky history. It would allow the school to operate without the oversight of a separate entity — its charter authorizer — tasked with holding the school accountable. The Genius School’s decision also comes as the number of students eligible for and using private school vouchers has grown dramatically in the state.

Originally known as Ignite Achievement Academy, the charter school joined the IPS Innovation Network of autonomous schools in 2017. It was tasked with turning around the underperforming Elder Diggs School 42.

But the district removed Ignite from the network after the 2021-22 school year, citing poor academic performance and high staff turnover.

The school later renamed itself the Genius School and moved locations to a shared space with GEO Next Generation High School. The mayor’s Office of Education Innovation, the school’s authorizer, allowed the school to continue operating under the new name but placed it on probationary status in the 2021-22 school year.

The school then sought authorization from Trine University’s charter authorizing arm, Education One. The Education One board rejected the application in December, citing concerns with enrollment targets and financial projections.

The Genius School’s charter expires at the end of the 2023-24 school year. Ely said the school currently has more than 100 students — up from the 74 the school had last school year, according to state records. Roughly 91% of the school’s population qualified for free or reduced-price meals last year.

A spokesperson for the Office of Education Innovation did not comment on the school’s move to become a private school and accept vouchers, and said only that decisions about accreditation are left up to the state board of education.

In 2017, legislators changed Indiana law to make it easier and faster for private schools to become eligible to accept state-supported vouchers. The law allows the state board to accredit a private school as soon as it begins operating.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana is expanding college access, but are students actually prepared to earn a degree?

2024-03-25T11:00:00+00:00

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As a teenager, Mike Utley’s college prep often came via Google and Reddit.

He had few people he felt he could turn to for advice, so he searched for answers online. He also reviewed pamphlets and went on college visits — but even the tours, he said, felt like going to the zoo and looking at an exhibit through glass.

“The concept of what this thing was was so foreign to me, that every part of college life was an adjustment,” said Utley, who graduated from Indianapolis’ Shortridge High School in 2018 and was a first-generation college student. “Every single part.”

Once he enrolled at Indiana University Bloomington, several factors made life challenging. His mother was battling cancer. He switched majors multiple times within the Kelley School of Business without finding a subject he was passionate about studying. And looking back, he said, he didn’t have a good understanding of his own mental health.

He dropped out in 2021, during the second semester of his junior year. In fact, of the Indianapolis Public Schools students like Utley who graduated in 2018 and enrolled in a public, in-state four-year college within a year of graduation, just 23.6% graduated on time, according to data from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. Fewer than 6 in 10 made it to their second year at any public state institution.

Mike Utley withdrew from Indiana University Bloomington in his junior year in 2021, facing a variety of challenges and the passing of his mother. As a first-generation college student, he faced a number of hurdles trying to navigate higher education. "The concept of what this thing was was so foreign to me, that every part of college life was an adjustment," he said. "Like every single part."

In Indianapolis and across the state, education officials and legislators have enacted several initiatives designed to expand college access and increase college enrollment. Students frequently hear about the benefits of higher education. But the experiences of people like Utley raise a key question: Are students actually prepared enough to finish it, even if their academic records suggest they are?

The recent expansion of college-access programs might make the answer to that question more important.

Indiana students in seventh and eighth grade who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch are now automatically enrolled in the state’s 21st Century Scholars program, which offers college tuition for qualifying students (Utley participated in this program). Every high school student in Indiana must now fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

And this year, IU Indianapolis will admit its first round of IPS students through an automatic admissions program for students with a GPA of at least 3.0.

Research suggests that college completion in Indiana and elsewhere is often hardest for students of color, students from low-income families, and those who are the first in their family to attend college. Researchers and experts say students withdraw from college for several reasons, and students of color in particular can struggle to feel at home on many campuses.

Low college completion rates are rooted in societal inequities that affect students beginning in prekindergarten and pose major challenges to K-12 schools, said Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy for the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute.

“There are inequities that are not getting addressed in K-12 among different populations of students by race and income, and those inequities perpetuate themselves in higher education,” Cook said, “even if students are able to be successful in high school to the point where they can get admitted into a four-year college.”

Both IPS — which says different data paints a better picture for its graduates — and higher education institutions say they’re working on the issue in various ways.

Officials in the college prep space must focus on systemic issues like homelessness, a lack of transportation, and food insecurity that can affect students’ emotional and social readiness for college, said Joe Zachery Jr., the director of the College Prep Institute at the Center for Leadership Development in Indianapolis.

“Yes, you were exposed to good education,” he said. “But you’re not really focused on that because you’re having a difficult time just surviving on a daily basis.”

Leaving high school unprepared for college

Utley, who is Black, said his family didn’t have a lot growing up. He and his siblings moved between shelters and other transitional housing with their mother.

But he still did well in IPS. He attended Sidener Academy, the district’s school for high-ability students. He did International Baccalaureate classes at Shortridge High School, where he said college enrollment was heavily stressed. He said he had a high school GPA of about 3.8.

Academically, he said, his high school experience prepared him for college. But in other ways, it did not.

He wishes someone had helped him understand college majors and careers, or how to take an effective gap year and explore career options. In general, he said, he needed someone to demystify adulthood.

“My high school was real big on, ‘This is a college prep school,’ so I understand why … they were so adamant on college enrollment, and that’s it,” he said. “But that’s not it.”

IPS officials say college completion rates for graduates have improved since 2018, based on National Student Clearinghouse data that includes private, public, and out-of-state colleges. But they have also boosted efforts at college preparation since Utley’s graduation in 2018.

These include the 2018 launch of Future Centers at each of the district’s four traditional high schools, and the creation of a Postsecondary Readiness team around the same time.

The goal of these centers, officials say, is to prepare students for college, employment, or enlistment in the military. Next school year, the district hopes to boost staffing at these centers by adding a college and career counselor and a college specialist.

But students from challenging circumstances like many in IPS, where nearly 70% of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals due to their low-income backgrounds, need not just academic but also social support, said Carey Dahncke, executive director of the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis.

Dahncke’s center runs the Urban College Acceleration Network, which helps high schools in IPS and other districts become Early College High Schools accredited through the center. These schools not only offer dual credit options for future academic success, but also help students with early planning so they understand how higher education works and college coursework, Dahncke said.

“The theory with early college is if you understand the gaps, the problems that exist, you can put interventions in place to get a different outcome,” Dahncke said.

‘I wanted to make money because I was poor’

Enamored by the prestige and reputation of IU’s business school, he chose to enroll there — even though he naturally gravitated toward art.

“I wanted to make money because I was poor, and I’m going to the business school — that’s where they make all the money,” he said. “That was the mentality.”

The pressure of being a first-generation student and attending a prestigious program also piled on.

“You owe it to your community, you owe it to your parents, you owe it to your siblings, you owe it to the next generation to be successful,” he said. “Every decision I made until I was a sophomore was in relation to that pressure.”

Utley’s home life made college even harder: He frequently returned to Indianapolis to see his mother, who was battling cancer, and at times that led him to miss classes. Then his mother passed away in 2020. All these factors culminated in his withdrawal from IU.

At IU Bloomington, Black students complete college on time at the same campus at a lower rate than white or Asian students. The trend is similar at other public university campuses where many IPS students go, including Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and Ball State. (IUPUI will split into IU Indianapolis and Purdue University in Indianapolis later this year.)

Among students who, like Utley, entered IU Bloomington in 2018, only 51.5% of Black students finished a degree from the university on time, compared to 71.1% of white students, according to data from the higher education commission.

And Indiana’s completion rates for students from low-income backgrounds, even those who receive financial aid through the 21st Century Scholars program, are also lower than for their wealthier peers.

“Higher education does treat students like adults,” said Vasti Torres, the university’s interim vice provost. “But we also understand that we have to explain how the system works.”

IU Bloomington offers programs for students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. That includes a program called Groups that brings low-income students together in the summer before their freshman year, and a pre-college summer business program for students of color.

As part of a long-term strategic plan, the university will also start having advisers work with students who have not yet declared a major, Torres said. And beginning this year, Torres will teach a first-year seminar that reviews how students can engage with the campus community.

Higher education officials also hope programs such as the new dual admissions program between Ivy Tech and IU Indianapolis will boost college completion by allowing students to first attend community college before transitioning to a four-year institution. But historically, Indiana’s outcomes for that general approach haven’t necessarily been encouraging.

IU Indianapolis, which admitted 121 IPS students this year through its automatic admissions initiative, has also made its summer Bridge program mandatory for all incoming freshmen. The program, which used to be voluntary, runs one week prior to the start of the semester and helps students acclimate to the college environment. It’s also trying to make its advising more proactive.

Helping students help themselves

When Zachery talks to college admissions offices, he frequently hears them stress the importance of having students ready to advocate and act for themselves.

That’s what programs at the College Prep Institute try to do, from teaching them financial literacy to the importance of showing up on time to class. The center’s low-cost programming primarily serves students of color, Zachery said.

There’s no single person or organization Utley blames for his withdrawal from college. He knows where he needed help, and he knows which things he would’ve done differently. Today, he’s considering going to Ivy Tech to get an associate’s degree.

Utley, who is now 24, frequently calls his brother DeWayne, a freshman at IU Bloomington. He tells him: Just go to class. Learn what you want to learn about for four years. Know that the pressure is not all real.

“Your only allegiance, really, in college is to yourself,” he said. “I don’t want him to feel like he has to pursue a thing to make his older siblings happy.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS adopts $456 million budget for next year as district focuses on literacy, revamped academics

2024-03-21T23:35:25+00:00

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The Indianapolis Public Schools board approved an operating budget for next school year that will prioritize staff pay raises, literacy programming, support for English language learners, and the district’s Rebuilding Stronger reorganization plan.

The projected $456 million spending plan adopted by the IPS board Thursday is $10 million more than projected spending for this school year. The figure excludes any debt that the district pays annually for capital expenses.

The board approved the budget for the 2024-25 school year by a unanimous vote.

Here are four main takeaways from the budget:

Budget priorities include teacher pay, literacy

Raises outlined in new teacher and support staff contracts approved this school year are one of the district’s funding priorities. Teachers received an average 3% increase in pay in the two-year contract approved in 2023, plus stipends for hard-to-fill positions such as special education and English as a New Language teachers. Support staff received an average increase of 7.4%, boosting starting pay from $11.01 per hour to $16.01.

The district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan is also a top priority. The plan will expand specialized academic programming like STEM, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia learning models into schools throughout the district. It also requires training for staff in these academic models.

It has also required financial incentives for staff and marketing for families to entice both parties to stay in the district, as the plan calls for the break up of K-8 schools that will send students and staff to new locations next year.

Other budget priorities include funding early literacy efforts as lawmakers have required districts to adopt curriculum based on the science of reading. Starting next year, third-grade students who do not pass the state’s IREAD test must also be held back in accordance with a new law.

The district this year launched training for staff on UFLI, a new reading skills curriculum, and LETRS, which also trains staff on the science of reading.

IPS also hopes to reorganize its English as a New Language program, a plan that calls for $2,000 stipends for teachers who lead these efforts in their school buildings.

Millions in property taxes will go to charter schools

The district will lose out on a projected $4 million in property taxes to charter schools in fiscal year 2025.

That’s due to a statute lawmakers passed last year dealing with charters and taxes. The 2023 law requires school districts in Marion County and three other counties to share increases in property tax revenues proportionally with charter schools in the county that enroll students living in the district.

And under a new law passed this year, IPS is limited in how much it may charge autonomous schools in its Innovation Network, the majority of which are charter schools. The district can’t charge more than the charter school receives in property tax revenues.

Chief Financial Officer Weston Young said in a statement that the district is still evaluating what the law passed this year will mean for IPS.

Enrollment and per-pupil funding projected to increase

IPS predicts a slight increase in the number of students in its non-charter schools, from 21,128 this school year to 21,420 next school year. Innovation charters are estimated to grow from 10,285 to 10,335 students.

Enrollment figures are critical for school districts, which receive funding based on student enrollment.

Per-pupil funding from the state includes a baseline amount plus more funding, known as “complexity” funding, for students from low-income backgrounds or those in foster care. Per-pupil funding for IPS stood at $8,060 this school year and is projected to be $8,170 next year, an increase of roughly 1.4%.

But IPS has seen a smaller proportion of its state support come from complexity funding in recent years, as the state has increased base funding for all districts.

The result, according to the district’s analysis, is that IPS has seen a smaller increase in per-pupil amounts from the state than its surrounding suburban districts.

IPS predicts financial crunch in a few years

Officials anticipate ending the fiscal year in June with $120 million in cash on hand.

The district still predicts a deficit in the cash balance for its education and operations fund around 2027, after federal COVID relief funds expire in September 2024 and money from a tax increase approved by voters in 2018 expires in 2026.

Officials have stressed that the district must make important decisions to alleviate the predicted deficit. The Rebuilding Stronger plan closed six schools operating under capacity and moved students into other schools in order to operate more efficiently.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Third Purdue Polytechnic school in Indianapolis delays opening

2024-03-14T22:00:49+00:00

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The opening of a third Purdue Polytechnic High School in Indianapolis is being delayed again — now until 2025.

It is one of three schools that Education One, the charter school authorizing arm of Trine University in Angola, approved to open in Indianapolis in the next few years.

Purdue Polytechnic High School West will open somewhere on the west side of Indianapolis within Indianapolis Public Schools borders, but the exact location remains unclear, according to its application with Education One. It initially planned to open in fall of 2023, and then delayed its start until the fall of 2024 while searching for a facility.

The school still does not yet have a site in hand, so the start date will again be pushed back to fall of 2025, Lindsay Omlor, the executive director of Education One, said at Education One’s board meeting on Thursday.

Purdue Polytechnic said in a statement that it does not have any expansion updates at this time.

“We remain committed to expanding high-quality seats, especially for our underrepresented populations,” the network said.

Purdue Polytechnic sought approval from Education One after the Indianapolis Charter School Board rejected its pitch to open in Pike Township amid strong public pushback. The Purdue charter network already has two high school campuses in Indianapolis — both of which are part of the Indianapolis Public Schools network of autonomous Innovation schools — and a third location in South Bend.

Education One has also approved the Purdue Polytechnic High School network for four other charters, although exact locations of those high schools and timelines for opening have yet to be determined. The network still must go through a process to activate each approved charter, according to Omlor.

The Purdue Polytechnic network emphasizes STEM education, particularly for students of color, and seeks to boost the pipeline of underrepresented students attending Purdue University. The Indianapolis Charter School Board within the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation authorizes its two other Indianapolis campuses.

The Purdue Polytechnic network has pitched a slow growth model for its new west campus, adding one grade each year to ultimately serve a maximum of 500 students in its seventh year.

Two other schools approved by Education One — Girls IN STEM Academy operated by Paramount Schools of Excellence and The Match high school operated by Matchbook Learning — still plan to open in the fall of 2024.

The opening of Girls IN Stem Academy in Washington Township has also sparked pushback from community members who are against charter schools. The fight has become a battle over zoning, as the school seeks to rezone property it acquired from a church to use for educational purposes. The city’s Metropolitan Development Commission will review its rezoning request at a meeting next week. The rezoning process, however, can be lengthy and ultimately ends with a vote from the Indianapolis City-County Council.

Like Purdue Polytechnic, Paramount also received approval from Education One for five separate charters. One of those charters is for Paramount South Bend, but the other three K-8 school locations have yet to be determined.

The Match plans to open off West 16th Street in warehouses that were renovated with the help of a U.S. Department of Energy grant.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Bill would restrict charter authorizing powers in Marion County

2024-01-03T23:07:31+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

A proposed bill would restrict the power to approve and oversee new charter schools in Indianapolis to two government authorizers: the Indiana Charter School Board and the Indianapolis Charter School Board.

Under the legislation pitched by Democratic state Sen. Andrea Hunley, a former Indianapolis Public Schools principal, several other authorizers that are active in the state would no longer be allowed to approve charter schools in Marion County.

Authorizers are institutions that have the power to approve or reject charters for new schools, and provide oversight that an elected school board would for traditional public schools. In Indiana, they can be tied to school boards, the state and Indianapolis charter boards, or certain universities.

Hunley’s bill follows a Chalkbeat Indiana report on charter school accountability that found roughly a third of brick-and-mortar or blended-model charter schools in Marion County have closed since 2001.

Authorizers outside of Marion County don’t fully understand the city’s landscape, Hunley said, and are not sufficiently accountable to the city’s constituents or families. Restricting authorizing power to the city and state charter boards, she argued, would provide more local accountability, while also allowing Indianapolis charter schools to choose from more than one authorizer.

Most charter schools in Indianapolis are authorized by the Indianapolis Charter School Board, which is part of the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation. But the city’s charter schools have also historically been authorized by the state charter board, by Ball State University’s Office of Charter Schools in Muncie, and by Education One, the authorizing arm of Trine University in Angola.

Hunley cites questions about accountability

Chalkbeat’s analysis found that at least three of the schools that closed since 2001 had sought and won approval from a different authorizer, after they or a sister school faced scrutiny from their initial authorizer. Those schools received their second approval from either Ball State University or Education One.

Hunley said the Chalkbeat report raises questions about whether authorizers are providing adequate oversight and quality control in Indianapolis.

“It’s really a problematic process that’s been allowed to happen,” Hunley said. “I think now we’re seeing the reality of how damaging, destabilizing that can be for kids.”

Last year, two Indianapolis charter schools closed in the middle of the school year, sending parents and students suddenly searching for other school options. One was authorized by the Indiana Charter School Board and another by Ball State.

Other schools have been approved by one authorizer after being rejected by another in the application phase. Last year, for example, Education One granted Purdue Polytechnic approval to operate a third campus in Indianapolis after the Indianapolis Charter School Board rejected the charter amid intense local public pushback.

Under Hunley’s bill, charter school operators throughout the state seeking authorization from higher education institutions would also be required to meet with school district leaders in the area where the proposed charter school would operate to discuss their proposal, their financial stability, previous performance of any current schools in the operator’s portfolio, and capacity for growth.

School districts would then make a nonbinding recommendation to the authorizer on whether to approve the school.

The bill would protect charter schools as a whole by ensuring that only high-quality schools are opened, Hunley argued. Some charter schools in her district are doing well, she said, but the general image of charter schools suffers when some close due to mismanagement, underenrollment, or other reasons.

“We don’t want to say in any way all charter schools are bad,” she said. “They aren’t.”

Charter proponents oppose bill

Advocates for charter schools defended the sector’s record of accountability and quality.

Lindsay Omlor, executive director of Education One, said in an email that the authorizer is highly present in all 15 of its charter schools. Staff conduct routine site visits and attend all school board meetings, Omlor said, and annual stakeholder survey results show a satisfaction rate of at least 95% over the last seven years.

“We already follow all statutory requirements for notifying districts and conducting a public hearing, etc. when we are considering an application for a new charter school,” Omlor said. “Point being, we are doing this work in accordance with the law, and based on the feedback we receive from our stakeholders, we know we are doing it well.”

The Indiana Charter School Network, which represents the state’s charter schools, is also opposed to the bill.

“We do not support any limitation on authorizer options in Marion or any county,” Marcie Brown-Carter, the group’s executive director, said in an email. “We do not support placing additional steps into the authorization process for school districts when they are already free to participate in public hearings, and many times do.”

The mayor’s Office of Education Innovation said through a spokesperson that it’s too early to comment on the proposed legislation but that it plans to follow the issue closely. Ball State University and the Mind Trust, which has helped spread charter schools throughout Indianapolis, also declined to comment Wednesday afternoon.

The legislative session begins on Jan. 8.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Bill clarifies exemption to law requiring districts to give closed buildings to charters for $1

2024-02-01T18:27:23+00:00

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Update: The Indiana legislative session ended on March 8, 2024. Here are the education bills that did and didn’t pass.

New legislation moving through the Indiana Statehouse could put an end to the legal battles over the controversial state law that requires school districts to make unused school buildings available to charter schools for the lease or sale price of $1.

Senate Bill 270 clarifies language added in the last legislative session that led to two different interpretations of the law by Indianapolis Public Schools and the state.

The tweak to the law last year granted school districts an exemption from the requirement if they share funding from voter-approved property tax increases for operating or safety costs with an “applicable charter school.”

IPS has claimed that it is exempt since it shared proceeds from a 2018 operating referendum with charter schools in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools. The state, however, has argued that the law was meant to exempt districts that share funding proportionally from ballot measures passed and adopted from May 10, 2023 onward.

The claim has boiled over into a legal battle with Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office that is now in the state appeals court awaiting a decision. But if passed, the bill could put an end to future legal battles over the exemption while bringing other small wins for charter schools.

The bill would also require all school districts in the state to share voter-approved tax increases for safety and operating expenses passed and adopted after May 10, 2024 — expanding a requirement that currently applies to districts in four counties, including Marion County.

And in another update to last year’s new legislation, the bill clearly forces school districts with declining enrollment to close school buildings that are underutilized. The definition of “underutilized,” however, changes from a building with an average occupancy of 60% over the current and past two school years to 50%.

Republican Sen. Linda Rogers, the author of the bill, did not return a request for comment. Rogers’ district includes South Bend, where a charter school has also expressed interest in occupying a recently closed high school. The school district there has also faced complaints alleging the district did not comply with the $1 law.

The bill has garnered opposition from the Indiana Urban Schools Association, the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, and the Indiana School Boards Association, which are concerned that sharing referendum funds with charter schools will require districts to ask taxpayers for even more money. The groups also remain concerned about the $1 law.

“A community asset paid for by taxpayers should not be required to be sold for $1 but at market value,” said David Marcotte, executive director of the urban schools group who also spoke on behalf of the superintendents association in a hearing last week. “We remain opposed to selling or leasing the school building for $1. However, if this bill moves forward, we do support the dollar law exemption if referendum funds are shared with charter schools.”

Bill clarifies $1 law dispute

Senate Bill 270 also clarifies when a district would be exempt from the $1 law. Districts could only claim an exemption if they share revenue from a ballot question for operating or safety expenses in a resolution approved after May 10, 2023.

Those funds must be distributed through a state-determined formula with charters that serve any student who lives within the boundary of the district that elected to participate in the referendum.

It’s unclear what impact the law would have on the ongoing lawsuit IPS has with the attorney general, which appealed a lower court’s ruling that found the district was exempt from the law. It’s also unclear whether the bill would void a lease agreement the school board approved in December with a local nonprofit for the former Francis Bellamy School 102.

However, the legislation does allow IPS to keep its lease agreement with the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which will occupy the shuttered Floro Torrence School 83 and George Buck School 94 while it awaits renovations on its main campus.

IPS did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said there is always a possibility the legislation could impact the IPS case on appeal.

“We cannot accurately assess the impact of any legislation on the case until we can analyze its final form,” the spokesperson said. “However, it isn’t our intention to dismiss the appeal at this time.”

Bill requires districts to close underutilized buildings

The bill would also more clearly force districts with declining student populations to shutter underutilized school buildings, changing law that states districts “may” close such schools to “shall.” That could make more buildings available to charter schools for $1 throughout the state.

This provision still only applies to districts where enrollment has dropped by at least 10% within the past five years. The district must also have more than one school building serving the same grade level as the one subject to closure, and another building no more than 20 minutes away that can absorb students of the closing school.

Districts can still avoid closing a building if they demonstrate that it meets certain capacity criteria for other uses, such as alternative education programs, administrative offices, or storage.

Districts must also list the factual basis for why they are not making a closed school building available in a statement to the Department of Education. However, interested parties can submit a rebuttal to the department.

The bill passed out of the Senate appropriations committee on Thursday and heads to the Senate.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools plans new approach to teaching English learners

2024-03-08T12:00:00+00:00

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At Lew Wallace School 107, principal Arthur Hinton sees students come from all over the world.

The sounds of Spanish, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and Arabic can fill the halls of the K-6 school on the west side of Indianapolis, near the “international marketplace” neighborhood. In recent years, the school has attracted more students whose families hail from Haiti, speaking French or Creole.

Roughly 70% of the 509 students are classified as English language learners, a population that has only increased since Hinton arrived in 2020.

“Don’t blink again,” he joked. It might grow even more.

Lew Wallace is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse schools in the district. But its growing share of English language learners is emblematic of a trend that’s appearing across Indianapolis Public Schools.

More than a quarter of the district’s students are now classified as English language learners — over 6,700 as of late February, an increase of over 2,000 students since 2017-18. As in many other districts, staffing up for those levels has been a challenge. At the end of February, the district had eight vacancies for English as a New Language teachers, out of 110 positions total. Bilingual assistants can be even harder to come by: The district had 24 vacancies as of that date for its 76 positions.

Amid a larger push for equity in its Rebuilding Stronger reorganization, the district now plans to reimagine how it serves English language learners. Officials say instruction for these students should be more consistent across school buildings, and allow students to learn alongside their native English-speaking peers. Students learning English, they say, should not be restricted from classes such as music or art because they are pulled away for separate English language learner instruction.

The plan includes assigning each school at least one leading English as a New Language “teacher of record,” responsible for overseeing the school’s English language learner program. It also involves more incentives for staff — including a $2,000 stipend for lead teachers and reimbursement for some English as a New Language teachers who also train to become certified to teach English language arts.

The plan is one of the district’s budget priorities for the 2024-25 school year.

“It’s going to be hard, without a doubt,” said Arturo Rodriguez, the district’s director for English as a New Language. “We’re up to the challenge.”

IPS plan encourages more co-teaching, less separation

In a sixth grade classroom at Lew Wallace, Ana Gonzalez sits with a small group of six students, alternating between Spanish and English as she teaches the concept of claims, evidence, and reasoning in language arts.

Just a few feet away, the main classroom teacher is reviewing the same topics with the other students. At Gonzalez’s table, though, the focus is on the English learners.

“You guys in class have been working on claims — finding a claim and finding evidence,” Gonzalez tells her students. “Tener, como, un reclamo y evidencia.”

The school uses a form of co-teaching, where English language learners are in the same classroom as their native-speaking peers, and learning the same things at the same time.

Ana Gonzalez, who teaches English as a new language, sits with sixth-graders in a small group to review the classroom lesson for the day. Gonzalez switches between English and Spanish while teaching amid the larger class of native English speakers.

This is the type of model that the district hopes all schools will embrace.

Right now, instruction for English language learners varies from school to school. Only some IPS elementary schools offer co-teaching, while others don’t have enough staff. Sometimes teachers are used as interventionists — staff who pull students away from class to work directly with them on their specific needs — rather than as co-teachers.

At the middle and high school levels, some English language learners do not have access to electives, because their English as a new language instruction is held during those times.

The district’s plans would mean less separation, and more exposure to the mainstream classroom as students learn English.

The philosophy: Everyone is an English as a New Language teacher.

An English as a New Language teacher “is supposed to help support language development, not necessarily spending their whole day doing intervention,” Rodriguez said. “There are some places where more than 80% of the day, that’s all they’re doing.”

At each school, a lead teacher of record will be responsible for the battery of tests that English language learner students must take to ensure that they pass the language proficiency test known as WIDA ACCESS.

That will free up the school’s other English as a New Language teachers to teach more throughout the day, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez is also hoping those lead teachers will monitor proficiency on state exams for English learners, which dropped after the pandemic, as it did for other student subgroups.

Last year, 47.9% of these students passed the third-grade IREAD exam, while 3.2% reached proficiency on both English and math sections on the ILEARN in grades 3-8, according to state data. (The figures do not include charter schools in the district’s autonomous Innovation Network.)

The district hopes to train English as a New Language teachers and main classroom teachers on the new changes.

Staffing poses a challenge

At Lew Wallace, Hinton acknowledges that he’s blessed to have five English as a New Language teachers. The school also has four bilingual assistants speaking Spanish and Arabic.

But at other schools in the district, filling those roles may be more challenging.

As of early March, the district anticipated the need to fill about one dozen English as a New Language teaching positions for the next school year.

Bilingual assistants, Rodriguez said, are particularly difficult to find amid stiff competition among districts. The district urgently needs candidates who speak Swahili, Kinyarwanda, French, and Haitian Creole, he said.

IPS hopes a few initiatives can help with the staffing needs.

The district is beginning to reach out to local universities to build a pipeline of bilingual assistants who can eventually transition into certified teaching positions, Rodriguez said.

The latest contract with the teacher’s union approved in November also offers base-pay increases for English as a New Language teachers and other in-demand positions.

And IPS also plans to offer English as a New Language teachers in middle and high school incentives to become dually certified to teach English language arts. That could reduce the number of staff needed to teach both topics.

The district would reimburse teachers for the cost of taking the Praxis certification exam for English language arts, which is over $100.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools newcomer program for English learners to merge with district schools

2024-03-01T03:00:04+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools will break up its newcomer program for English language learners who are new to the country.

The move to pull the newcomer program out of Northwest Middle School will help reduce transportation costs, make the best use of physical space, and help students engage more with their peers who are native English speakers, officials said in a presentation to the school board on Thursday. It also mirrors a district-wide push to more fully integrate English language learners with their English-speaking peers.

The newcomer program, which the district launched in 2016, currently serves 232 students in grades 7-10 who have been in the United States for one year or less and don’t attain a certain score on an English proficiency exam. But not all students who meet these criteria are enrolled in the newcomer program, officials noted. Many of them end up enrolling in other schools throughout the district.

The change will not require a school board vote.

The program is housed in Northwest Middle School, which currently serves grades 7-8 but will also expand to offer sixth grade next school year as part of the district’s Rebuilding Stronger reorganization.

High school students in the program will transfer to George Washington High School, while middle school students will go to their chosen middle school. Those new schools will still offer staff for English language learners, officials said.

The move will allow high schoolers to take elective courses with students who are native English speakers, while still taking newcomer courses such as developmental reading. High school students can transition to their high school of choice after their first year in the newcomer program, which is typically a one-year program.

The earlier start time at George Washington High School will also help the many newcomer students who also work to provide for their family, said Arturo Rodriguez, the district’s English as a new language director.

Newcomer staff will be assigned to middle schools with English language learner needs, according to the district.

In other news, the district also plans to merge Simon Youth Academy —an alternative program for high school juniors and seniors currently housed in Circle Centre Mall — with its Graduation Academy, another alternative program serving students who are also parents on the Arsenal Technical High School campus.

The lease for Simon Youth Academy has expired, and the cost of a new lease in the mall is high, officials noted. Staff at Simon Youth Academy would switch to the Arsenal Tech location.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Circle City Prep’s lesson in Black history has special meaning to school’s culinary club

2024-02-26T12:00:00+00:00

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First-grader Alayah Parks sat quietly while her teacher read her class “Pies from Nowhere,” the story of Georgia Gilmore, the civil rights activist who used her cooking skills to help fund the historic Montgomery bus boycott.

“Standing up for other people and standing up for yourself is good,” Alayah said, “and is better when it makes your community happy.”

The students in teacher Olivia Hayes’ class learned how Gilmore organized a secret cooking operation after Black residents in Montgomery began boycotting the bus system to protest unequal treatment in December 1955. The proceeds from the sales helped pay for alternative modes of transportation that the city’s Black residents used during the 381-day boycott.

But the story holds special significance for this school on the far eastside — this semester, Circle City Prep launched its culinary club for students at the K-8 school, which plans to host a bake sale to raise money during the school’s Black History Month celebration next week.

Culinary club students also learned about Gilmore’s impact and the connection between food sales and the civil rights movement, when NFL player and Indianapolis native David Bell read them the book earlier this month.

“Hopefully, it just shows them that they can do things to maybe one day be their own business owner, or be able to raise money for themselves,” said Crystal Prell, a club leader who also works in the school’s kitchen.

The club of about 15 students meets twice a week, cooking fried chicken, grilled cheese, and garlic bread pizza. Prell hopes to use the funds from the bake sale to buy more stovetop burners and ingredients for future recipes.

Students will sell their baked goods at the school, 4002 N. Franklin Road, just before the school’s Black History Month celebration at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 29.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Top-performing staff at three Indianapolis charter schools to receive bonuses from anonymous donor

2024-02-16T19:34:41+00:00

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Top-performing teachers at three Indianapolis charter schools will be eligible for hefty merit bonuses that top $40,000 — 80% of a teacher’s starting salary — for the highest-ranked teacher beginning this year, thanks to funding from an anonymous donor couple.

The surprise funding announced Friday will provide merit bonuses for the next 25 years for top-performing staff at Avondale Meadows Academy and Avondale Meadows Middle School in the Meadows neighborhood on the east side, and Vision Academy in the Riverside neighborhood on the west side — schools that are part of the United Schools of Indianapolis (USI) charter network. The network hopes the new funding will not only boost its current year-end bonus pool, but will serve as a strong recruitment and retention tool.

The donor couple, who remain anonymous to the network, launched a $12.5 million trust fund to help fund $500,000 in merit awards across all three schools annually. All staff — roughly 110 across the network — are eligible for the raises, and roughly a third will receive them each year. More weight will be given to classroom teachers, where the need for staffing is the greatest. The average bonus is expected to be $15,000 per teacher.

“I hope you know that the work you do in your classrooms is noticed,” Bill Harris, chair of the USI board of directors, told teachers during the surprise announcement on Friday at Avondale Meadows Middle School. “Your passion for teaching, the love you show our students, and your ability to think outside the box and push boundaries make a difference. Some community members have noticed and want to reward you for your efforts.”

The network currently distributes bonuses to all teachers based on their evaluation scores — extra pay that averaged about $1,500 to $1,800 last year, according to USI executive director Kelly Herron. This funding, however, will allow the schools’ higher-performing teachers to receive even more.

Staff must return to the network in order to receive the bonus, which will be paid out in the fall.

“We know that high-performing teachers who stay with the school for an extended period of time develop a much deeper understanding of their students’ strengths and challenges, allowing them to provide targeted interventions and personalized support,” Herron said during the announcement.

Bonuses will be awarded based on a staff member’s evaluation score, which considers professional responsibility, student achievement outcomes, and community engagement. Those scoring in the top 30% receive the bonus, which will be weighted depending on score.

Each year, the teacher in the top-performing slot will receive $40,000.

The starting teacher salary across the network is currently $50,000, almost on par with the starting salary for Indianapolis Public Schools, which sits at $51,900 this school year. USI schools are all independent charters not affiliated with IPS.

The announcement gave staff a sense of being recognized, said Karina Calvillo-Brown, an instructional coach at Vision Academy.

“I came into education around the time of the pandemic — so a lot of uncertainty — but I think it was also a time when the need for teachers and the realization of how much teachers do really came out for everyone that was at home,” she said. “I think over the years, people have started to recognize we do a lot. We wear a lot of hats in the classroom, in the building.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

‘A Touch of Glory’ will showcase Crispus Attucks High School’s historic basketball win

2024-02-15T22:18:55+00:00

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Last week, Asher Young didn’t know much about Oscar Robertson — the student and later NBA star who led the Crispus Attucks High School basketball team to victory in its historic 1955 state championship win.

Then, just days before a throng of visitors descend upon downtown Indianapolis for the NBA All-Star Weekend, the Arsenal Technical High School senior was asked to portray another member of the school’s famed basketball team in a new play about the Tigers’ historic victory.

Though his role is small — one with few lines but a lot of facial expressions, Young said — he has still learned a lot about the Black community in Indianapolis during the 1950s and Robertson himself.

“This is a way for me to pay respect to [Robertson],” Young said. “And to other people that have also fought for civil rights.”

The play — “A Touch of Glory” — will run at Crispus Attucks High School this weekend, coinciding with a weekend celebrating all things basketball that also occurs during Black History Month.

The play recounts the win that made the Tigers the first Indianapolis team — and the first all-Black team — to win the Indiana High School Athletic Association basketball tournament. The Tigers were also the first all-Black team to win a state championship in any sport in the country.

But the win symbolized much more than a state title — it marked an achievement by the city’s Black students, who persevered despite the school system’s segregation at the time.

Crispus Attucks High School opened as the city’s only high school exclusively for Black students in 1927, during a decade when the Ku Klux Klan held a powerful sway in local politics. Despite a 1949 state law outlawing segregation, the school remained segregated until a federal court mandated the school district desegregate in the 1970s.

Deborah Asante, the play’s director, plans to create a curriculum available free to schools that will help contextualize the basketball team’s story in the fight for civil rights nationwide occurring at the time. The team won the championship the same year white men lynched Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, and the same year as the Montgomery bus boycott.

“These were breakthrough moments where the world kind of pushed forward,” Asante said. “This is our way of keeping that fight out there to remind people that people have made sacrifices already and we will continue to do so. That’s why it’s important to put it in front of people because a man like Oscar Robertson was smacked down when he was a young man — disappointed and disillusioned. And he continued to push past that to make amends for not only himself but for all players.”

Even after winning the title, the team was denied a traditional parade through downtown Indianapolis — another fact that Young learned as an actor in the play.

Now, he and other actors will perform on the same stage the basketball team used to practice on. (At the time, the school’s gym was too small to host basketball games, Robertson recalled.)

The play, written by Laura Town and held in partnership with the local creative agency GANGGANG and the National Crispus Attucks Alumni Association, will have showings on Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 4 p.m. at Crispus Attucks High School, 1140 Doctor M.L.K. Jr. St. Tickets are $20 in advance and $30 at the door.

A free matinee showing on Saturday is open to the public, with a welcome and introductions at 1 p.m. A community conversation will occur after the showing, which starts at 2 p.m.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Charter schools bought two IPS buildings for a dollar each. What happened next?

2024-02-15T12:00:00+00:00

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The dust in the brick building on east 42nd Street is so thick that visitors have written their names on the counter of what was once a school cafeteria. Desks are all that remains of an old science lab. Basketballs sit in the corner of the school gym.

The former Indianapolis Public School building in the Meadows neighborhood was sold in 2012 by IPS to a charter school for $1 under a law designed to provide vacant facilities to charter schools. But the structure hasn’t housed a school in a decade: It was resold for $225,000, and then again for $10,000. It is now owned by a church and is poised to become a community center.

Another IPS building on the far eastside that was sold to a charter school for $1 changed hands between multiple limited liability companies. At one point, it sold for $1.4 million. It has since been heavily renovated with the proceeds of those sales, according to school officials, and is now the home of Tindley Summit Academy, a K-6 charter school.

Indiana’s so-called “$1 law,” which has been on the books since 2011, has come under fire — particularly in Indianapolis. A battle is brewing over six former school buildings that could eventually be sold under the law, which requires school districts to sell or lease closed school buildings to charter schools or higher education institutions for $1.

But the fates of these two buildings — the only two sold by IPS under the $1 law, according to a Chalkbeat analysis — shows that the controversial piece of legislation has rarely brought about its intended effect in Indianapolis. The challenge isn’t necessarily with the sale but what comes next: Even when charters have managed to acquire buildings for $1 without legal dispute, the buildings have required pricey renovations that charters must pay for on their own, officials with these schools say. That can make opening and maintaining a school in these facilities trickier than the sticker price might imply.

Empty shelves are open in a classroom in the former School 11 in the city's Meadows neighborhood. The building's current owner is working on transforming it into an education and community center.

Historically, charter schools have not received funding from property taxes that go to traditional public school districts, creating a struggle to pay for capital investments.

Despite acquiring the buildings for $1, charters say they did not turn a profit in the subsequent sales to other entities, due to the money they invested in restoring and upgrading the buildings. Under the $1 law, the charters would have had to turn over any such profits to IPS.

The number of buildings sold under the $1 law could increase significantly soon. Lawmakers are considering amending the law this year to essentially clarify that the six schools IPS closed last year are not exempt from the statute.

Acquiring underutilized facilities for $1 can be a good deal for charters pushed for space, said Chris Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University.

But in addition to the challenge of renovations, the transactions raise questions about whether the law is beneficial and transparent for taxpayers, who paid to have these buildings constructed only to see them sold for next to nothing.

“Overall, when you look at the transfer of assets, it raises some big questions about what are the taxpayers in Indianapolis, in this case, getting for the money they had in the past invested into those facilities,” he said.

First school sold for $1 vacant for years

In 2012, IPS made its first $1 sale when KIPP Indy bought School 11.

KIPP Indy, a charter network that at the time only operated a middle school, had to move locations when IPS canceled the network’s building lease at Julian Coleman School 110, according to the network. So KIPP Indy’s acquisition of School 11 was timely.

But the building needed substantial renovations, such as new technology infrastructure and lockers, according to KIPP Indy. Considering both in-kind and direct investments, KIPP Indy says it put about $450,000 into the building.

The school spent two years there, then departed before the 2014-15 school year to return to the Coleman building, where the network now operates its elementary and middle school.

That’s the last time the building housed a school.

KIPP Indy sold the building in 2017 for $225,000 to Global School Properties Indiana, LLC, a Virginia-based business. Since KIPP Indy put more than $225,000 into the building, there were no profits from the sale that KIPP Indy had to redirect to IPS, according to the network.

State business records show the CEO of Global School Properties is Ronald Packard, the former head of the for-profit K12, Inc. — now known as Stride — which has opened virtual charter schools nationwide.

A spokesperson for Global School Properties Indiana, Courtney Harritt, said although the corporation made the purchase with the intention of opening a charter school, the “timing ended up being off.”

The corporation sold the building in 2022 to the local Hovey Street Church for just $10,000.

Denell Howard, the church’s pastor, hopes to turn the abandoned school into an education and community center through his nonprofit. On part of the seven-acre property behind the building, a local gardening operation has already set up shop with several garden beds and chickens. Howard is also hoping to build a walking trail.

Still, Howard says he needs to raise $11 million to fully renovate the building — or roughly 39 times what KIPP Indy sold the building for in 2017, after adjusting for inflation. He sees a lesson in that huge renovation cost.

“Those people who are looking at these schools and looking at utilizing them for stuff, they’re going to need support behind their vision,” he said. “And I’m not talking about just ‘Rah, rah’ support. They’re going to need financial support.”

Pastor Denell Howard walks through the bathroom stalls of the former School 11, which he purchased in 2022.

Multiple transactions funded renovations at former School 98

In 2017, IPS sold the former T.C. Steele School 98 building on Dubarry Road for $1 to Tindley, another charter network.

But the building needed roughly $2.8 million in renovations to make it habitable for students, said Hilary Buttrick, chair of Tindley’s board of trustees. The school paid a significant portion of those costs out of its own cash reserves, she said.

Tindley sold the building, which was then sold again to its current owner for $1.4 million, in a series of financial transactions with limited liability companies that officials say helped the school repay the remainder of the renovation costs.

CIES Tindley I, LLC, which owns the building today, also owns other buildings in the Tindley network. It is affiliated with the Center for Innovative Education Solutions, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that aims to provide cost-effective services to charters.

The Tindley charter network itself no longer owns the building, but Tindley Summit Academy operates there today.

Tindley Summit Academy on the far eastside now occupies the former T.C. Steele School 98, but required significant upgrades to be operational.

Edreece Redmond, the executive director of the Center for Innovative Education Solutions, said in a statement that the process allowed CIES Tindley I to provide cheaper financing, passing on thousands in savings to the school, which rents the building.

Charter school funding change could supersede $1 law

A recent change to state law may reduce the need for such accounting and fundraising maneuvers, as well as the impetus for the $1 law itself.

State legislation passed in 2023 requires school districts in Marion, St. Joseph, Vanderburg, and Lake counties to proportionally share increases in tax revenue from rising property valuations with charter schools, starting in 2025.

Under a different law enacted last year, school districts in these four counties must also share funding for any voter-approved tax increases for operational or safety expenses with charters as well.

Those relatively steady sources of revenue could make it easier for charter schools looking to purchase and (if necessary) renovate facilities.

IPS and other groups representing school districts that have expressed concerns with the $1 law also opposed both measures during last year’s session.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Parents renew call to IPS to partner with charter schools most successful for students of color

2024-02-07T22:45:50+00:00

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Community members in a campaign organized by charter-friendly advocacy groups called on Indianapolis Public Schools to partner with more charter schools in a petition delivered to IPS school board members Wednesday.

Members of the “Better Together” campaign echoed demands long expressed during public comment at school board meetings: to partner with schools that post higher-than-average test scores for Black and Latino students. Specifically, community members point to charter schools excelling in this area.

The demand comes ahead of the district’s application window for schools interested in joining the Innovation Network, a string of autonomous schools that includes both charter and non-charter schools. But partnerships in IPS can also take other forms: charter schools have previously expressed interest in occupying a few of the six school buildings that the district closed earlier this year and proposed legislation at the Statehouse could impact how that’s done.

The petition of 1,000 residents is the latest development in an ongoing divide between IPS and the charter school community. Charter-supportive community members previously expressed opposition to the district’s Rebuilding Stronger overhaul plan in 2022, in part because it did not replicate charter schools best serving students of color. Now, the district could float an operating referendum to help fund the reorganization that will largely take effect next school year, and campaign members are asking again.

Parent Susan Sargent, left, and Believe Circle City High School student Elazia Davison hand petitions to IPS school board members Angelia Moore, Kenneth Allen, Hope Hampton, and Venita Moore at John Morton-Finney Center on Wed., Feb. 7, 2024.

Parents pointed to the district’s analysis of 2023 ILEARN results that compared proficiency rates for both English and math in schools across Marion County. Three Paramount campuses that are independent charters not in the Innovation Network were in the top quartile of performance for Black and Latino students and students eligible for free or reduced lunch, along with the district’s Sidener Academy for High Ability Students.

And the three high schools in the top quartile for SAT performance benchmarks for both math and Evidence-Based Reading and Writing were all Innovation Network charter schools.

“We are asking to call on the IPS administration to have a detailed plan in place by June to grow public schools that are working,” said Gregory Henson, whose daughter attends Longfellow Middle School, a traditional IPS school. “And we’re asking that this plan be inclusive of public charter schools that were highlighted in the October board report on school performance in Indianapolis.”

The push is in partnership with Stand for Children Indiana and Empowered Families, two groups that are supportive of charter schools and their expansion.

In a statement, Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said she appreciated the perspectives brought forth by concerned parents and community members.

“Every family in Indianapolis wants great choices at great schools, and that is what our district has been wholly focused on since 2015 with our innovation network school partnerships, our emerging schools supports, and, next year, the full implementation of Rebuilding Stronger,” she said. “”Our North Star will continue to be keeping our commitment to great schools, in every neighborhood, for every student.”

Opportunity gaps in IPS higher than independent charters

In IPS, the gap in proficiency between white students and students of color is significant.

White students reached proficiency on the ILEARN in both English and math at a rate of 36.3%, compared to 5.4% for Black students and 8.3% for Latino students, according to state data.

“We should all be concerned when we see how much work there is to be done to recover from the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly when a gap in both the resources and opportunities available to poor students and students of color existed pre-pandemic, and showed up in academic outcomes and results,” Johnson said in her statement.

As a whole, however, that gap is smaller in independent charters not affiliated with IPS, according to Chalkbeat’s latest analysis of ILEARN scores. Black and Hispanic students in these schools located in or near IPS borders posted higher proficiency rates as a whole.

Yet demographic differences also vary between IPS and charters within its borders. While both Innovation and independent charter schools within IPS borders have a higher proportion of Black students and students eligible for free or reduced lunch, IPS has a higher percentage of special education students and English language learners.

Elazia Davison, a student at the Believe Circle City High School independent charter school, said he has attended multiple IPS schools and seen some schools with clear models for learning while others have almost no stability or functional learning model.

“I want to make sure that students who come after me are positively impacted by the measures IPS takes to ensure equitable learning,” he said. “This will happen by replicating schools that show success.”

School board president Angelia Moore said the next steps would be continuing conversations.

“I appreciate and respect all parents’ input on what works for their children,” Moore said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana’s AG launched a tip line for controversial classroom material. It’s already raising concerns about accuracy and privacy.

2024-02-06T22:40:27+00:00

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The Indiana Attorney General has unveiled an online portal for complaints about the teaching of race, gender, and political ideology in schools — an aggressive move that raises concerns about privacy and the veracity of the material made public.

The new website, which was announced Tuesday by state Attorney General Todd Rokita, is called “Eyes on Education” and includes complaints dating back to 2018. The website launched with material already posted, but the included school districts and state department of education didn’t know about it.

It lists 13 school districts around Indiana and the Indiana University School of Medicine with links to photos, screenshots, or presentation materials that the office describes as “potentially inappropriate.” In some cases, the portal also includes the addresses, phone numbers, and emails of people identified in the materials. Schools have characterized these materials as incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate.

Molly Williams, a representative for the Indiana Department of Education, said the agency was not made aware of the portal when it was under construction or when it launched.

The portal represents an escalation of a longstanding fight between Rokita and Indiana school districts over how lessons on race and gender are taught in schools. In establishing and promoting the website, Rokita has taken a similar approach to a controversial tip line started by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin for parents to report “divisive” teaching at their schools.

There appeared to be problems right off the bat.

A majority of the districts listed on the portal told Chalkbeat that they were not contacted by Rokita’s office and were unaware of the portal until Tuesday. A press release from the AG’s office was sent early Tuesday morning, but not publicly posted on the website until hours later.

Rokita’s office did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about how and when submitted complaints are posted publicly; what an investigation and verification by his office into the complaints will entail; whether the office would pursue legal action; and whether the persons identified in the material gave permission for his office to post their contact information online.

After at least one district complained about the portal, Rokita’s office told that district that it would remove inaccurate material.

The ACLU of Indiana said in a Tuesday post on the site formerly known as Twitter that the website is “an effort to intimidate teachers” from discussing issues of racial equity and LGBTQ topics.

“Classroom inclusivity benefits everyone. Classroom censorship does nothing but harm,” the group said.

What the website for ‘potentially inappropriate’ materials shows

The materials posted on the Indiana portal take the form of photos of online quizzes and presentations, flags and lessons in the classroom, and overviews of complaints about districts’ materials.

They cover a range of topics, from copies of school districts’ policies on supporting transgender students, to an email announcing a college presentation for Black students, to a list of sexually sensitive content identified in a school’s required reading.

Most of the materials posted online are undated and many others are from 2020 to 2021, when fury over the teaching of race in K-12 schools peaked in Indiana and nationwide and culminated in a bill that attempted to ban “divisive concepts” from K-12 classrooms.

Metadata for the website indicates the link for the portal, which ends in “education-liberty” was started in 2022.

Rokita, a Republican, has waded into this fight before. In 2021, he released his “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” which took aim at social-emotional learning and critical race theory, terms commonly used as shorthand for broader lessons on gender, sexuality, and race. (A former member of Congress, Rokita served on the U.S. House education committee.)

In a press release, Rokita said his office would investigate complaints submitted to the portal.

“Our kids need to focus on fundamental educational building blocks, NOT ideology that divides kids from their parents and normal society,” Rokita said in the release, which describes the website as a transparency portal for parents and educators.

The portal does not include responses from the 13 school districts and one university. It’s not clear how or if Rokita’s office verified that the submissions are from the school districts that are named.

And while names are redacted in some of the materials, the portal makes other names public.

One entry reviewed by Chalkbeat appears to be a screenshot of an online form submitted to Rokita’s office with concerns about a school’s bathroom policy, with the complainant’s name, address, email address, and phone number visible.

Rokita’s office did not say whether this person or others gave permission for their information to be posted publicly.

What school districts listed on Rokita’s portal say

Chalkbeat contacted all 13 districts and one university listed on the portal — all 11 that responded objected to the information on the portal in some way.

Those 11 districts — Brownsburg, Carmel Clay, Center Grove, Clark-Pleasant, Franklin Community, Hamilton Southeastern, New Prairie, Noblesville, Penn-Harris-Madison, Mooresville, and Martinsville — also said they were not notified in advance about the portal or that they would be included. Several districts also stressed that families can bring their concerns and questions to school leaders, and at least two reached out to Rokita’s office to correct the information.

Some of the strongest words came from the superintendent of The Metropolitan School District of Martinsville, which said the documents on the portal do not reflect what the district teaches students.

“The posting suggests that the District endorses radical gender identity curriculum, which is reckless and inaccurate. Furthermore, the posting lacks context and clarity,” Superintendent Eric Bowlen said in a statement. “We invite Attorney General Rokita and any of our legislators to visit our schools to observe as our students learn from the standards required by the Indiana Department of Education.”

Carmel Clay Schools spokesperson Emily Bauer said that the district “was not previously notified regarding the website or asked to confirm the validity of submitted screenshots.”

Bauer also said several documents “originated from a now-defunct outside special interest group, and others appear to be online quizzes with no additional context provided.” Bauer added that it is “irresponsible to portray these screenshots as curriculum.”

Clark-Pleasant Schools said a hyperlink to a board policy document about transgender students “is outdated, retired, and no longer exists here at CPCSC!”

“We are disappointed in the release of this incorrect information and the fact that no one from the Attorney General’s office reached out to verify this information,” the district said.

The New Prairie United School Corporation said a plan listed on the portal is not in active use by the district, said Superintendent Paul White.

“The support plan was changed after community meetings in which we received input from parents, the community, and our school attorney,” White said in an email. “Parents are informed in ALL instances when a student comes forward to declare transgender status.”

The portal’s materials listed for Noblesville Schools are all old and not in use, said spokesperson Marnie Cooke. The site listed a screenshot of a presentation that the document claims was on white privilege, featuring a link that does not work.

The portal also listed screenshots of assignment details for an English course detailing the meaning of privilege, and a screenshot of an assignment on dominant and subordinated groups of people that the office labeled “CRT” (which is shorthand for critical race theory).

“For example, one document shows someone who was a volunteer community speaker in 2018. He presented content that was not appropriately vetted by us and we apologized to families at the time,” Cooke said in an email. “Another item is from an employee who is no longer with Noblesville Schools and the third example is also not in use.”

The Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation said the “minority scholarship” document listed for the district in the portal is from a one-day conference that the district did not sponsor, host, or plan, and was not a district minority scholarship as implied, according to the district.

Another document portraying an email sent to students about a representative from Goshen College available to speak to Black students was not a “Black Only College Fair” as it was labeled on the portal, Penn-Harris-Madison also countered.

And a third document labeled “diversity activities” was used in 2021 with students who were enrolled in a Preparing for College and Careers course and an Ivy Tech course, the district said. The Penn High School teacher obtained the diversity activities from the course framework provided by Ivy Tech faculty and made adaptations using professional judgment.

“After teaching this lesson and receiving parental/guardian feedback, Penn High School made changes to the courses while also maintaining state standards,” the district said. “The diversity activities shared have not been used at Penn High School since 2021.”

Indiana teachers ‘feeling under surveillance’

Analysts say the website could potentially have a chilling effect on classroom lessons and educators.

John Rogers, director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, said it’s important for teachers to feel comfortable enough to lead their students through historical lessons and discussions about different experiences within a multiracial democracy. But they’re less likely to do so under the threat of being reported to the state.

“It’s very hard to lean into those conversations when you are feeling like you might be attacked, publicly and in bad faith,” Rogers said.

Existing democratic processes allow parents and educators to share concerns with governing bodies that can then make decisions about what should be allowed in schools — building mutual respect and trust, he said.

But the website takes a “name and shame” approach, Rogers said, that ultimately foments conflict for the sake of conflict and heightens a sense of ill-will and mistrust in education.

Christopher Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University, said it’s not clear how the investigations will work and whether they’ll be fair, whether complaints reflect real concerns, and what kind due process is available for individuals accused in the materials, he said.

Posting personal information also creates concerns about doxxing, a term that refers to publishing people’s personally identifiable information without their consent.

Many Republican-led states have adopted measures like the tip line or a parents’ bill of rights, he said, though parents already have the right to view and challenge curriculum, as well as attend school board meetings and run for office.

He said anecdotal evidence suggests the measures have likely negatively impacted teacher recruiting and retention.

“They don’t have the autonomy they expected. They’re feeling under surveillance,” he said. “They’ve likened it to McCarthyism.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Lawrence Township district puts new metal detectors at entrances to secondary schools

2024-02-02T20:07:01+00:00

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Thousands of Lawrence Township students will pass through metal detectors on their way into school every day as part of the district’s latest effort to boost school security.

The district’s six middle and high schools began using the new metal detection systems last week. They are set up at the entrance of each school to detect weapons such as guns and large knives.

The district has not confiscated any weapons on school grounds so far this school year, officials say. Still, officials hope the latest technology will act as a deterrent to school shootings.

“We’re not going to be one of them,” said Jim Parish, the district’s director of security. “So this is why we put them in place.”

The district is the second one in Marion County to announce a boost in security this school year. In December, Perry Township showcased its new weapons detection systems at its two high schools, a measure it called one of several “proactive steps” to keep students safe.

Separately, last November, taxpayers approved new revenue to improve safety in Fort Wayne schools through new security measures and school resource officers, but also by hiring new staff to help students with mental health issues.

The roughly $350,000 initiative builds on the district’s weapon detection procedures that began in 2016, when the district began conducting random searches daily and metal detection at large events. Lawrence Township also received 56 metal detection wands from the state in 2018, about 70% of which are still in use, according to the district.

The effort allows the district to search many more students in far less time. Officials say students and staff at each entrance are getting used to the procedure, which requires students to pull out or lift their laptops above their heads to avoid setting off the detector.

“With our old detectors, we were randomly [searching] kids — so we were getting 300, 350,” said Parish. “When we kicked this off, we did 2,400 kids in 30 minutes. The next day, we cut 10 minutes off of that, did another 2,400 in 20 minutes.”

At Lawrence North High School, students say the new detectors make them feel much safer

“I think it’s a more comprehensive check of what people are bringing into school,” said Taylor Smith, a junior. “And I think it’ll catch much more of what they were trying to catch.”

Staff and security officers stand at each entry to search bags if the detection system goes off. The metal detector wands will be used alongside the new equipment for secondary screening if needed, according to the district.

Last school year in Lawrence Township schools, one person was arrested for possession of a firearm on school property and one person was arrested for attempted intimidation with a deadly weapon, according to state discipline and arrest records.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Waivers from Indiana graduation requirements are declining. Educators explain how they did it.

2024-01-31T12:00:00+00:00

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When Lauren Franklin first took over as principal of Crispus Attucks High School, her mentor gave her some important advice: “The principal has to own graduation.”

She’s used that advice to try to increase the school’s graduation rate while granting few exemptions to students who don’t meet certain state diploma requirements. These waivers give students an exemption from requirements linked to postsecondary pathways for college or career and can be a lifeline for students in certain circumstances. But some of Franklin’s efforts revolve around the amount of work that getting a waiver can involve, compared to forging ahead without one.

“If we’re going to work that hard to get to a waiver, we just need to work that much harder to get them graduated without a waiver,” she said.

In the Class of 2023, the number of Crispus Attucks students who got waivers dropped to just two out of 246 graduates. That decline from the previous year matches a trend statewide, where the share of students using waivers dropped from 7% to 4.5% for the last two graduating classes. In Marion County, the share of students using waivers also fell from 2022 to 2023 in 10 out of 11 school districts. Their decline coincides with efforts by state lawmakers to curb the use of waivers, and make it more transparent when schools do grant them.

The “graduation pathways” framework — made optional for graduates starting in the Class of 2018 but mandatory starting with the Class of 2023 — lets students choose a certain postsecondary trajectory, such as college or a career. It also requires students to pass a “competency requirement” that can align with one of those goals — including reaching a certain score on the SAT or ACT, or earning a C average in at least two advanced career and technical education courses.

But state law allows students to receive a waiver from these competency requirements if they meet certain requirements. Before the pathways framework, students could also receive waivers from the graduation qualifying exam.

A new law deterring the use of waivers, set to take effect for the Class of 2024, may have played a role in the trend. Yet some Marion County school districts with low waiver rates say it’s a result of a years-long effort to ensure students are actually prepared for whatever comes after graduation.

Indianapolis Public Schools, the county’s largest district, has had among the lowest proportion of graduates with waivers dating back to at least the Class of 2021. In the Class of 2023, roughly 2% of its students received waivers, according to state data. (In the data, the state includes some but not all charter high schools in the district’s Innovation Network of autonomous schools.) Officials credit a philosophy embraced by current and previous administrations to use as few waivers as possible.

IPS is well-positioned to avoid exceeding a state-mandated cap that kicks in for the Class of 2024, when students who graduate with waivers can’t account for more than 9% of the total graduating class in a school’s reported graduation rate. Lawmakers say that rule will improve transparency about graduation rates.

In the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, officials also attribute a decline in waiver rates to adhering to the pathways set by the state’s new graduation requirements.

“It became very hyper-focused even at the middle school level,” said Brett Crousore, principal at Lawrence North High School. “We started having conversations about the different pathways that students would enter.”

IPS leans into career academies for success

Indiana’s 2018 transition to “graduation pathways” requirements aligned with the overhaul of IPS high schools that same year. The district’s closure of three high schools led to the addition of more specialized career academy programs at its remaining four.

Those changes meant “we had to change up everything and how we were doing it,” Franklin said.

But Franklin also attributes the medley of requirements students must meet to be eligible for a waiver to her school’s low waiver rates.

In order to qualify for a waiver, seniors must have tried to pass at least three competencies. They may also be eligible for a waiver if they transferred from a nonpublic, non-accredited or out-of-state school during their senior year and failed to pass one. In either case, students still must also maintain a C average and also have an attendance rate of 95% in order to qualify.

Instead of trying to meet those qualifications, officials say they’re starting early to make sure students meet standard graduation requirements. Each of the district’s four traditional high schools has a graduation coach who works to ensure students try to complete multiple competency requirements throughout their high school career, said Cara Hachmeister, the district’s graduate services coordinator.

That way, if students fail to achieve one competency — such as earning passing grades in career-technical courses, for example — they can have another one to fall back on.

“We’re not just relying on them to pass a test,” she said. “They have those safety nets built in there starting with their freshman year.”

IPS also mirrors another statewide trend: an increase in non-waiver graduation rates. The district’s graduation rate excluding waivers has increased in each of the last three graduating classes, and reached roughly 79.7% last year, although that’s still among the lowest for Marion County districts.

In Lawrence township, focus on pathways helped reduce waivers

In Lawrence township, officials credit a focus on the new graduation pathway requirements to help reduce waiver usage.

Too many students at Lawrence North High School were dabbling in entry-level classes but not moving on to higher-level courses, said Brett Crousore, the school’s principal. The school instead began to ensure more students were following through with the next course to help them complete their designated pathway, he said. That focus on pathways even started in middle school.

“It felt like a 12-year-old was having to pick a major as they entered into high school, and that’s essentially somewhat what we’re doing,” Crousore said.

The career and technical education pathway is a popular option in the district. At the McKenzie Center for Innovation and Technology, students from both high schools can attend programs in law, health science, hospitality, and more.

The township reduced its use of waivers from 14% of the Class of 2021 to roughly 3% of last year’s graduating class.

Like IPS, Lawrence has increased its non-waiver graduation rate every year since 2021, when 80% of students graduated. The non-waiver graduation rate for the Class of 2023 was 91.7%.

But some Marion County schools and districts use waivers at much higher rates than their peers.

At Ben Davis High School in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, for example, 36% of graduating students received a waiver, according to the latest state data. The district as a whole has the highest waiver rate of any Marion County district, with roughly one-third of graduates receiving a waiver — about ten times the percentage in Lawrence Township.

State law will increasingly restrict how much waivers can contribute to graduation rates schools and districts share with the public. For the Class of 2025, no more than 6% of graduating seniors in the school’s reported graduation rate can receive waivers. In 2026, that drops further to 3%.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Former virtual school leaders face decades in prison if found guilty in alleged enrollment scam

2024-01-25T20:49:34+00:00

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The federal investigation into alleged fraud at two virtual charter schools required a complex review that included interviews of falsely enrolled students and their parents — including the family of one student who was enrolled even after their death, federal investigators said Thursday.

The former virtual charter school leaders of Indiana Virtual School (IVS) and Indiana Virtual Pathway (IVPA) could face decades in federal prison if convicted of charges that they allegedly defrauded the Indiana Department of Education, officials said.

The operators of the now-closed schools allegedly inflated the enrollment by thousands of students and accepted more than $44 million in state funding, per a federal indictment from last week.

That funding was then allegedly funneled through several for-profit companies and used for personal expenses, including tuition at Park Tudor and a purchase at a boat dealership.

The founder of the schools, Thomas Stoughton Sr., 74, of Carmel, faces one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 16 counts of wire fraud, and 57 counts of money laundering. Director of IVS Phillip Holden, 62, of Middletown faces one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 16 counts of wire fraud. The superintendent of both schools, Percy Clark, 81, of Carmel, faces one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 16 counts of wire fraud, and 11 counts of money laundering.

Additionally, school operations manager Christopher King, 61, of Green Fork, entered a plea of guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Attorneys for Stoughton, Holden, and Clark did not immediately return a request for comment.

“Taxpayers rightfully expect that their hard earned money is being used to educate our children as intended,” Zachary Myers, the U.S. District Attorney for Southern Indiana, said in a press conference Thursday. “Stealing public money from our educational system deprives Hoosier students of the services and opportunities that are vital to all of our futures.”

An unnamed individual described as a manager of student services representatives is also listed in the indictment as a defendant, but Myers did not comment on why they are unidentified. It’s unclear if that person is also charged in the case.

Each defendant faces between 10 and 20 years in federal prison per count, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana.

If convicted, the government could recoup that money directly or seize assets to recover the loss, officials said.

Federal indictment comes six years after Chalkbeat investigation

Chalkbeat Indiana originally investigated the school in 2017, noting ballooning enrollment, few teachers, and multiple companies affiliated with Stoughton that received funding from the school.

At the time of the investigation, state education officials said they could not intervene.

A state audit released in 2020 found the two schools inappropriately spent more than $85 million in public funding on companies connected to school officials. Of that amount, more than $68 million was improperly collected by the schools, the audit reported.

Additionally, the state attorney general sued the charter schools in 2021 to recoup $154 million in state funds. That case is still ongoing per court records.

Myers said the state and federal lawsuits are two different actions working under different laws and periods of time, which may lead to the discrepancy in damages.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Office of Attorney General Todd Rokita said the office will continue its civil lawsuit to recoup damages.

“While we are pleased to see that there will be potential criminal repercussions for at least some of those involved in the diversion of public funds, the criminal charges do not encompass all of the loss or involved parties,” the spokesperson said.

Herb Stapleton, special agent in charge of the Indianapolis FBI field office, said the case was a complex one involving reviews of hundreds of bank accounts and interviews with falsely enrolled students or their parents.

“In this particular case it was the State Board of Accounts of Indiana who put a significant amount of effort into identifying that there was potential fraud here, and then did the right thing by referring it to law enforcement,” he said.

A trial for Stoughton, Holden and Clark has not been scheduled.

Indictment spurs calls for stronger charter oversight

The indictment has spurred charter opponents to call for stronger oversight in a state with a legislature that fully embraces all forms of school choice.

“Instead of depending upon elected school officials, the state has decided to depend on charter schools that use outside contractors who are not under close supervision and lack public accountability,” Democratic State Rep. Ed DeLaney, who represents Indianapolis, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We export our management and oversight responsibilities to people who choose not to perform the function. In the end, the taxpayers lose out.”

The indictment also raises questions about whether charter school authorizers, which are responsible for overseeing charter schools in lieu of a publicly elected school board, are adequately monitoring their portfolio of schools.

“Charter school authorizers do not always monitor the conduct of the schools they are authorizing,” DeLaney said. “Our current charter school management system, or lack thereof, not only creates the opportunity for fraud but has reportedly cost the state at least $85 million of taxpayer money in this one case.”

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Former virtual charter school leaders face federal charges tied to alleged enrollment scam

2024-01-23T22:52:41+00:00

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Several former charter school operators were indicted last week for their alleged roles in conspiring to defraud the state of Indiana by padding student enrollment at virtual charter schools.

The operators of Indiana Virtual School (IVS) and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy (IVPA) are accused of inflating the number of students who attended the institutions by thousands of students and accepting more than $44 million from the state, according to the 24-page federal indictment.

The defendants face a combined 76 charges including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and money laundering.

A state audit in 2020 said the two schools inappropriately spent more than $85 million in public funding on companies connected to school officials. Of that amount, more than $68 million was improperly collected by the schools, the audit reported.

The state funding was allegedly funneled through several for-profit companies owned by the schools’ founder, Thomas Stoughton, and then paid out to himself, his family, former IVS and IVPA Superintendent Percy Clark, and others, the indictment said. Federal prosecutors allege the money was then spent on extravagant purchases ranging from a Cadillac and jewelry from Tiffany & Co. to private school tuition.

The federal indictment, filed by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, comes several years after the state attorney general sued the charter schools — which folded in 2019 — to recoup the state funds. That case is still ongoing per court records.

A 2017 Chalkbeat investigation into Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy uncovered inflated enrollment, conflicts of interest, and dismal academic results.

The former virtual school officials and their attorneys didn’t respond to requests for comment, but officials with the schools have previously denied wrongdoing. Online court records show that Clark submitted a not guilty plea. A person who answered a phone number listed for Clark said “no comment” and hung up.

The indictment also raises questions about charter school authorizers, which are government- or university-related entities that essentially provide the same oversight an elected school board exercises over traditional public schools. But observers have asked if warning signs were missed by the authorizer in this case, and if the state is too lax on the authorizers themselves.

The indictment spelled out a complicated scheme to inflate enrollment in exchange for state money. According to the indictment, the virtual schools were required under state law in 2017 to monitor attendance and withdraw students who didn’t log in for online classes.

According to the indictment, Stoughton, along with Clark, Director of IVS Phillip Holden, school operations manager Christopher King, a manager of student services representatives listed as “individual 2,” and others “conspired to defraud the State of Indiana through their operation of two online charter schools.”

They allegedly did this in part by counting partially completed application forms from students. “Most of these ‘students’ never participated in any way,” the indictment stated.

The defendants are also accused of falsely re-enrolling students who in fact left, as well as telling teachers not to disenroll any students, according to the indictment. (One teacher was allegedly fired for trying to blow the whistle on the arrangement.) These numbers were turned over to the Indiana Department of Education by the schools’ leaders and used by the state to calculate funds sent to the schools.

Teachers at the schools, though, were only paid for the students who were legitimately enrolled, the indictment noted.

Millions of dollars were then transferred to several companies and bank accounts under the control of the defendants, according to the indictment. Money was then drawn from the accounts by the defendants to make purchases that include a Cadillac sedan costing more than $58,000, private school tuition at Park Tudor, and about $11,000 at Tiffany & Co.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Managing Editor Carrie Melago contributed to this article.

Indianapolis’ Andrew J. Brown charter school ditches for-profit manager in bid for local control

2024-01-12T15:04:48+00:00

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One of the oldest charter schools in Indianapolis is severing ties with its national for-profit operator over concerns about transparency, high staff turnover, and a lack of local control.

Andrew J. Brown Academy’s school board is in the process of parting ways with National Heritage Academies, which has run the school on the far eastside since it opened in 2003, as its charter faces a renewal decision from the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation. Instead, the school hopes to partner with Paramount Schools of Excellence, a popular local nonprofit charter operator.

The school’s board hopes that the switch will increase their control over funding that they currently send to National Heritage Academies (NHA), a national organization not based in Indiana. But the transition also brings uncertainty for the future of the troubled K-8 school — named after a local civil rights leader — that serves about 600 students who are mostly Black or Hispanic.

In addition to lagging test scores, unstable leadership, and failures to meet special education requirements revealed by a state investigation, Andrew J. Brown has experienced a striking amount of staff turnover recently. Between the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, for example, roughly three-quarters of teachers left the school.

The mayor’s office has until April 1 to make a renewal decision — which officials say will depend on whether the school finds a new building and finalizes an agreement with a new operator. The school will likely have to move to a different location for next school year because its current building is owned by National Heritage Academies. The school pays NHA nearly $800,000 a year in rent, according to school board chair Richard Hailey.

Charter authorizers have the power to approve, shut down, or renew a charter school — decisions largely based on how the school performs and operates during the term of its charter. A charter school’s governing board, meanwhile, can designate and pay an operator to run the school.

“Even though Andrew J. Brown has had the backing of a national service provider with considerable financial resources for 20 years, the academic and operational systems we expect to see at a school of this age are quite frankly not present,” said Patrick McAlister, director of the Office of Education Innovation Director, at a renewal hearing for the school in December.

National Heritage Academies, which also operates Aspire Charter Academy in Gary and over 100 other schools in eight other states, argued that the school academically outperforms nearby schools.

“These and other metrics show that we have made good on our promise to provide educational opportunities to the families we serve,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “So, it’s deeply disappointing the school board has decided not to renew their services agreement with us.”

The separation of the school and NHA means the departure of the last for-profit charter operator of brick-and-mortar schools in Indianapolis, home to a charter community that has placed significant emphasis on schools operated locally and in a non-profit manner.

Hailey said the school’s board feels that the for-profit model doesn’t work well for primary and secondary education.

“There’s a feeling that everything should be spent on students,” he said. “That there shouldn’t be a profit left over.”

School board hopes for better academic results, transparency

The school’s board ended its service agreement with NHA around a year ago, Hailey said. It has been operating on a temporary agreement that has required the operator to share more information with the school — while allowing the school to continue using the NHA-owned building, he said. But the agreement ends at the end of this school year, leaving the school on the hunt for a facility.

Andrew J. Brown and Paramount officials are hoping a new operator will address some of the myriad issues that occurred since the start of the pandemic.

When contacted by Chalkbeat, Paramount Schools CEO Tommy Reddicks referred comment to Andrew J. Brown’s school board until more details are finalized. But at last month’s hearing, Reddicks and school officials made the pitch to Office of Education Innovation officials for Paramount to run the school.

Paramount’s partnership with Andrew J. Brown would be a “confer and consent” model with the school’s board, Reddicks said. That model would offer transparency and oversight for the school board, he said.

The school’s teacher turnover rate has been remarkably high recently. For example, between the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, when 74% of teachers left Andrew J. Brown, Marion County schools as a whole retained roughly 66% of their teachers, according to the school’s renewal application and an analysis of state data from the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation.

Then there’s test scores. While the school has rebounded from the pandemic to a certain extent, only 46.8% of its third graders passed the state’s IREAD test last year — a drop of roughly 16 percentage points from last year. That was the biggest decline of any of the schools in the mayor’s portfolio of charter schools, according to the Office of Education Innovation.

Leadership at the school was also unstable after it lost its principal at the end of 2020-21, according to the school’s renewal application. That left the authorizer uncertain about the building’s instructional leader until the current principal took the position in the fall of 2022, according to the Office of Education Innovation’s renewal report.

In March 2022, the Office of Education Innovation notified the school that it was failing to meet certain standards in its accountability plan and charter agreement, including legal obligations to students with limited English proficiency.

Two months later, the state found violations of state special education requirements, including a failure to ensure proper licensure for special education teachers and a failure to provide services outlined in students’ individualized education programs. The mayor’s office subsequently placed the school on probationary status. The state later closed the file on the school in December 2022 after the school took corrective action.

Budget transparency, too, has been a problem. NHA prepares a budget which the board must approve, Hailey said, but in the past it’s been unclear to the board how that money has been spent. The school board has historically signed off on monthly payments to NHA for the costs of running the school, he said.

“It’s a model that they run [for] a lot of schools, and they’re not open to negotiating how those schools are run,” Hailey said. “So as a board member there’s not a lot of transparency when it comes to budgets. You really don’t get the amount of information you need to conduct effective oversight.”

The school has sought a new operator that serves a similar demographic of students while delivering excellent results, Hailey said. “We don’t want just [to be] keeping up with the IPS schools,” Hailey said. “We want to excel.”

Hailey also said he hopes the school will stay on the northeast side, serving the same student population.

McAlister said it’s too early to say whether his office supports the idea of Paramount helping to run the school.

Paramount’s work has attracted positive attention. A higher percentage of Black and Hispanic students in Paramount-run schools passed both the math and English sections on the state ILEARN test than in IPS, according to the latest 2023 state data.

“We know that Paramount has a strong track record in Marion County, and have a high degree of confidence in their ability to manage a school,” he said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

How a love of language and travel shaped Indiana’s 2024 Teacher of the Year

2024-01-10T12:00:00+00:00

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As a first-year teacher in 2007, Eric Jenkins often sat in the dark next to a copy machine in a small shed in Ibadan, Nigeria, waiting for the power to come back on.

Rolling blackouts at the American school there were frequent, he recalled, which meant that it was a gamble to try and make all of your copies in one sitting.

“So much reflection and planning happened in those moments between the power shutting off and coming back on,” he said. “It forced me to focus on what I had available and in front of me at the present moment. It not only made me appreciate my life stateside but also helped me affirm that being an educator is the best way to impact the world.”

This year, Jenkins marks his 10th year at Franklin Community High School in Franklin, Indiana, with one of the state’s highest awards: the 2024 Indiana Teacher of the Year title.

His passion for travel prompted Jenkins to pursue his secondary education degree in English and language arts, with the idea of teaching English as a foreign language. During a study abroad trip in college, he met a French teacher who would later extend an invitation to him to teach in Africa.

Jenkins’ love of language continues to shine on the job: At Franklin Community High School, he teaches English language arts and a dual enrollment writing course offered through his alma mater, Indiana University.

“Both professionally and personally, the study of language arts, literacy, and composition has opened so many doors for me,” Jenkins said.

He is also a teacher consultant for the Hoosier Writing Project, which helps educators hone their writing skills and, in turn, become better writing teachers. Some of his best teaching strategies, he said, come from fellow teachers in the program.

After returning from Nigeria, Jenkins taught in Trussville, Alabama, before earning his master’s degree in literacy and moving back to Indiana. Jenkins recently spoke to Chalkbeat about teaching tips, life-altering interactions, and lessons learned from his travels.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What lessons did you take from your time teaching in Nigeria?

During that school year, I met so many wonderful people. My sixth-graders, in particular, taught me the power of sharing our backgrounds and experiences and the need to create a classroom community. Every day was a lesson in culture and connection — and food. The food was amazing.

The school was located in a walled compound outside of central Ibadan. You know the joke about teachers living at school? Well, we actually did. There was a house on the school grounds that we lived in, a short walk away from the classroom buildings. Three other American teachers and I shared that house. Describing it that way sounds like a pitch for a reality show, doesn’t it? In some ways, it was.

The teachers in that house really leaned on one another for support in so many ways. Thinking back on that now, I realize that it really shaped my views about the kinship among teachers. Regardless of content area or age range, there is an automatic bond and level of understanding among fellow educators.

Can you recall a memorable time, good or bad, when contact with a student’s family changed your perspective or approach?

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about legacy in public education. But it was not until I had an impromptu meeting with parents two years ago, that I realized that legacy in education is generational, too.

Their student was starting his senior year, and our meeting marked the last “back to school night” for them as parents. Not only was there legacy in the fact that I had had that student in his sophomore year and now again as a senior, but they were also because he was the third and last sibling to be in my class. Their oldest was in my class during my first year at FCHS.

Eric Jenkins teaches a class.

It dawned on me that a significant part of their experience with English language arts and writing had been shared with me over the course of nearly eight years. They had grown up with me, and I with them. And even though the parents and I had only spoken a few times in person or over email over the years, I felt a genuine sense of connection with their family. That moment broadened and deepened my understanding of the impact that teachers have on their communities. Teaching is so much more than a singular moment or an anecdote, it’s an impact that lasts for generations.

What part of your job is most difficult?

All meaningful work is difficult.

The constant battle with time is (and always has been) a difficult part of being an educator, but I would say the biggest challenge is being a parent and an educator at the same time. It’s a real test of stamina and patience.

However, being a parent has made a positive impact on my teaching as well. I feel more at ease communicating with parents. That first parent conference or phone call as a new, twenty-something teacher can be terrifying. But now, like with teachers, there is an automatic shorthand. There is a shared understanding of all of the joys and challenges that come with raising children.

Tell me about your favorite lesson to teach – where did that idea come from?

I am a firm believer that choice is the best way to engage someone. I try to look for ways to incorporate choice into any project. It’s a delicate balance, though.

For a long time, debates in my class fell flat. So, I decided to give students free rein on their topics. While the students chose topics that they were personally invested in, it did not go well. Students were too dug into their viewpoints and positions, which resulted in more division than productive discussion.

So I decided to change from having a traditional debate to preparing mock trial performances. The cases still provide choice, but the fictionalized scenarios offer the freedom for them to explore many different points of view. With debates, their personal views were put on display to be dismantled and judged by their peers. Mock trials offer a chance to role-play and pretend; it’s competitive, but there is not as much on the line for them personally. It’s an activity that has become a staple for my sophomores in the fall.

What’s the best advice you’ve received about teaching?

I have been fortunate to have so many brushes with greatness.

One that I have been thinking about a lot lately is Simona Herring, my mentor teacher in my first year at Trussville. Simona is the embodiment of Maya Angelou’s lines, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

She helped me understand that we are in the business of teaching people, not content. We hope that students take away lessons about reading, writing, and speaking, but even more importantly, we want students to leave feeling seen, heard, and appreciated.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS enrollment declines slightly in 2023-24 while charter school enrollment keeps growing

2024-01-05T19:37:44+00:00

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Enrollment at Indianapolis Public Schools has remained fairly stable since last year, despite the closure of six buildings that sent over 1,000 students searching for new schools this year.

Marion County’s largest district lost only 169 students from 2022-23 to 2023-24, bringing total enrollment to 21,858, according to data from the Indiana Department of Education. The figure excludes students enrolled in charter schools within the district’s Innovation Network of autonomous schools, which the state counts separately.

Although the district continues to lose students annually, the latest figures indicate that sharp drops in enrollment stemming from the pandemic have essentially flattened out; from 2019-20 to 2020-21, the district lost roughly 10% of its students. Enrollment declines this year and last school year have been less than 1%.

This year’s slight decline could indicate that enrollment won’t change dramatically next year, when the district embarks on the latter half of its Rebuilding Stronger reorganization and sends even more students to different schools as IPS breaks up its K-8 schools.

In a bid to boost its enrollment, IPS has paid federal pandemic relief to a private firm to recruit students. IPS has also stressed the choices parents have within the district as it implements Rebuilding Stronger.

Overall, district officials were happy with the new enrollment numbers, said Patrick Herrel, the district’s director of enrollment and options.

“We did put a very intentional and concerted effort into making sure we were reaching out to and communicating with families so we would lose as few students as possible during the big transition that happened last year,” he said.

Student enrollment in the district’s Innovation Network charter schools grew by about 200 to roughly 10,350 students total. That continues a trajectory of growth among these charter schools that has recently kept total enrollment in the IPS portfolio of schools relatively stable.

Enrollment at charter schools not affiliated with IPS but operating within IPS boundaries also increased from last year by a few hundred students to roughly 13,600.

Demographics at charter and traditional public schools differ

Both independent and Innovation charter schools as a whole have roughly 75% of their students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, compared with about 56% of students in the district’s non-charter population.

At those charters, roughly 51% of students are Black, compared with the district’s 37%.

But compared with those charter schools, non-charter IPS schools have a higher proportion of Hispanic students, special education students, and English language learners.

Student enrollment grows at several IPS schools

IPS schools that grew the most this year include those that the district set as default schools for students at closing schools. That includes James Russell Lowell School 51, which had the biggest jump, from 294 students to 528, or nearly 80%, and Anna Brochhausen School 88, which grew from 263 to 384 students.

But schools not in that category also saw big jumps, including Brookside School 54 and George Julian School 57 on the east side of the district — both of which grew by over 20%.

Herrel said those schools — along with William McKinley School 39, which grew by roughly 9% — did a decent amount of recruiting for families at schools that closed.

“I think pretty universally we saw not all families chose to go to their guaranteed default school,” he said. “So pretty commonly, they spread around nearby schools.”

Schools where enrollment dropped the most include George Washington High School, which declined to 624 students, a loss of roughly 17%, and the Center for Inquiry at School 27 in the Kennedy-King neighborhood. In fact, all four Center for Inquiry schools had enrollment declines.

Parents at these and other IPS magnet schools voiced concerns about the Rebuilding Stronger’s plan to break up the K-8 model that they argued served these schools well. Some decided to pull their children out of those schools ahead of the district’s sweeping grade reconfigurations that will take place next year.

But Herrel said the exact cause of the drops is unclear.

Applications for IPS schools higher than last year

Meanwhile, IPS continues to receive applications for its schools at a higher rate than last year, according to officials.

Just before the district’s winter break in December, 22,060 families applied — a 43% jump compared to the same time last year, according to Herrel.

“We were very intentional last year in how we communicated and worked with families on how they were going to be impacted on Rebuilding Stronger,” Herrel said. “We’re trying to apply that same approach this coming school year.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana legislators may turn to law enforcement to reduce absences. Some schools have other ideas.

2023-12-19T12:00:00+00:00

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As the clock ticked down to the start of the school day at 8:05 a.m, Courtney Smith kept an eye out for the couple of students who were often absent.

Every morning last school year, Smith — the assistant principal at Pleasant Run Elementary in Warren Township schools — would call their parents, sometimes waking them up, to tell them that school was about to start. Eventually, Smith said, they began to expect her call. And in the end, their children’s attendance improved.

“They knew we cared,” she said. “They will show up, maybe late, but they’re still here.”

Pleasant Run is part of an all-hands effort that began last school year at the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township to improve student attendance and curb chronic absenteeism, which has spiked across Indiana and the nation in the wake of the pandemic.

Indiana policymakers have indicated that during the upcoming legislative session they may seek to reinforce existing laws on absenteeism, which can include punitive measures for excessive absences. These allow local prosecutor’s offices to take parents and teens to court, and make students ineligible for drivers’ licenses.

“We just want to make sure it’s a focus again, because anything good we do in the education system, for those kids who aren’t there, they’re not going to have success,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, a Republican.

Yet education officials and experts say family engagement at the school level is more effective at curbing absenteeism. Punitive approaches, they argue, don’t solve the core issues that lead students to miss school.

Data for Marion County from statewide and local agencies show that officials rarely used enforcement measures prior to the pandemic, and in some cases they’ve become even less common since then as officials aim for an approach that doesn’t send families to the justice system.

Nationwide, schools have cited a long list of reasons that absenteeism hasn’t fallen to pre-pandemic levels. These include confusion over when to keep sick kids home; ongoing mental health concerns and students’ own unwillingness to attend class; and greater socioeconomic needs in some areas. Transportation, childcare, and work schedules have also presented obstacles for some families, advocates say.

Warren Township schools can point to proof that its approach is working. Out of all the Marion County school districts, it’s had the biggest drop in what the Indiana Department of Education calculates as chronic absenteeism, from 63.5% of students missing 18 or more days of school due to excused or unexcused absences in 2020-21, to roughly 26% last school year. Pleasant Run Elementary’s rate declined from 37.2% to 15.1%, according to state records.

An attendance sign alerts students and staff of daily statistics in February at the front office of Eastridge Elementary in the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township. The district has prioritized boosting attendance post-pandemic.

What’s made the most difference is a focus on communicating with parents about attendance, school officials said, an effort spearheaded by the district’s new parent liaisons and supported by a new attendance system — all of which require resources, they added.

“We’re not there to attack them with attendance, we’re there to help and support,” Smith said.

Attendance enforcement drops in Marion County

State law provides several enforcement measures for students who are “habitually” absent, or parents of younger children who routinely fail to bring them to school. A “habitual truant” is defined in the law as a student who accrues more than 10 days of unexcused absences in the school year.

School officials must report a child who is habitually absent to the Department of Child Services, which handles cases of educational neglect on behalf of a parent, or juvenile court, which addresses the failure of older students to bring themselves to school.

State law also requires school officials to file affidavits in local courts against parents, who may then be prosecuted.

But even prior to the pandemic, the Marion County prosecutor’s office rarely filed cases against parents, and the current administration has revamped a diversion program to address root causes of absenteeism and keep families out of the court system. Only 29 criminal cases were filed from January 2014 to October 2016, for example, according to data from the office. Two resulted in misdemeanor convictions — resulting in a few days in jail, and in one case a bond of $145. The rest were dismissed.

Schools often refer students who miss around 20 to 30 days of school to the diversion program, said Jake Brosius, the youth programming coordinator with the prosecutor’s office. Brosius — a social worker by trade — calls families to understand why they’re missing school.

Sending families to court does not address the root cause of absenteeism, Brosius said.

“If they attend a court hearing, they can’t go to work that day,” he said. “And a lot of the families we work with are in those kinds of positions where each and every day can be a struggle.”

There were 11 referrals to the diversion program in the 2020-21 school year, then 30 in 2021-22, and 19 last school year. As of Oct. 31 this year, there has been one.

Data across other agencies also show a decline in punitive measures for absenteeism, which some officials say is a result of schools adopting alternative responses.

The Marion Superior Court Probation Department, which receives referrals from schools dealing with older truant students, received 47 referrals in 2021 and 20 in 2022. As of early December of this year, the department had received none. After an investigation into the alleged absences, those referrals are forwarded to the prosecutor’s office for a decision on whether to prosecute.

Marion County Chief Probation Officer Christine Kerl said many school districts are responding in ways that indicate their belief that “the court may not be the best response.”

“I think that does play into why we see so fewer truancy referrals than we did 10 years ago,” she said.

State law even allows school districts to list habitual truants age 15-17 as ineligible for a driver’s license with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Figures from the BMV show that since 2019, that figure peaked in 2020 at 32 students, then fell to 28 in 2021 and seven in 2022, before rising to 14 as of Oct. 31 of this year.

Still, Marion County absenteeism rates remain higher than the statewide average.

Lawmakers and state board of education members have recently raised alarms about these statistics, linking high rates of absenteeism to declining test scores. They’ve also called for more action focused on parents, whether through enforcement or awareness.

“I don’t know what can be done, but there has to be, in my opinion, a way to hold parents of minors accountable for those students not coming to school,” said State Board of Education member William Durham at an October meeting.

Legislative leaders have already confirmed that they’ll pursue a bill related to absenteeism in the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January.

Bray, the Senate president pro tempore, said at a November legislative preview event that lawmakers would look to existing enforcement measures provided by the Department of Child Services and other agencies, rather than create a new system to address absenteeism.

House Speaker Todd Huston added that existing laws needed to be reinforced.

Lawmakers could update state code to give a clearer picture of the reasons that students are absent, said Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, a professor at Indiana University who worked with Warren on improving attendance. She said doing so would shine a light on instances of “school withdrawal,” for example, where students are missing school because of instances like waiting for a repairman because their parents are at work.

Schools could then target their support, she said: A child who has ‘school refusal’ isn’t going to school due to challenges like bullying and anxiety, and needs a different type of intervention than a child experiencing school withdrawal.

How a trophy and stickers can improve student attendance

But there’s a gap between what some officials want and what research says may work best in reducing absenteeism.

Illinois schools that had strong family engagement prior to the pandemic had a chronic absenteeism rate that was 39% less than similar schools with weak engagement, according to a study released in October from the Learning Heroes nonprofit and The New Teacher Project.

Families understand the importance of education and want to send their children to school, said Kate Roelecke, director of strategy and operations at the Marion County Commission on Youth. But they may face obstacles like their work schedules, or a lack of transportation and child care that force older children to be responsible for younger siblings, for example.

Roelecke said the commission hopes to work with lawmakers on solutions that connect families to community resources. She said she’d rather see lawmakers study the issue of absenteeism this summer than address it in a rush during this session.

“We all want the same thing, we want kids to be getting a great education and we know being in school is a key piece of that,” she said. “I don’t think we’re going to accomplish that by putting parents, students, and schools on the defensive.”

At Pleasant Run Elementary, a five-foot trophy towers in Yvette Glenn’s office, waiting to be awarded to the classroom with the best attendance of the week. Glenn is the school’s family engagement liaison — a position funded by tax increases recently approved by voters — and is constantly coming up with creative ways to entice students to school.

Pleasant Run Elementary students who were at school on time the day before earned a "H.O.T." ticket that allowed them to wear pajamas the next day on Dec. 7.

“Our kids really want to be here too. They’re not asking their parents to stay home,” said Smith, the assistant principal.

Warren schools also adopted last year a new district-wide attendance system called RaaWee K12 that automates many aspects of tracking absenteeism. It flags which students need a call home, a letter home, or even a parent meeting after a certain number of days missed.

In the past, letters sent home about attendance were impersonal and made little improvement, Smith said. What’s different now is that calls and letters home come from teachers and staff seeking to understand why a student has been absent, and offering help with finding a solution.

“We’re learning a lot more about our families in a positive way,” Smith said. “Not due to the fact that they’re absent 15 days and we’re saying, ‘hey, where are you?’ We’re hitting that early on, and they’re able to share what their needs are.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools moves to lease School 102 to nonprofit amid ongoing litigation

2023-12-15T02:13:35+00:00

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Banned from selling any of its closed school buildings through a court order, Indianapolis Public Schools will instead lease Francis Bellamy School 102 to a local nonprofit that serves youth.

The Thursday 6-0 vote (one member was absent) by the IPS school board authorizes the administration to lease the building on the east side for free to the Voices nonprofit. But the lease acknowledges the terms may change depending on an agreement with Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office or the result of the district’s ongoing lawsuit with the state over closed school buildings.

Voices, which works with disadvantaged youth in the city, will pay the building’s utility costs.

District officials have stressed that Voices shares the district’s philosophy of serving underprivileged youth and students of color. The organization could also help combat youth gun violence, board president Venita Moore said on Thursday — a growing issue that has reached a high in the past five years.

“One might wonder why this board continues to be committed to partner with Voices in ensuring they have a place to call home,” Moore said after the vote. “Voices is an integral part of the community, serving our city’s most vulnerable children, a number of whom have already been engaged with our justice system.”

The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The sale of School 102, which the school board previously approved, is in limbo pending litigation with the state. A Marion County judge ordered a pause on the sale of any closed school buildings while the matter is in appeals court, but clarified that the district could lease the buildings if both parties in the lawsuit agree.

The lawsuit IPS filed in August against Rokita and state board of education officials sought relief from a state law that requires closed school buildings to be offered to charter schools for the sale or lease price of $1.

The district argues it is exempt from the law, thanks to a new addition to state statute this year that grants an exemption if districts share funds from voter-approved property tax increases for operating or safety expenses with an “applicable charter school.” A Marion County judge sided with the district last month, and Rokita appealed the ruling.

Thursday’s vote came after parents and students under the “Better Together” campaign, which features the charter-supportive group EmpowerEd Families, once again packed the meeting to urge IPS to work with charters instead of competing with them.

“Both IPS and charter schools should work together to find more innovative solutions,” said Elazia Davison, a student at Believe Circle City High School charter school. “This will build trust with families and improve partnerships in our city.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Minimum teacher salaries reach $50,000 for majority of Marion County districts

2023-12-14T10:00:00+00:00

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Teachers’ starting salaries for a majority of Marion County’s 11 school districts reached at least $50,000 for this school year, following the latest round of contract negotiations completed last month.

Notably, Indianapolis Public Schools no longer touts the highest starting salary for teachers in Marion County. That designation belongs to the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, which offers a minimum salary of $52,500. After the latest round of talks, an additional five of the 11 Marion County districts now offer a starting teacher salary of at least $50,000, a threshold that leaders hope will keep them competitive in the local labor market.

The salary adjustments come on the heels of increased funding for traditional school districts in the two-year state budget adopted earlier this year. They also reflect ongoing efforts to make teaching a more attractive career, as schools grapple with hiring challenges that intensified during the pandemic.

The average teacher salary in Indiana for the 2022-23 school year, the latest year available, fell about $1,500 short of the $60,000 figure supported by Gov. Eric Holcomb earlier this year. However, most Marion County districts reported average salaries above $60,000, and districts in the county have used different approaches to boost base teacher pay.

“We are absolutely thrilled to realize the $50,000 entry salary benchmark,” said Beech Grove Schools Superintendent Laura Hammack, adding that the figure is a significant milestone.

Wayne Township’s new starting teaching salary, meanwhile, isn’t just the highest in Marion County — it’s one of the highest starting salaries in Indiana.

“There’s a couple of schools of thought that we need to consider,” Wayne Township Superintendent Jeff Butts said about teacher compensation. “One is for brand new teachers coming into the profession. They’re going to look at that starting salary — they don’t necessarily look at the average salary or the top end salary. We want to be competitive.”

Raises vary based on education, experience, other factors

State law dictates that increases to base salary depend on five factors, including years of experience, performance rating, and the academic needs of students. Teachers who received a rating of “needs improvement” or “ineffective” in the prior year are ineligible for a raise.

For example, a highly-rated teacher in the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township with six years of experience would be eligible for a $2,000 increase for performance and another $2,000 for experience. The same teacher could earn an additional $2,000 base salary increase if they earn a master’s degree in their content area for a total pay bump of $6,000, according to the contract.

Some districts, including Lawrence Township, also provide additional stipends on top of base pay increases for remaining with the district, earning National Board Certification, and several other factors.

In its new teacher contract, Perry Township schools, for example, offered a $500 stipend for those who worked in the district last year and returned this year.

Superintendent Patrick Spray said Perry Township’s new starting salary of $50,000 represents a significant acceleration over the last five years, and is more in line with the local cost of living.

“I think that the difficulty right now is just the available number of new teachers or teachers entering the field,” Spray said. “So we do have to be responsive to that.”

Districts have also tried to maintain adequate pay raises for mid-career teachers.

For 2023-24, eligible Wayne Township teachers will receive a $3,500 increase to their base pay, and those with four to 16 years of experience will receive an additional $2,000.

Wayne district leaders also want its teacher salaries to be competitive with those in districts outside of Marion County. Hendricks County is where the highest percentage of Wayne teachers live, Butts said.

“So those are also districts that we look at when we’re thinking about our negotiations,” Butts said.

While the state’s average teacher salary still sits below Holcomb’s $60,000 target, eight of Marion County’s 11 districts report an average salary above $60,000 for 2022-23. For full-time teachers in Wayne Township and Speedway schools, the average salary is more than $70,000.

Franklin Township Community Schools, which has Marion County’s lowest starting salary in 2023-24, still had an average salary last school year of $62,873 in 2022-23— higher than five other Marion County districts.

There are 305 bargaining units in the state, including those for school corporations and special education centers that provide services to multiple districts.

But not all public school educators are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. No charter schools in the state had a teacher bargaining unit for the 2022-23 school year. And the state legislature ended collective bargaining for Muncie Community Schools in 2018, when Ball State University took control of the district.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Weddle is the education editor at WFYI. Contact Eric at eweddle@wfyi.org.

Charter authorizer rejects bid from Indianapolis school with rocky academic, attendance history

2023-12-13T22:02:46+00:00

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The Genius School in Indianapolis has lost its bid for a charter from a second authorizer, after the Education One board at Trine University rejected its application Wednesday, citing concerns with inflated enrollment targets and financial projections.

The 3-0 vote creates uncertainty about the future of the troubled Genius School on the eastside of Indianapolis. The small school, which is co-located with GEO Next Generation High School, has a charter with the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation that expires at the end of this school year.

The Education One board on Wednesday also voted 3-0 to revoke the charter for Thea Bowman Leadership Academy in Gary, citing ongoing struggles with staff turnover, declining enrollment, and academic underperformance. The school is in the second year of a three-year charter extension set to expire in June 2025.

Without a charter, Thea Bowman’s roughly 850 students could be forced to look for new schools in June, when the revocation takes effect. However, the school is seeking approval from Calumet College of St. Joseph, another charter authorizer. In a press release after the vote, Education One’s executive director expressed disappointment that the school has decided to seek approval from another authorizer rather than rectify its deficiencies.

The votes follow a Chalkbeat analysis of Marion County charter schools that found a lack of guardrails in state law to ensure that charter schools and their authorizers are held accountable. State law provides little oversight of schools seeking approval from a new authorizer after facing scrutiny from their existing one.

The Genius School renamed itself after Indianapolis Public Schools removed it from the district’s network of autonomous Innovation schools. In its decision to sever ties with the school, which used to be called Ignite Achievement Academy, the district cited high staff turnover, poor academic results, and low attendance.

The school, which was placed on probationary status by the Office of Education Innovation around January 2022, withdrew from the renewal process with the authorizer earlier this year.

The Genius School’s head of school, Shy-Quon Ely II, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chalkbeat’s analysis also found that roughly one-third of brick-and-mortar or blended-model charter schools in Indianapolis have closed since the passage of the state’s charter school law in 2001.

Education One staff also cited concerns with the school’s ability to implement a multi-faceted model focused on the whole child.

Staff also had concerns with the Genius School’s ability to hit projected enrollment targets. State records show it had an enrollment of 74 students last school year. In its application, the school set a goal of reaching 150 students in 2024-25.

Staff also cited an insufficient timeline for its facility plans, and noted that the proposed budget would put the school in a deficit within its first two years.

Education One Executive Director Lindsay Omlor said that staff shared their feedback with the school.

“I don’t know if they’ll apply to us again in the spring, if they’ll shoot for another authorizer, if they’ll just call it a day,” Omlor said.

Thea Bowman Leadership Academy’s charter revoked

Meanwhile, staff cited ongoing struggles with staff turnover, declining enrollment, and academic underperformance at Thea Bowman Leadership Academy.

This isn’t the first time a charter authorizer has spurned the school. In 2016, Ball State University declined to renew the school’s charter. That same year, the school sought authorization from the Indiana Charter School Board, but that board also declined to sponsor the school. Eventually, Education One authorized the school in 2016.

The school was able to rectify organizational concerns and greatly improve academic performance within its first two years at Trine, Omlor told board members at the meeting. But things have gone downhill since then, she indicated.

She said Education One staff have had “had really strong ongoing concerns related to both academic and organizational performance” over the last three years.

But in a statement, the school argued that the revocation was retaliation for seeking authorization from Calumet College of St. Joseph, which it pursued beginning in March because a “disconnect” had developed between Education One and the school. The school said it notified Education One of intent to change authorizers on Oct. 30.

The concerns cited in Education One’s notice of revocation are present in other urban school districts and said the authorizer has had “little to no in-person contact”, the school argued. “The challenges are real and require real time and real attention.”

Phalen Leadership Academies, which manages the school, referred comment to the school.

This school year alone, staff turnover at Thea Bowman is the highest it’s been for the school at over 50%, Omlor said. Enrollment has also declined from over 1,200 students seven years ago to 850 this year, she said.

The school also underperforms on state tests compared to some similar nearby schools, according to annual performance reviews — most notably at the high school level. It has consistently failed to meet overall academic standards in such annual reviews.

The school has also not set performance goals with Phalen Leadership Academies and has failed to communicate with stakeholders such as Education One, Omlor said at Wednesday’s meeting.

“Today’s difficult decision was made first and foremost with the interests of students, families, and taxpayers in mind,” Omlor said in a statement after the vote. “While we never set out to close a school, it is our obligation to ensure our schools are upholding their duty to provide high quality educational options for kids and communities across the state.”

This article was updated to include a statement from Thea Bowman Leadership Academy.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Number of young people killed in Indianapolis reaches five-year high, despite overall drop in homicides

2023-12-12T11:20:00+00:00

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This article was co-published by Chalkbeat Indiana and Axios Indianapolis as part of a reporting partnership about youth gun violence in Indianapolis.

The day before Mother’s Day this year was hot. Hotter than it should’ve been in mid-May, reaching into the 80s. Mourners vigorously waved paper fans while they waited in line to walk past Jamar Ward’s white casket.

He should’ve turned 19 that day.

Instead, his mother leaned over his dead body and wailed to God.

At the time of his death in April, Ward — who graduated early from Arsenal Technical High School — was the 15th teenager to be killed by gun violence in what has become a record year for homicides of young people in Indianapolis. Within the next two weeks, four more teenagers would die from a shooting.

While total homicides in Indianapolis are down this year by over 20% from the record set in 2021, the number of homicides in the 19 and under age group have reached a high since 2018. The majority of such deaths involve gun violence: The number of youth in this age group killed by gun violence has more than doubled from 20 in 2018 to 44 as of Dec. 8 of this year, according to an analysis of Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department records and news articles by Axios Indianapolis and Chalkbeat Indiana. (The analysis only extends to 2018). This year all of the victims have been teenagers.

Homicides among minors, children under age 18, are up more than 25% from last year’s 19 and more than triple the pre-pandemic levels in 2018. Meanwhile, the number of teenagers shot and killed since Jan. 1 is at 44, higher than 34 last year and 36 in 2021 — the city’s most violent year in overall homicides.

The increase has left students, parents, and education officials grappling with how to stop killings that have impacted school districts and charter schools throughout Marion County. Community members who work closely with youth and gun violence attribute the causes to a variety of factors, including social media and the easy access that youth have to guns.

Two days after Ward died, 19-year-old Markes Day was found shot to death in an alley – less than a month before he would have graduated from George Washington High School. Roughly a week later, Jhavon Fisher, 17, and Nicholas Powell, 18, were killed. Three days after that, Austin Tyler Bunn, 19, was killed in what police believed to be an accidental shooting.

“We are at war,” IPS school board Commissioner Angelia Moore said at a board meeting Nov. 16 — one day after 13-year-old Dayon Darnell Lyles was shot and killed near the Meadows neighborhood on the city’s eastside.

That same night, 14-year-old Arsenal Tech High School student Kaleiah Veloise-Mae Dean would lose her life.

Police have called on the community to keep guns out of the hands of children. Last month, IMPD Commander Matt Thomas stood outside just yards away from KIPP Legacy High School, where 15-year-old Devin Gilbert III was shot and killed in an adjacent parking lot.

“We have to do better,” Thomas said. “And we owe it to our youth to lead the way in doing that.”

The deaths have also left families like Kaleiah’s dealing with the loss of multiple family members.

Derico Young lost his 21-year-old daughter Derisha Young in 2021 to gun violence. Now, the death of his stepdaughter, Kaleiah, has left him once again facing the loss of a young life.

“Why?” Young asked. “Why does someone else have to bury another kid?”

The shootings have also left some young people injured.

Andrew Holmes, an activist on gun violence prevention in Chicago, was at the scene of a mass shooting there when he got the call that his grandson Terrell was shot at a party in Indianapolis. Terrell’s mother, Holmes’ daughter, was shot and killed in Indianapolis years earlier.

Terrell, a football player at Lawrence North High School, was one of nine injured in a shooting at an Oct. 29 party on the northeast side that left 16-year-old Kalin Washington dead. Six of those injured were teenagers.

Now, Holmes said, his grandson is recovering from his shooting injury with rehabilitation and therapy as the family prays he is able to play football again.

“That’s a passion that his mother had for him,” Holmes said. “I told him just keep pushing, you shall play football again. Your mother wants you to play football.”

Read the Axios Indianapolis story here.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Arika Herron is a reporter for Axios Indianapolis. You can reach her at Arika.Herron@axios.com.

Roughly 1 in 3 Indy charter schools have closed since 2001. Is weak oversight a problem?

2023-11-30T12:00:00+00:00

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On the day the Indiana Charter School Board voted to close Carpe Diem Meridian High School in 2017, Liv Pedigo stepped outside, sat on the family swing in the backyard, and cried.

Pedigo, a junior at the time, had loved Carpe Diem Meridian, a blended-model charter school using virtual and in-person learning that opened to fanfare five years earlier. The closure was a surprising turn of events for the network, which years earlier had been given permission by the Indiana Charter School Board to open six schools across the state — without any restrictions on timing.

But within about a year of the closure vote, all three of Carpe Diem’s schools in Indianapolis had shut down due to financial concerns and academic struggles.

“That was really hard for me and devastating,” Pedigo recalled. “Just because I felt like that was where I belonged. That was my home. That was where I felt safe.”

Liv Pedigo, a former Carpe Diem Meridian student, had to attend a new high school for senior year when the school closed in 2017. About one-third of charter schools that have opened in Marion County since 2001 have closed.

Pedigo’s school is one of 31 in-person or blended-model charter schools that have closed in Indianapolis since 2001 — roughly a third of 91 such schools, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of school identification information from the state. Some, like Carpe Diem, appeared to be given the power by authorizers to expand too soon. Some faced declining enrollment, yet were allowed by authorizers to stay open. And some were rejected by one authorizer, only to be approved by another.

While closing schools represents a form of accountability, the volume of closures turns a spotlight on Indiana’s charter authorizers. These boards, often connected to government agencies or universities, essentially provide the oversight an elected school board would for traditional public schools. As the city’s charter enrollment grows, observers question whether authorizers are doing enough gatekeeping and quality control of schools — and whether the state’s own oversight of authorizers has been lax.

Charter oversight in general has created intense controversy in Indiana in recent years, although perhaps the most prominent example doesn’t involve brick-and-mortar schools. Following a 2017 Chalkbeat investigation, state auditors alleged that operators of two virtual charter schools inflated enrollment numbers to improperly obtain and disperse tens of millions of dollars. The state sued to recover the money, and the case is still in court.

In the wake of that scandal, legislators changed state law to bolster oversight of virtual charter schools, although critics argued the legislation did not go far enough. And the challenge goes beyond virtual schools: Nowhere in Indiana does charter accountability matter more than Indianapolis, which has the highest number of charter students of any city in the state.

“I do think that more standards should be in place to hold authorizers accountable for their portfolio,” said Joseph Waddington, director of program evaluation and research at the Institute for Educational Initiatives at Notre Dame University who has studied charter authorizers. “Especially in an instance like Indiana, which affords the opportunity for many different agencies to serve as authorizer.”

Indiana is heralded by national charter groups as a paragon; last year, for the seventh year in a row, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools said Indiana (in a tie with Colorado) had the best charter school law in the nation. Yet in its model charter law, the same group says states should require automatic closures of chronically low-performing schools, and set a minimum performance standard for an authorizer’s portfolio of schools.

Indiana law requires neither.

While Indianapolis has averaged more than one charter closure per year, it’s not necessarily clear that its closure rate of roughly 34% is a major outlier.

In Ohio, for example, over 42% of the nearly 600 charter schools that opened since 1998 had closed by the end of 2019, according to an analysis from Stéphane Lavertu, a professor at Ohio State University who has studied charter school closures. Last year, a federal watchdog found that 14% of schools receiving money from the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter School Program for states from fiscal 2006 through 2020 had either closed or never opened; that rate was over 30% of such schools in Illinois and over 60% in Kansas.

At the same time, authorizers are making decisions in a state policy environment where school accountability is essentially on hold.

Some in the authorizing community say Indiana’s suspension of A-F grades for schools has made it hard to ascertain whether a school of any type is academically successful. In addition, some in the charter sector argue that decisions like voting to close a school indicate authorizers are doing their jobs.

“Authorizing is not paint by the numbers,” said Karega Rausch, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, who has also worked extensively on charter authorizing in Indiana. “It requires professionals with really high degrees of experience and judgment.”

Low enrollment factors into many charter school closures

Under state law, authorizers grant charters to prospective school operators, revoke charters for failing to meet certain standards, or choose not to renew them at the end of their term.

In addition to the Indiana Charter School Board, there are three other charter authorizers with schools in Marion County: the Indianapolis mayor’s Office of Education Innovation, Ball State University’s Office of Charter Schools, and Education One, the authorizing arm of Trine University in Angola. Authorizers collect fees for their work, which in the 2021-22 academic year ranged from roughly $307,000 to nearly $3 million for those four authorizers.

Authorizers evaluate their schools based on financial, academic, and organizational success, and submit an annual report to the state Department of Education. They also have a pre-opening process for new schools.

Authorizers’ work with each school can be long-lasting as well as detailed: They review schools throughout their charter term, which state law recently expanded to last as long as 15 years.

A Chalkbeat analysis of those four authorizers of non-virtual and blended-model charters in Marion County found that BSU had the highest rate of school closures at 75%, or six of eight.

How each authorizer holds its schools accountable — and how they determine whether to open a school — can vary, and their methods do not always protect against the factors that lead to schools shutting down.

For example, enrollment has a major impact on charters because it is tied to their per-pupil state funding; historically, charters have not been able to collect local property tax revenue like traditional public schools. Authorizers in Indianapolis say they closely monitor enrollment. Some examine the school’s budget to ensure it can remain financially stable, while others cite it as a deficiency in its evaluation of the school that could lead to probationary status.

But such measures don’t always guard against failure. HIM By HER charter school’s first academic year of 2020-21 was disrupted by the pandemic, making student recruitment a challenge. The low enrollment was a red flag for Ball State’s charter office, officials there said — but the warning and any subsequent intervention was not enough to save the school from closing in 2022.

Charter schools routinely close due to low enrollment. In 2018, four non-virtual Indianapolis charter schools closed, and all of those schools or their affiliated networks faced challenges with enrollment. Still, six new charters opened that year in Indianapolis.

Former students and employees of charter schools that struggled with enrollment described a lack of resources, general disorganization, and misplaced priorities.

Sydney Pedigo, Liv Pedigo’s older sister who also attended Carpe Diem Meridian, was skeptical when the school offered her gift cards in exchange for participating in promotional events about Carpe Diem’s expansion.

Pedigo said there was a focus on promoting the school “and not actually further investing anything in the education” of students.

Rick Ogston, founder of the Carpe Diem network, did not respond to a request for comment.

State law places no parameters on how fast a school should grow, or what to do when schools routinely fail to meet their enrollment targets. There is also no limit on how many charters an authorizer can grant to a school operator at once.

For its part, the Indiana Charter School Board eventually decided to avoid approving multiple charters for a single network at once unless the network has a plan for expansion, said James Betley, the board’s executive director. And it’s more cautious in at least one other respect.

“We don’t authorize in Indianapolis any more, really,” said Betley, who did not lead the organization when it approved Carpe Diem’s expansion. “It’s too crowded. It’s oversaturated. There are too many schools.”

After rejection, some charter schools seek approval elsewhere

For Darneatryce Scott, teaching for just a few weeks at the Genius School was “hell” before she quit in 2022.

The school struggled with staffing, she said, and she ended up teaching more subjects than she was hired for. She had to scramble to provide her own curriculum, she recalled, since it did not initially have one for several subjects.

And when she applied for the job, she said, she had no idea the school once had a different name.

The school used to be known as Ignite Achievement Academy and for a time was part of the Indianapolis Public Schools Innovation Network, a group of schools under the district umbrella that have more flexibility than traditional schools and are often charters. But in 2021, the IPS school board voted to kick the school out of the network the next school year, citing low test scores and high staff turnover.

The mayor’s Office of Education and Innovation, the school’s authorizer, allowed the school to rename itself, relocate, and stay open — but put the school on a performance improvement plan.

But this year, the school is seeking approval from another authorizer: Education One.

The Genius School did not return requests for comment.

Since 2001, at least three Indianapolis brick-and-mortar or blended charters have sought and won approval from a different authorizer, after their school or sister schools faced scrutiny from their initial authorizer.

At least another five schools were rejected in the application stage by one authorizer but later approved by another.

The charter office for Ball State approved three schools that had been previously rejected or had schools in the same network under scrutiny, the highest number among the four authorizers for schools that have opened. Trine approved two — and also recently approved a Purdue Polytechnic High School campus after the Indianapolis Charter School Board, which is part of the mayor’s Office of Education and Innovation, rejected a third Purdue Polytechnic campus amid public pushback. That campus is slated to open in 2024.

Lawmakers have added some provisions to guard against schools jumping from one authorizer to another. Authorizers that wish to issue a charter to a previously closed school must request a review by the state board of education at a hearing.

Authorizers, meanwhile, say they talk to other authorizers about previously rejected schools. And state law requires applicants to list any other authorizers they have applied to in the past five years.

But such processes don’t necessarily address those schools that hop to another authorizer before they’re even forced to close.

When Scott heard the Genius School was seeking a new authorizer, she was incredulous.

“We need to get rid of all these schools,” she said, “and stop letting them go from one [authorizer] to another.”

Charter school authorizers in a ‘zombie’ accountability stage?

State law is relatively open-ended about when or why authorizers should shut down schools.

For many years, the state used A-F school ratings for accountability purposes and to determine school improvement status. But in 2020, the state granted a hold-harmless period for those ratings due to a transition in state testing from ISTEP to ILEARN. The pandemic extended that pause, removing a high-profile accountability tool for those overseeing public schools, including charter authorizers.

In 2021, with those A-F grades still frozen, the state repealed a law requiring charter schools to shut down if they remained in the lowest category of school improvement for three consecutive years. The same year, they also repealed a law that allowed the state to suspend authorizers if they failed to close such schools.

Authorizers say the state accountability vacuum has left them to judge schools with a medley of data points – from progress on national assessments to how a charter compares to neighboring schools – to determine academic success. Legislators haven’t enacted new oversight measures for charter schools and authorizers to take the place of the previous two mandates.

“It is a bit of a zombie state right now, I think, as far as trying to evaluate the performance of schools,” said Jamie Garwood, director of Ball State’s Office of Charter Schools.

State lawmakers have tasked the Indiana Department of Education to develop a revised school performance rating, using the A-F grading scale, by December 2024.

Rep. Bob Behning, an Indianapolis Republican who chairs the House Education Committee, said he would be open to new accountability measures for authorizers.

“Do I see that we’ll be putting consequences back in statute soon? Probably not,” he said. “It’s hard to see a world where you’re going to put consequences in place where you don’t have accountability.”

He also warned against overregulation that could hinder authorizers from giving the green light to schools that may deserve a chance.

Victory College Prep, for example, left a charter management network to become an independent charter in 2019, after the mayor’s Office of Education and Innovation renewed the school.

Since then, said the school’s executive director Ryan Gall, the school has gone on an upward trajectory, improving its academic outcomes and financial management. Throughout that time, the mayor’s office has held them accountable, he said.

Students walk in the hallway at Victory College Prep on Sept. 29, 2023. The charter school has exceeded pre-pandemic proficiency levels on both the ILEARN and IREAD state tests since it cut ties with its management organization and renamed itself in 2019.

Gall questioned the scrutiny on authorizers’ work. What matters more, he said, is how charters fare compared to traditional public schools nearby.

A Chalkbeat analysis of the latest state test results show that on ILEARN tests, students in charter schools not affiliated with IPS outperformed students in IPS-controlled schools.

And schools run by IPS close and create instability for students too, Gall noted. Since 2001, at least 17 traditional IPS schools have closed.

“Have charter schools over the last 20 years been a better option?” Gall said. “I would argue we have.”

But that’s not much comfort for Sydney Pedigo, who graduated from Carpe Diem Meridian.

Given another chance, she would tell the Indiana Charter School Board not to approve the other two charters for the additional schools. That way, she said, maybe the network could have focused all its attention on Carpe Diem Meridian.

“It would’ve been solid before actually expanding,” she said. “It could’ve done what it was intended to do.”

Clarification: Nov. 30, 2023: A previous version of this story said Purdue Polytechnic High School’s application was rejected by the mayor’s office. This story has been updated to clarify the rejection was made by the Indianapolis Charter School Board in the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

As enrollment drops, IPS is pitching families on better academics. Here’s how parents are reacting.

2023-11-27T11:00:00+00:00

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Bridget McIntyre has no idea where she will send her daughter once she reaches sixth grade.

She has one school year to figure it out: Her daughter, now in fourth grade at Daniel Webster School 46, will stay there for fifth grade next year, when the school will shrink from pre-K-8 to pre-K-5.

A few years ago she wouldn’t be faced with this decision, and her daughter would have attended School 46 through eighth grade, just as her son did. Now, she has to do more research on her daughter’s middle school options.

“I know where I don’t want to send her to as far as out-of-district schools,” she said. “But I’m not for sure I’m keeping her in-district.”

The next few years will be critical for Indianapolis Public Schools as it rolls out its plan to break up K-8 schools and provide rigorous academic offerings to all students in a push for equity. But as the district faces declining student enrollment in its traditional schools, there’s another big task: convincing families facing a move to a new school to stay in the district.

During the enrollment period for the next school year that ends April 19, IPS will need to actively market to parents and families in an already hyper-competitive school choice environment in which IPS is regularly losing students in its non-charter schools.

The district, meanwhile, is working hard to ensure families know their options: opening elementary and middle schools to public tours, training principals on how to sell their school, and even offering school-day field trips for elementary students to visit the middle school where they are guaranteed a seat.

New and bigger enrollment zones will give parents the options to choose from multiple IPS schools — a setup that the district has marketed as an invitation for families to “Choose your IPS.”

Officials hope that the reorganization taking place in 2024-25 will ultimately boost enrollment by expanding specialized academic programming, and offering more rigorous academic courses and electives. By reconfiguring grades, all middle school students will have access to band or orchestra, a world language, and Algebra 1.

They also hope the bigger enrollment zones will allow more students to remain at their school if they move a short distance away.

“Our hope is that with those three things combined, our three- and five-year projections would be very positive and would reflect an upward trend because of how much more students are being offered,” said Patrick Herrel, the district’s director of enrollment and options.

But there’s no guarantee it will work, as private school options as well as charters grow in popularity.

“In a way you could argue they’re fighting fire with fire here,” Christopher Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy at Indiana University, said of the district’s marketing campaign. “It’s hard to outchoice the charters and the voucher schools, but that seems to be the battleground they’re choosing.”

Families that endured the pandemic face more upheaval

The stakes could hardly be higher for IPS. An analysis by Lubienski and others at the center found that the district has lost roughly 41% of its student population from 2006 to 2022, or more than 15,500 students. (That figure excludes students in charters that are part of the district’s Innovation Network.)

But even when families acknowledge what IPS is trying to do, some have other big concerns that marketing and expanded options don’t address.

It was a hard decision for Jill Davis to pull her two children out of Center for Inquiry School 70 in the middle of last school year and place them in a private school.

The family had already gone through the challenges of pandemic learning. The district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan, which would send her sixth grader to a new school when the school switches from pre-K-8 to pre-K-5, was the latest wave of instability. The plan would have required her children to leave the school for middle school — a change that, combined with other factors, led her and her husband to pull their children out of IPS.

“For our family, I just didn’t have the stomach to take now what’s probably going to be the hardest part of school, middle school, and have the school part be not constant,” she said.

Davis appreciates the district’s plan to make academics more equitable for all students, and knows she has the privilege of being able to choose to leave. But the plan, to her, seemed a lot to implement in a short amount of time.

“I kind of feel like everybody’s in a snow globe,” she said. “And they’re just going to shake it and see how things fall out.”

As IPS reconfigures, its highest flight risks may be families like Davis’ in magnet schools — specifically Montessori, CFI, Butler lab, and high-ability schools — where students are more likely to be white and not from low-income backgrounds, such as CFI 70. Parents from these schools voiced some of the strongest objections and concerns to the Rebuilding Stronger plan.

CFI 70, for example, was roughly 66% white last school year with about 25% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, according to state data. In IPS as a whole, white students in non-charter schools made up roughly 21% of the population, while 68% of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.

Other parents like what Rebuilding Stronger involves, regardless of the upheaval it will require.

Officials’ promise of stronger and more diverse academic offerings is what has parents like Brooke Thomas enthusiastic. Her son, who’s in the sixth grade at Butler Lab School 55, will attend Broad Ripple Middle School next year.

“I’m really excited for Cameron to be able to be in a middle school environment,” Thomas said. “I like the idea that he’ll have so many more offerings than a single K-8 building.”

IPS hopes changes will stabilize and grow enrollment

Parents like McIntyre do have logistical concerns about how the plan will roll out. She wonders, for example, how the closure of six schools earlier this year and the opening of others will affect staffing and transportation.

Behind the scenes, IPS is working on staffing projections and transportation routes, officials say.

“I can totally understand these parents’ concerns,” Herrel said. “This is exactly what we are working on right now with a lot of really detailed information that we already have.”

The district is also looking to the past to determine what kind of impact the reorganization will truly have on enrollment.

Student enrollment in non-charter IPS schools has been shrinking in small increments in recent years (although the district lost a more significant amount during the pandemic). But overall enrollment — which includes students in the district’s Innovation Network schools — has not decreased significantly when the district has closed schools or reconfigured grades in the past, Herrel said.

In fact, the district has seen slight increase in enrollment from students transferring into the district when it has expanded Butler lab or Center for Inquiry schools, he added. But he cautioned against making overly optimistic projections.

“Just because part of Rebuilding Stronger is launching new programs, we don’t want to overestimate in this first year how much of a magnet that will be” as far as attracting students to IPS, he said. “We hope it will be, and we anticipate over time it will be.”

Some leaders, families excited about district’s changes

At Brookside School 54, the Rebuilding Stronger plan is designed to bring stability.

The school, which serves a high percentage of families from low-income backgrounds, has struggled with student transiency throughout the school year as families move elsewhere in the city. The bigger enrollment zone means that fewer families will need to enroll in a new school just because they move a short distance away from Brookside.

“It’s going to be a game-changer,” said Principal Jeremy Baugh.

Brookside School 54 Principal Jeremy Baugh watches a family enroll at the district's Showcase of Schools on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023.

As an “exploratory” model school, Baugh markets the school as one that will prepare students for college and career while also allowing students to explore the community and neighborhood around Brookside. It offers everything from small-group math instruction to a pottery studio.

But with Rebuilding Stronger, next year the school will at least double the number of enrichment opportunities for students by adding things like a makerspace, Baugh said.

Baugh is not flustered by the competition he could face from other IPS schools. With about 430 pre-K-6 students this year, the goal is to reach an enrollment of about 500 next school year, even after the school drops the sixth grade next year.

And many new families are excited about coming to Brookside, now that they fall into the school’s enrollment zone, Baugh said.

“Is it an option to potentially lose children? It always is, and I think it always has been,” he said. “I think our goal is to make sure that whatever we offer in our school, it’s great for families.”

Like Baugh, Thomas is excited for the district’s changes next year and thinks they’re well thought out.

“I’m excited to see it play out and get implemented,” she said. “It probably won’t end up exactly right like they had thought. They’ll just adjust as they go. But it really seems like the best possible path to put IPS on.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS sale of Francis Bellamy School 102 paused amid legal battle with Todd Rokita

2023-11-17T21:52:11+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools board voted to move ahead with the sale of Francis Bellamy School 102 while the legal battle over whether the district must offer it to charter schools for $1 continues in court.

But within a day, that sale was put on hold.

The school board voted 6-0 Thursday to authorize the sale of the school on the far eastside to VOICES, a local nonprofit that works with youth, for $550,000. One commissioner was absent.

The vote came three days after Marion County Judge Heather Welch granted the district an exemption from a state law that requires districts to offer closed school buildings to charter schools for $1. For some time, that law has caused tension between IPS and some in the charter sector, as IPS has closed schools while charter school enrollment has grown.

On Friday, Welch granted an emergency motion requested by Attorney General Todd Rokita to stay her ruling and stop the sale while Rokita appeals the decision.

In a statement, the school board said it is seeking clarity on the meaning of the stay.

“We will continue to advocate for our facilities to be repurposed in ways to meet the needs of our community, as is the case for our agreement with VOICES Corp.,” the board said.

Before the school board vote Thursday, a crowd of parents, students, and others urged the school board to work collaboratively with charter schools under the “Better Together” campaign. The campaign includes groups supportive of education reform, such as EmpowerEd Families.

IPS objected to Rokita’s attempt to stop the sale in a court filing on Thursday, arguing that doing so would harm IPS and taxpayers.

The district indicated that there’s no real downside to selling the school while the legal battle plays out, as far as IPS is concerned. If an appeals court ultimately finds the district in violation of the $1 law, state law would require the proceeds of the sale to go to nearby charter schools, the district noted in its filing.

The state has not provided any evidence that a charter school actually wants to acquire either School 102 or Raymond Brandes School 65 — another closed school the district wants to sell — IPS also said in its filing.

However, last year several charter schools expressed interest in taking over schools that IPS planned to close.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Attorney General Todd Rokita will appeal ruling backing IPS in lawsuit over $1 law

2023-11-15T20:48:26+00:00

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This story has been updated.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita plans to appeal a Marion County judge’s ruling that grants Indianapolis Public Schools an exemption from state law requiring districts to sell closed school buildings to charter schools for $1.

Rokita is also seeking an emergency stay of Judge Heather Welch’s Monday ruling, in order to prevent IPS from selling Francis Bellamy School 102 at Thursday’s school board meeting. IPS plans to sell the building to the local VOICES nonprofit that works with youth.

The lawsuit from IPS against Rokita and state board of education officials sought relief from the so-called $1 law. It also highlighted disagreements between the district and some members of the charter community about the best use of facilities and resources.

The district argues it is exempt from the law because it shares funding from a 2018 operating referendum with charter schools in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools. Lawmakers revised the $1 law this year to exempt districts if they share funds from voter-approved property tax increases for operating or safety expenses with an “applicable charter school.”

Welch ruled that IPS is exempt from the law so long as it continues to share those referendum funds with its charter schools.

But she said that the district would need to comply with a new law — which requires Marion County school districts to share such funds with all charter schools that enroll any of its students — if it extends its current sharing agreement, or if voters pass another funding referendum.

Rokita said in a statement that IPS should be held to the letter and spirit of state law.

“Like every case, we take it head on and do not back down,” he said. “We truly believe in parental rights, so we plan to file an appeal as soon as possible.”

IPS did not offer comment on Rokita’s announcement but referred to their statement sent on Monday that expressed gratitude for the judge’s ruling.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS board approves new teacher contract with average of 3% raises

2023-11-15T01:04:36+00:00

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The Indianapolis Public Schools board unanimously approved a new two-year labor contract on Tuesday that gives teachers an average of 3% in raises plus more time off.

The contract, which Indianapolis Education Association members voted to ratify last month, bumps starting pay in the district from $50,400 to $51,900 in 2023-24, and raises it again to $53,460 in 2024-25. Current teachers can also increase their base salary based on their educator evaluation ratings, their years of service in IPS, and whether they serve in high-need subject areas.

Those pay increases range from $1,850 to $2,790 for 2023-24, and $1,900 to $2,870 for 2024-25. Teachers who were rated as ineffective or needing improvement, however, are not eligible for an increase.

Teachers will also receive two floating holidays each academic year that can be used at their discretion. These holidays are designed to benefit those employees whose religious holidays are not recognized on the traditional school calendar.

The agreement, heralded by both IPS and the IEA as a positive collaborative effort, will guide compensation and bonus pay at a critical time for the district, which will shift teachers to different schools next school year when IPS breaks up its K-8 schools.

“I’m extremely proud of the agreement that we were able to build together by working collaboratively to find solutions to the fiscal and logistical obstacles that we face as a district,” Tina Ahlgren, the bargaining chair for the IEA, said at the meeting.

A new pilot program in the contract will allow teachers to receive additional pay if they are forced to give up their preparation periods to cover for an absent teacher in another class. Teachers can receive $25 per hour under this new provision.

Teachers can also receive that extra pay if principals increase their class size by at least 30% because of another teacher’s absence.

“We are both proud of and grateful for the collaboration that we’ve had with our partners at IEA to get to this point this evening,” Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said at the meeting. “Thank you to the team, both the bargaining team as well as my administrative team, who really did engage in this deep collaboration, positive conversations and discussion.”

The contract also provides new pay for staff who serve as certified school psychologists, social workers, or teachers of English as a new language.

Teachers who are approved to serve as long-term substitutes in addition to their regular teaching roles can also get additional compensation under the new contract.

The contract increases the payout for unused sick time that teachers can cash out upon retirement, from $35 for every seven hours to $50. That payout had not changed in over 15 years.

The district, however, will no longer pay for long-term disability insurance. Teachers can opt in to the insurance but will pay premiums on their own.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Judge grants IPS exemption from state law in sale of two closed school buildings

2023-11-13T19:47:42+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools may sell two closed school buildings without first offering them to charter schools for $1, a Marion County judge ruled on Monday.

Judge Heather Welch’s ruling in the district’s lawsuit against the state over the so-called $1 law — which requires districts to make those buildings available to charter schools or state education institutions for $1 sales or leases — concluded that IPS can sell the buildings because it previously agreed to share referendum funding with its Innovation Network charter schools in 2021.

The ruling against state Attorney General Todd Rokita, Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, and the Indiana state board of education means the district can sell Raymond Brandes School 65 and Francis Bellamy School 102, both of which closed to students at the end of last school year.

It was not immediately clear Monday if any state agency planned to appeal Welch’s ruling. In a statement, the IPS school board said it was grateful for the judge’s ruling, which the board said reaffirmed the district’s ability to make decisions about the reuse of its facilities.

“We’re proud that we have already worked with organizations and community members so that, along with a number of possible options, some of these buildings will serve students with mental health needs, deaf students, and adult learners,” the statement said. “We continue to strive to not only be a good partner but also be fiscally responsible with the resources that have been entrusted to us by our community.”

In a statement responding to the ruling, a spokesperson for Rokita’s office said it will “continue to fight to uphold the law, as it is our statutorily authorized duty.”

“Charter schools provide a multitude of positive opportunities for children and allow Hoosier parents to have a say in how their kids are being educated,” the spokesperson said.

The Indiana Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit hinged on a new exemption to the $1 law, and highlighted ongoing tension between IPS and the broader charter community about resources and facilities.

That exemption applies to districts that distribute money from a voter-approved tax increase for operating or safety expenses to an “applicable charter school”

IPS, which sought relief from the $1 law in August, claimed in court filings that it was exempt from the law because it shared funds from its 2018 property tax increase with charters in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools.

Rokita’s office, however, argued that the district also needed to comply with a new referendum-sharing requirement imposed on school districts this year in order to be exempt.

That new requirement says school districts in Marion County and three other counties must share operating or safety referendum funds with charter schools that enroll a student in that district for any ballot question passed after May 10, 2023. Virtual and adult high school charter schools are exempt from receiving such funds.

In her ruling, Welch applied the “unambiguous” language of the exemption statute as written, arguing that the district is already distributing referendum funds to at least one charter school and is therefore exempt from the $1 requirement. The exemption applies for as long as IPS continues to give its charter schools such distributions, the ruling noted. The distributions are slated to last through 2026.

Lawmakers could have been more specific in crafting the new exemption to explicitly require districts to follow the new referendum-sharing requirements in order to be exempt from the $1 statute, Welch said.

But the court “must ultimately apply the statutes as written and cannot otherwise engage in further statutory construction to ascertain the General Assembly’s intent for passing the 2023 amendments to the Dollar Law in the particular manner the Legislature did,” the ruling stated.

But IPS is only exempt due to the “unique timing of the prior referendum and its election to distribute funds to charter schools,” Welch noted.

If IPS were to extend its current agreement to share funding with charter schools or begin distributing funds from a referendum held after May 10 of this year, it would be subject to the new state law requiring it to distribute funds to any charter school that enrolled an IPS student, Welch added.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Circle City Prep celebrates opening of new cafeteria with scratch kitchen and culinary lab

2023-11-10T20:21:12+00:00

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Jonnah Davidson walked into his school’s new cafeteria on Wednesday thoroughly impressed.

The new Circle City Prep cafeteria — known in school as “C3″ — is part of a $1.5 million investment the school made with the help of philanthropic donors to provide a new scratch kitchen with an on-site chef and a new learning laboratory space for the school’s after-school culinary club.

The project also included an overhaul of what students get to eat for lunch. Last year, the school began to transition from prepackaged, reheated food, like warmed-up pizzas, to fresh produce and meals made at the school. Students can choose fresh kale salads, something from the produce bar, and other options.

It’s a big deal for Circle City Prep, a school on the far east side, where family income levels qualify nearly every student for free or reduced-price lunch and many residents struggle with access to grocery stores and fresh food. The school and its community partners hope the new cafeteria and food lab will not only help students discover new food options, but also be open to the community as it addresses food insecurity as a whole.

The cafeteria space, with its sleek new seating, opened to students for the first time last month. During the construction, students were eating food in classrooms.

“This year, it feels like everything’s just new,” said Davidson, a sixth-grader. “I actually went into the kitchen one time and helped make a pizza. I feel like there’s more options.”

The project drew on assistance from the Patachou Foundation, a local nonprofit that works to address hunger. The group helped ensure the project complied with federal regulations for the National School Lunch Program, which covers the cost of lunch for students from low-income families.

Circle City is one of the foundation’s first “PataSchool” sites, where the group supports a transition from prepackaged meals to fresh food prepared on-site.

“Food insecurity is not just about scarcity. It’s a profound issue of justice,” Matthew Feltrop, executive director of the PataSchool program at the Patachou Foundation, said in remarks at the school celebration on Wednesday. “Merely providing food to prevent starvation perpetuates the cycle of poverty, and the real challenge is to break the cycles through innovative approaches and sustainable strategies.”

At Circle City Prep, the foundation’s in-kind aid includes help with recipes, training for kitchen staff, and help with operating the school cafeteria, Feltrop said.

The foundation is also helping Adelante Schools at Emma Donnan, a charter school in the Indianapolis Public Schools Innovation Network, for the first time this year.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS seeks community help to expand before- and after-school care to all pre-K-5 students who need it

2023-11-09T20:08:30+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools is asking for help from the community to increase availability of before- and after-school care for students districtwide.

The Engage Every Student Indianapolis campaign — launched on Thursday with At Your School, the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis, and other community partners — seeks to provide before- and after-school programs for all students who need it, from pre-K to fifth grade, by the 2024-25 school year.

Some community centers that currently offer programming and partner with the district have waitlists, officials say, while staffing also remains a challenge. The district call to action seeks pledges from community organizations to work with the district to eliminate the waitlists.

Community partners already on board with the initiative hope to work with the district to properly staff programs that are located both at schools and elsewhere. IPS also hopes to tap district employees to serve as paid staff for the programs.

“While our specific work may vary, our goal of providing quality care is universal,” said Natasha Bellak, vice president of the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis. “When we work together, we move everyone close to meeting that goal.”

The district already partners with about a dozen community centers and other organizations to offer before- or after-school care, in some cases at the school and in others off-site. Fees for such care can vary based on the provider; low-income families can seek assistance through the federal Child Care and Development Fund administered by the state’s Family and Social Services Administration.

The district plans to expand the number of these collaborative programs from 15 after-school offerings to at least 25 by next school year, and to add more before-school programs, which are currently at about 10.

Staff at Daniel Webster School 46 plan to launch a before- and after-school program on Monday, in partnership with At Your School, to address the need in the southwest corner of the district.

“IPS welcomes and encourages other youth program providers to connect with the district, so that we can better support our pre-K-fifth-grade students during these critical development years,” said Mary Seifert, director of student engagement and extended learning for IPS.

People from interested organizations can get involved by filling out the pledge form.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Tentative IPS teacher contract includes average 3% pay raises, more time off

2023-11-09T01:06:49+00:00

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Teachers in Indianapolis Public Schools could see average raises of 3% and more days off under a tentative contract agreement between the district and the Indianapolis Education Association.

The new contract, which would cover the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, would raise starting salaries from $50,400 to $51,900 for 2023-24. The contract’s maximum salary for teachers would also increase to an estimated $94,000.

The estimated salary range for the 2024-25 school year would be $53,460 to $94,000.

No teacher would make below the minimum salary for each school year unless given an evaluation of “ineffective” or “needs improvement.”

The tentative contract would offer special increases to base pay for special education teachers, English-as-a-new-language teachers, school psychologists, and social workers.

As required by state law, only teachers rated “highly effective” or “effective” will receive increases to their base salary. But recent data indicates the vast majority of teachers would receive those raises under the proposed contract.

In 2022-23, nearly 35% of teachers were rated highly effective and roughly 64% were rated effective, according to district data obtained through a public records request. Only 15 out of the 1,586 teachers who were evaluated were given ratings of “improvement necessary” or “ineffective.”

Increases in base pay for qualifying teachers would range from $1,850 to $2,790 for 2023-24 and $1,900 to $2,870 for 2024-25. Salary increases for the current school year would be retroactively paid dating back to July 23 of this year. Raises for the 2024-25 school year would take effect during the first contract day of that year.

The school board will vote on the contract next week.

Here are some major changes in the proposed contract.

Base pay increases by teacher evaluations

Teachers who receive a rating of “highly effective” for the prior school year would receive:

$1,290 in year one (reflecting their 2022-23 rating).
$1,310 in year two (reflecting their 2023-24 rating).

Teachers who receive a rating of “effective” for the prior school year would receive:

$1,050 in year one (reflecting their 2022-23 rating).
$1,070 in year two (reflecting their 2023-24 rating).

Base pay increases for in-demand positions

Employees who served as certified school psychologists, social workers, special education teachers, teachers of English-as-a-new-language, core content teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), STEM career and technical education teachers, or credentialed dual-credit course teachers in the prior school year would receive:

$530 in year one (if employed for 2022-23).
$550 for year two (if employed for 2023-24).

This provision would exclude teachers working in these areas on emergency permits.

Base pay increase by years of service

Teachers who were employed by IPS for at least 120 contract days in the prior school year would receive:

$530 in year one (if employed for 2022-23).
$550 in year two (if employed for 2023-24).

Teachers who completed one to seven years of effective IPS teaching as of the effective date of salary increase would receive:

$440 in year one (if teacher completed one to seven years by July 23, 2023).
$460 in year two (if teacher completed one to seven years by the first contract day of 2024-25).

Teachers who completed eight or more years of effective IPS teaching as of the effective date of salary increase would receive:

$270 in year one (if teacher completed eight or more years by July 23, 2023).
$280 in year two (if teacher completed eight or more years by the first contract day of 2024-25).

Pilot program to pay teachers for class coverage

The district would launch a pilot program for 2023-24 and 2024-25 to pay teachers for class coverage when another teacher is absent.

Teachers would receive $25 per hour when they give up their designated preparation periods to cover a class with an absent teacher.

Academic coaches, interventionists, and International Baccalaureate coordinators would only receive this compensation if they cover for at least three hours and lose their prep period. Job-sharing teachers would not receive this compensation when their co-teachers are absent, unless the coverage also requires them to give up their prep period.

Teachers would also receive an extra $25 per hour if principals place additional students in their class that increases their total class size by at least 30% due to the absence of another teacher.

More days off during the school year

Teachers will receive two floating holidays for each academic year that can be used for any reason. Unlike sick or personal time off, these days do not roll over from year to year and cannot be cashed out upon retirement.

The tentative contract would provide for two additional bereavement days for extended family, bringing the total to three full paid days off to attend the funeral of an extended family member. Such family members are defined as aunts, uncles, nieces, or nephews.

The contract would give more flexibility for bereavement days for immediate family, a term that would extend to an unborn child.

Employees would have five bereavement days for immediate family as in the old contract, but could take three within 14 days of the death and reserve the other two for up to a year after the death to attend to affairs of the deceased.

Compensation to serve as a long-term substitute

The new contract allows licensed teachers to accept a role as a long-term substitute to cover vacancies outside the classroom instruction hours of their current teaching position.

This scenario could cover teachers who, for example, finish their school day sooner than other schools and may have the ability to travel to another school still in session to cover a class there.

Teachers would be paid at their standard hourly rate for this long-term assignment, which would end either at the end of the semester or until the vacancy is filled. Priority for vacant positions would be given to teachers whose schedule, licensure, and endorsement matches the needs of the vacant position.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Phalen Leadership Academies charter network seeks $10 million for sports complex

2023-11-08T21:14:55+00:00

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For Javonte Bailey, being on the track team at James and Rosemary Phalen Leadership Academy meant running through the hallways and up the cramped staircase by the school’s only small gym.

Track is one of several sports teams at the Indianapolis school that must take advantage of whatever space is available in the hallway, or auditorium, or gym — or even a parking lot turned into a miniature football field outside.

“We’re literally all on top of each other,” said Zion Maxwell, a junior on the cheer team, who worries about being too loud during practice while the after-school tutoring classes are nearby.

To help students like Zion, the Phalen Leadership Academies charter network is seeking to raise $10 million by 2025 for a sports complex at the far eastside school of roughly 800 students. The charter school is located in a high-needs area that relies on community resources to keep students safe and engaged after school.

Students at James and Rosemary Phalen — one of several Phalen schools in Indianapolis — say their peers are currently deterred from enrolling in after-school sports by the space limitations and lack of facilities. A new sports complex, they say, would also ease transportation headaches and provide a secure and healthy environment for students.

Phalen Leadership Academies is seeking $10 million from donors to build a sports complex that will feature a field for football, track, and soccer.

“It’ll be a safe place,” said Lakyi Herring-Jackson, a junior. “A place for people who live over here on the far eastside, for them to stay off the streets, stay away from the violence, stay away from the things that aren’t good for them.”

The network is turning to donors to help build a field for football, track, and soccer on a nine-acre plot of land next to the school. Officials also hope to build a new basketball facility with two full courts for practice.

Having a sports complex at the school would allow parents with limited transportation options to actually see their children compete, students said. It would also mean some students, such as those on the football team, won’t need to leave the school to practice like they did in the past.

James and Rosemary Phalen Leadership Academy is hoping to add new space for basketball.

Earlier this year, the Central Indiana Land Trust donated the nine-acre plot next to the school. In addition to the field for football, track and soccer, officials hope to use it for a concession stand and fieldhouse.

The school has also raised a little under $2 million toward the project so far, said Earl Martin Phalen, the founder and CEO of the Phalen network.

Phalen said he hopes individuals, foundations, and corporations will serve as donors for the complex, which will be named after Sean Cowdrey, his nephew. Naming rights are also available for parts of the complex such as the track or the field, he said.

“It’ll be nice for people to come to Phalen and see what we offer, instead of us having to go out,” Zion said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis mayoral election results: Democrat incumbent Joe Hogsett defeats Republican Jefferson Shreve

2023-11-08T03:49:47+00:00

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Democratic incumbent Mayor Joe Hogsett secured a third term with nearly 60% of the vote against Republican opponent Jefferson Shreve, unofficial election results showed with roughly 97% of precincts reporting as of 10 p.m. on Tuesday.

Shreve conceded in a speech to supporters at a watch party broadcast on WTHR, telling the crowd: “We can be better and we will be better, but (Hogsett) has won the night.”

He also pointed to the lead that Democrats have in Marion County, calling it “sobering.” Unofficial election results showed that roughly 65% of voters cast straight Democratic party ballots compared to roughly 35% of voters who cast straight Republican ballots.

“We’ve just got to learn to work within that model to advance change and improve our city,” he said.

In his speech to supporters broadcast on WTHR, Hogsett said that the pandemic had undeniably delayed some progress for the city.

“Now, the voters have spoken. They have given us the chance to deliver on those challenges that yet remain,” he said. “Because there are guns to get off of our streets. There is affordable housing to build. There are students to support. There are small businesses to empower.”

Voter turnout increased slightly since the last municipal election in 2019, with roughly 26% of registered voters casting a vote, per the Marion County Election Board. In 2019, 153,977 people voted, compared to 164,677 ballots cast in Tuesday’s election.

Hogsett will continue to have significant influence over public education in Indianapolis, where the mayor’s office serves as an authorizer for new and existing charter schools. Those decisions are made by the Indianapolis Charter School Board within the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation. The board has nine members with six members appointed by the mayor.

Hogsett’s top three education priorities highlighted in Chalkbeat’s voter guide are high-quality oversight of mayor-sponsored schools, improving literacy rates, and ensuring students are prepared for life beyond high school.

But education took a back seat in much of the discourse surrounding the mayoral election, with debates focusing mainly on police, the status of downtown Indianapolis, and the city’s animal shelter.

To address gun violence’s impact on young people, Hogsett highlighted “common-sense gun safety measures,” such as increasing the legal purchasing age from 18 to 21 and requiring a permit to carry a handgun in Marion County. The Indiana state legislature prohibits cities from regulating firearms, but Hogsett said he would push for state preemption on local gun laws to be removed in upcoming sessions.

In Chalkbeat’s voter guide, Hogsett said that as mayor he will continue to hold mayor-sponsored charter schools to high standards, “while remaining engaged with their work so we know if we need to step in to offer support.”

Hogsett would not say whether he would support a potential operating referendum by Indianapolis Public Schools that the district could propose to taxpayers in the future. Instead, he noted, the decision will be made by taxpayers within the IPS district.

Provisional and military ballots still need to be counted on Nov. 17. The Marion County Election Board will certify the vote totals on Nov. 20.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

KIPP Legacy High School student fatally shot near school identified

2023-11-06T21:01:40+00:00

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The KIPP Legacy High School student shot and killed near the school on Friday afternoon has been identified as 15-year-old Devin Gilbert III, according to the Marion County coroner’s office.

Gilbert was shot as he was walking home from school just before 1 p.m., the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the school said Friday. Police said the shooting was a targeted incident and no other people were injured.

IMPD homicide detectives announced on Friday night the arrest of a 15-year-old for his alleged role in the shooting, but did not release the name of the suspect. The Marion County prosecutor’s office will make the final charging decision, police said.

A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office said charges will have to be filed in juvenile court due to the age of the suspect.

Since Gilbert’s death Friday, at least two more teenagers were shot and killed in the city over the weekend, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Legacy High School planned to have on-site support available for students and staff on Monday to help them process the tragedy, the school said in a statement on Friday.

Police urge anyone with information about the incident to call Detective Larry Craciunoiu at the IMPD Homicide Office at 317-327-3475 or send an email to Larry.Craciunoiu@indy.gov. People who wish to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-8477.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Student shot and killed outside KIPP Legacy High School

2023-11-03T22:27:05+00:00

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A teenage student at KIPP Legacy High School was shot and killed Friday in a community center parking lot next to the school in what police say was a targeted shooting.

The student, who has not yet been identified, was walking home when he was shot just before 1 p.m. in the parking lot of the Edna Martin Christian Center’s Leadership and Legacy Center, both the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the school said Friday afternoon.

Police have detained a teenage male suspect who they said is not a Legacy student.

KIPP Legacy has a close relationship with the center, and uses space for extracurricular programming there. The community center also reserves parking spaces in its lot for KIPP staff. Both are fixtures of the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood.

“We are in ongoing communication with the student’s family, and will continue to offer support during this extremely difficult time,” the school said in a Friday afternoon statement. “On Monday, we will have on-site supports available for students and staff as our school community processes this tragedy.”

Police said there was a disturbance at the school earlier in the day, which is being investigated, but did not elaborate further. But they said there is not enough information to conclude whether the two incidents were connected. No one else was injured in the shooting.

The homicide marks at least the fourth fatal shooting of a school-aged youth in less than two weeks in Indianapolis. One 15-year-old boy was found fatally shot on Oct. 21, and a 16-year-old girl was killed eight days later. Another 15-year-old girl was found fatally shot on Wednesday.

“It’s unacceptable that as a community, we’ve had conversations about youth violence all week, and this is how our week ends,” said IMPD Commander Matt Thomas. “It’s unacceptable that we have families hurting.”

Mayor Joe Hogsett has responded to such shootings with concerns about the accessibility of guns.

“This afternoon’s shooting of an Indianapolis teen is another example of the horrific combination of access to firearms and a failure of conflict resolution,” Hogsett said in a Friday statement. “No young person should have to worry about gun violence, let alone near a school.”

KIPP Legacy High School is a charter school within the Indianapolis Public Schools’ Innovation Network, and celebrated its first graduating class last spring.

Police urge witnesses or others with information to call the IMPD homicide office at 317-327-3475 or Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-8477 to remain anonymous.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

How to navigate IPS’ school reorganization and new enrollment policies for 2024-25

2023-10-25T21:24:16+00:00

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Thousands of Indianapolis Public Schools students will see big changes next year when the district splits up more than a dozen schools, gives families a wider choice of schools, and expands the reach of its specialized academic programs.

The changes are the second part of the district’s massive Rebuilding Stronger reorganization, which seeks to bring more diverse academic programming and extracurricular activities to more students in a push for equity. The plan also seeks to stabilize enrollment amid growing competition from charter schools.

The plan could have a big impact on where families choose to enroll.

Starting in 2024-25, the district will break up 17 K-8 schools into 16 standalone elementary schools and one middle school. Other schools will switch from serving grades K-6 to K-5, and from 7-8 to 6-8.

The district is organizing its schools into four new enrollment zones encompassing different educational options. Families can apply for a spot at any of the schools located in their zone, rather than being restricted to their neighborhood school or to old school-choice boundaries.

Each zone has a mix of schools that specialize in different subjects or programs, such as arts, STEM, Montessori, International Baccalaureate, dual language, high ability, or the Reggio-Emilia approach. Some schools that do not have these specific programs are “exploratory” schools. The plan also assigns new feeder schools for these specialized schools, guiding students from elementary to middle school.

Some schools serve multiple zones.

High schools will serve all zones and will still be open to all students in the district, no matter where they live.

The first enrollment period for 2024-25 runs from Nov. 1, 2023, to Jan. 24, 2024, with results of the lottery released on Feb. 22. The second enrollment period runs from Jan. 25 through April 19, with results released on May 16.

The district has held school tours and open houses every weekday for the past month, and plans a showcase event Nov. 1 from 4 to 8 p.m. in which every school will be open for families to visit.

Here are answers to some of the big questions inspired by Chalkbeat Indiana readers about the upcoming enrollment process:

What is the easiest way for me to enroll?

The district encourages families to enroll online through Enroll Indy, which runs the lottery for IPS. Families who visit a school to enroll will still use Enroll Indy’s online application.

Will my child get transportation to any school in our zone?

Yes, families who choose a school in the zone where they live will receive transportation to and from that school. However, families who live close enough to the school to be classified as a “walker” will not receive transportation. See if you qualify as a “walker” here.

Families can apply to a school outside their zone, but IPS gives preference to students who live in the zone. Families must also provide their own transportation to a school outside of their zone beyond the 2024-25 school year.

Schools in the IPS Innovation Network may not offer transportation through IPS, and may require families to contact the school directly for transportation.

The proposed new enrollment policy talks about ‘priority groups.’ What are those, and how will they affect my chances of getting into the school I want?

The lottery gives certain groups of students preferences that can increase their chances of getting a spot in the school they want. Priority is given, in this order, to:

Students living in the IPS district
Siblings of a current student at the school
Families who live in the same zone as the school
Students who attended a closing school
Students with a guardian who is an IPS employee

My child is attending a school that will be in our zone next year. Do I need to do anything to reenroll them?

If families are happy in their current school and plan to stay there for the 2024-25 school year, they do not need to reapply or reenroll, according to the district.

What happens if the school I want in my zone is at capacity?

Families can select another school in their zone, according to the district.

When IPS unveiled the plan last year, Evan Hawkins, school board president at the time, said the district has not historically seen families crowd any one school.

My child’s new zone is different from the one in which their current school is located. Can they stay at that school next year?

Yes, families can remain at their current school until the student graduates from the school’s highest grade, according to the district.

If families are eligible for transportation at the school this year, they will be offered transportation in 2024-25, but not after that.

What happens if I want or need to transfer to another IPS school midyear?

Families who move in the middle of the school year to a different zone can apply for a seat at a school in their new zone through Enroll Indy, according to the district. Or the student can stay at their current school, provided they have their own transportation.

But students won’t be permitted to switch schools midyear for a personal preference. They would need to wait until the next enrollment period to apply to a different school.

There are exceptions, though, for students who:

Need special medical services offered by the desired school
Experience bullying at their current school
Are in physical danger due to documented issues with other students at the current school
Have a sibling who attends a special education program in the desired school

How can I easily compare school options?

IPS advises visiting Enroll Indy to preview school options.

Have a question about IPS enrollment that’s not answered? Email us at in.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated to correctly note transportation options and clarify that some schools serve multiple zones. The accompanying map has also been updated to correct information on schools and add schools that were omitted.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS to tap state vouchers to fund prekindergarten as it weighs whether to charge tuition

2023-10-24T11:00:00+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools will rely on state-funded vouchers for its expanded prekindergarten offerings once federal pandemic relief expires in 2024, as officials weigh whether to charge for prekindergarten in the future.

Beginning next year, all families will be required to submit an application for the state’s On My Way Pre-K voucher if they want to enroll their children at any one of the 22 IPS prekindergarten sites, even if they don’t qualify for the voucher. The vouchers are offered to families who earn a gross monthly income of less than 150% of the designated federal poverty level — or about $45,000 for a family of four, according to the state Family and Social Services Administration

IPS families do not need to be eligible for the voucher in order to secure one of roughly 700 prekindergarten seats next year, IPS officials say. All families will be eligible for matching with a prekindergarten program in the district-wide lottery, according to IPS. Those who qualify for vouchers will not get preference, but other preferences do apply.

The switch to state voucher funding for the district’s prekindergarten program is one of several changes that IPS and other school districts will have to make as federal pandemic relief funds expire. It comes as officials consider whether to charge for prekindergarten for families who can afford it. IPS is one of few districts that offer free prekindergarten. Across Marion County, charging tuition is the norm.

“This is a first step that I believe will lead to us likely taking on a charge for families, because the reality is even in the districts who offer it, it is at a cost,” except for those using On My Way vouchers, Superintendent Aleesia Johnson told school board members at a work session earlier this month.

IPS anticipates receiving enough funding from the On My Way Pre-K vouchers to cover prekindergarten programming expenses, the district said in a statement.

Vouchers should bring in roughly $4.2 million to the district next year to offset a program cost projected at roughly $3.8 million, Chief Financial Officer Weston Young told school board members last week.

If voucher funding is not enough to cover the cost, the district said it will supplement it with an alternative funding source, such as its main education fund or other federal funding.

The district’s reorganization plan, known as Rebuilding Stronger, increased the number of sites offering prekindergarten, from 29 classrooms at 20 sites last school year to 30 classrooms in 21 sites this year. Next year, the district will add one more site for a total of 31 classrooms.

Source: Indianapolis Public Schools

How to apply for IPS pre-K for 2024-25

Families can apply for prekindergarten for the 2024-25 school year online through Enroll Indy when the first enrollment period opens Nov. 1. To be eligible, students must be 4 years old by Aug. 1. Enrollment decisions will be released on Feb. 22.

A second enrollment period opens on Jan. 25, with decisions released on May 16.

The application period for the On My Way Pre-K vouchers opens in March. IPS will retroactively verify with the state whether families applied for the voucher.

The enrollment lottery will give priority placement to families who live in the IPS district, IPS employees, students who have a sibling already attending the designated school, and families who live in the new enrollment zone that the school serves.

After that, remaining seats will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis, according to the district.

Families who received a prekindergarten seat next school year are guaranteed a seat in kindergarten at the same school for 2025-26.

Additional early childhood seats offered at new Howe site

IPS has also partnered with Early Learning Indiana to open another early childhood education site at the future Howe Middle School, which opens next school year. This site is separate from the 22 prekindergarten sites and offers classes for even younger ages.

Families tour the new Day Early Learning center on Oct. 19, 2023. The center offers 79 seats for toddlers, infants, preschoolers, and prekindergarten students.

This site will offer 79 seats across two infant rooms, two toddler rooms, one preschool room, and one prekindergarten room. Priority is given to IPS employees and IPS students with children.

The Day Early Learning Center at Howe opened this week with three initial infant, toddler, and preschool classes totaling 20 students, all of whom were students of IPS employees. The district offered scholarships to families enrolled this year, paid for through federal pandemic relief funds. Families had to apply for available state or federal assistance in order to qualify.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Thrival Indy Academy Innovation school to close after 2023-24 amid low enrollment

2023-10-07T00:43:55+00:00

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Thrival Indy Academy, designed to offer study abroad opportunities to students as an Indianapolis Public Schools Innovation Network high school, will close at the end of the 2023-24 school year after failing to meet enrollment targets.

The school’s board of directors voted on Friday to not renew its Innovation agreement with IPS once it expires at the end of this school year. The high school, located within Arlington Middle School, has 107 students this year who will have guaranteed spots at an IPS high school in 2024-25, according to the district.

Year after year, Thrival could not meet the enrollment targets set forth in its latest Innovation agreement, signed in 2019. This year, that target was set at 300 students.

“When we look at student numbers and enrollment, we have to ask ourselves the question of what student experience can we really give the students?” Julius Mansa, Thrival’s board chairperson, said during the meeting.

The Thrival board also voted to offer retention stipends of $10,000 for teachers and support staff and $12,000 for administrative staff who stay through the end of the school year.

“This is always the hardest decision to share as a superintendent, but I am committed to getting this transition right for Thrival students, families, and staff,” IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said in a statement. “My pledge to Thrival families is that IPS will have your back every step of the way by helping you find a great IPS high school for your child next school year.”

The high school is one of the few IPS Innovation Network schools that is not a charter school. It is run by a nonprofit organization and a board of directors.

Thrival opened in 2017 as a small pilot program within IPS that allowed students to study abroad in Thailand for free. It later grew to a one-year school that only enrolled juniors.

But the school paused operations for one-year in 2019-20 as officials figured how to help students fit the one-year opportunity into four years of high school. Thrival relaunched in 2020-21 as a four-year high school, after signing a new Innovation agreement with IPS that allowed it to start with ninth graders and grow by one grade each school year.

Students were unable to travel for two school years after the pandemic, Mansa said. Last school year, students took a domestic trip. A Puerto Rico trip is planned for some students this year, he said.

Loki Lavin, a sophomore at the school, expressed concern about the transition of Thrival students into much larger schools after Friday’s meeting.

“This school is small and we’re very close-knit like a family,” Lavin said. “And I think that’s part of what makes us different.”

Mansa said he was unsure if the pandemic caused the school’s low enrollment.

“I know it’s a tough enrollment environment in general,” he said. “There’s a lot of options. Students have a lot of choices.”

The district will offer enrollment sessions for each Thrival family, IPS said in a statement.

Enrollment at IPS schools for next school year begins Nov. 1, and families can apply to schools at enrollindy.org/apply. All IPS school buildings will be open for families to visit during a showcase of schools from 4 to 8 p.m. Nov. 1.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Safer schools, new classrooms, pools: Lawrence Township’s plan of over $500 million takes shape

2023-10-05T20:44:39+00:00

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An abundance of natural light flows through the art classrooms at Lawrence Central High School. Three floors above, students complete independent work in an open-space lounge.

And on another end of the building, crews work on the latest addition to the Lawrence Township high school: an indoor pool.

The renovations here are among the largest of the district’s massive facilities upgrade plan that has touched each of the district’s 17 school buildings. So far, it has pumped more than $500 million into new classrooms, new stadiums, bigger playgrounds, safety renovations, and more.

The district’s Blue Ribbon Facilities plan, which began in 2014, sought to upgrade buildings that are up to 55 years old by creating more classroom space to accommodate the district’s growing student population. The district has so far spent over $200 million on these upgrades. But in 2019, voters approved a $220 million ballot measure that turbocharged the district’s facility plans by funding improvements at Lawrence Central, five other schools, and four early learning centers. The changes could be vital to ensuring students are engaged in school, a challenge in the post-pandemic era.

“You see a different level of ownership for us,” said Lawrence Central High School Principal Franklyn Bush.“I think we also see the want to absolutely be at school just because of all the natural light, the bright light, the opportunities to support and promote your clubs, activities, your students’ success.”

Lawrence Central High School Principal Franklyn Bush speaks to a student in the open-lounge space in the new three-floor addition to the school.

Renovations bring more classrooms, extracurricular space

The old Lawrence Central was dark, crowded, and carpeted — on both the floor and the walls.

After voters passed the $220 million referendum in 2019, similar overhauls and updates began at both Lawrence Central and Lawrence North. The 2019 referendum pays for upgrades at both high schools, as well as Brook Park, Forest Glen, Oaklandon, and Winding Ridge elementary schools. Four early learning centers located within elementary schools also received this funding.

The two high schools are the district’s largest projects.

Major upgrades by building

Crestview Elementary: New gym and additional classrooms.
McKenzie Center for Innovation & Technology: Added and renovated cosmetology, culinary, and barbering labs and a student-run restaurant
Mary Castle Elementary: Four additional classrooms.
Skiles Test Elementary: New gym.
Indian Creek Elementary: New front office area, redesigned media center.
Harrison Hill Elementary: Three additional classrooms, interior redesign.
Sunnyside Elementary: Four additional classrooms, new front office entry space, full renovation of building.
Amy Beverland Elementary: Courtyard turned into media center, additional classroom, front space redesign.
Lawrence Central and Lawrence North High Schools: Three-story classroom addition, new indoor pool, new athletic fields, fully renovated auditorium, softball stadium upgrades, new stadiums and end zone buildings.
Brook Park Elementary: New entryway, redesign of the front entrance, additional rooms.
Forest Glen Elementary: Five additional classrooms, addition to front office space, new facade, full renovation of building.
Oaklandon Elementary: Redesign of the inside of the building, addition to front entryway, addition to cafeteria and STEM space.
Winding Ridge Elementary: New front entryway.
Four Early Learning Centers: Expanded playgrounds.
Belzer Middle School: Full renovation of building, new auditorium, upgrades to concessions and track.
Fall Creek Middle School: Redesigned media center, new office space for support services and administration, full renovation of building, two additional classrooms.
Transportation facility: Larger, new space for school buses.
Administration building: New building to be built from land donated by Fort Harrison Reuse Authority. Existing Lawrence Education and Community Center to receive renovations.

Source: Lawrence Township schools

At Lawrence Central, the referendum money funded a three-story addition, and the school’s classrooms have been reorganized to minimize the chaos between classes. Students attend their four core classes in the three-story building and come through a new hallway to get to their elective classes in a separate wing of the building.

On the ground floor, there’s a new cafeteria, media center, and a bright new senior cafe that seniors use at lunch and other students and staff can use for events.

Students are already taking advantage of the new space. Last month, the Latino student union performed a dance for National Hispanic Heritage Month. About 80 tickets were sold for the dance in the cafe, a more intimate space than the school’s gym, Bush said.

“This has given them so many more opportunities to own space in the building and just enjoy themselves,” he said.

At Lawrence North, students will soon get to enjoy the new indoor pool when it opens later this year.

Both high schools also received funding outside of the referendum for new auditoriums and upgrades to the stadium and end zone buildings that house locker and training rooms.

Upgrades focus on transportation, school safety, athletics

Lawrence Township schools still has a host of other projects to complete over the next several years; the district expects the first phase of the Blue Ribbon to be completed in 2027. But other projects that are part of the district’s recent spate of construction are already finished.

The district used Blue Ribbon plan funds to build a new transportation facility, completed in 2021, that accommodates its enrollment growth. Its previous lot for school buses was designed for 96 vehicles, but the district now has 220, said Rodger Smith, the district’s chief operations officer.

Eleven other schools have also received upgrades under the Blue Ribbon plan. Main offices for some of the seven elementary schools in this group were moved from the center of the building to the front to improve school safety, Smith said. Many also received new classrooms.

Last month, officials celebrated the groundbreaking of a new administration building that officials will move into in 2025. The current administration building will still house the Lawrence Advance Academy, and officials are also examining the possibility of opening a new school serving grades 5-8. All of these developments are part of the Blue Ribbon plan.

Across the street from Lawrence Central, Belzer Middle School is getting a full renovation that includes a new auditorium.

And the work at Lawrence Central is not quite done. The school is still in the process of getting two soccer fields and a new varsity baseball diamond, plus the indoor pool.

Bush hopes that the improvements to Lawrence Central will allow the school to serve more student needs and interests.

“When you think about the opportunities for kids when it comes to training, regarding performing arts, athletics, even academic trainings, we necessarily don’t have to send our kids off campus anymore,” he said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Charter school’s closure after state count day could leave other schools without proper state funding

2023-10-02T20:31:41+00:00

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The closure of the Vanguard Collegiate charter school four days after the statewide “count day” used to determine each school’s funding could leave students’ new schools without accurate state funding.

The 5-8 grade school, which operates out of the Hawthorne Community Center, announced last month that it will close Oct. 6 — four days after the state’s count day. The school struggled with declining enrollment that last stood at 43 students, according to the school’s authorizer.

The Indiana Department of Education uses two count days each year — one in the fall and one in the spring — to determine how much funding each school should receive based on the number of students enrolled by that date. This year’s count date, Oct. 2, is later in the school year than usual.

That funding is a baseline “foundation amount” per student, plus additional funding for students in specialized categories, such as English language learners, those who live in poverty, and special education students. Vanguard was slated to receive $9,072 per pupil this school year and $9,333 per pupil for the next year, according to estimates from the state’s Legislative Services Agency.

Schools that close during the school year — such as Vanguard Collegiate and HIM By HER, another charter school that closed last year — do not continue to receive their monthly tuition support payments from the state following a closure, according to the Indiana Department of Education. Instead, those dollars remain in the state’s tuition support fund.

However, if a student transfers to another school after Oct. 2, the receiving school will not get tuition support funding for that student for the first half of the school year either, according to the department. State law does allow school districts to petition the state board of education to adjust pupil counts if they believe the figures are unrepresentative of enrollment.

The former Vanguard students could, however, generate funding if they are included in their new schools’ enrollment count taken in the spring.

Vanguard Collegiate did not respond to a request for comment on why it selected to close after count day.

The school held an enrollment fair on Friday to help its students find new schools.

James Betley, executive director for the Indiana Charter School Board that authorized the school, reported at the board’s meeting on Sep. 26 that about one-quarter of the families had been moved to new schools since the closure was announced.

One challenge, he said, is that contact information for some families has been incorrect.

“We’re trying to track down those addresses, we’re working with the school to try to find those kids,” he said. “And the hope is that with each passing day, we’ll get more and more kids enrolled in school.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana University Indianapolis to offer automatic admission to IPS students with 3.0 GPA

2023-09-27T22:38:07+00:00

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Students attending Indianapolis Public Schools who have a grade point average of at least 3.0 will receive automatic admission to Indiana University Indianapolis.

The major initiative announced on Wednesday aims to make higher education more accessible for IPS students. In addition, those qualified students won’t have to fill out an application, provide a high school transcript, or pay an application fee to attend the university. The effort applies to students in the four high schools IPS manages directly: Arsenal Tech, Crispus Attucks, Shortridge, and George Washington.

“We know that this partnership with IU Indy bridges the gap between high school and higher education,” IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said during the announcement at Crispus Attucks High School. “[It] empowers our students to pursue advanced coursework and broaden their horizons.”

The announcement comes as the state embarks on a broad push to make high school students aware of their higher education opportunities.

A new law requires Indiana students to fill out the application for federal aid next year, with certain exceptions. And this month, some Indiana high school seniors began receiving pre-admission letters to certain higher education institutions through an Indiana Commission for Higher Education initiative; that initiative still requires students to apply, even if they are pre-admitted.

Indiana University Indianapolis is still known as Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), but will officially rebrand as IU Indianapolis in the summer of 2024 following an agreement between IU and Purdue to split and operate two separate campuses.

IPS students who meet the GPA requirement will receive an email and postcard indicating they qualify for admission to IU Indianapolis this fall, and can opt in to attend the school. They will receive automatic admission after filling out an online form. The first cohort of admitted students will attend the university in the fall of 2024.

The initiative is funded by the New Skills Ready Network initiative by JPMorgan Chase & Co., which selected Indianapolis as one of several cities to receive $7 million to help students complete high-quality career pathways.

IUPUI is one of the three most popular colleges that IPS students apply to, Johnson said.

In 2023, 64% of graduating seniors at IPS reported plans to enroll in a two- or four-year college, Johnson said. This year, that figure is 72% for the class of 2024.

Statewide, the college-going rate for high school seniors is roughly 53% for the class of 2021, the latest data available.

Crispus Attucks High School senior Amy Gaytan said she’s excited about the new initiative because it will help ease some of the stress of her senior year. She hopes to study nursing at IU Indianapolis, and has been working through dual-credit classes currently offered through her school and the college.

“I was a little bit worried (about) starting to find scholarships and to apply for colleges and all that stuff, and with all my classes that I take here and [at] IUPUI I was just overwhelmed,” she said. “But when I heard about the opportunity here, I was just very excited.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Vanguard Collegiate of Indianapolis to close next month amid declining enrollment

2023-09-19T22:49:51+00:00

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Vanguard Collegiate of Indianapolis will close roughly two months into the school year, citing declining enrollment.

In a letter to parents last week, the charter school’s executive director said its last day will be Oct. 6. The school, which opened in 2018 in the Hawthorne neighborhood on the city’s west side, serves students in grades 5-8 and had an enrollment of 71 as of last school year, according to state records. It recently moved into the Hawthorne Community Center.

“Please know that we fought hard for you, our beloved school community. And in that fight, we realize that the right thing to do is to close,” executive director Robert Marshall said in the letter. “Now, our number one priority is to ensure that your child gets enrolled in a new suitable school of your choice.”

It’s the second charter school in less than a year that has announced a closure during the school year, a practice that charter school accountability experts say causes disruptions for families who then scramble to find new schools. Since the state created the charter school law in 2001, 29 brick-and-mortar and blended learning charter schools in Marion County have closed, or roughly 30% of the 94 that have opened, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

Marshall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The school is authorized by the Indiana Charter School Board, which approved a five-year renewal of its charter last fall.

The school’s initial charter application had ambitious enrollment projections, with plans to grow from 120 students in 2018 to 480 by its fifth year.

After Vanguard moved to the Hawthorne facility, it reduced enrollment to operate as a micro-school, said James Betley, executive director of ICSB. The school was aiming for 90 students this year but had 40 students as of a few weeks ago, Betley said.

“That was one of those renewals where we probably could have leaned the other way,” Betley said of last year’s decision to renew the school. “But there was enough evidence that they could keep going.”

The school is directing families to the city’s unified enrollment system, Enroll Indy, to find a new school and is also hosting an enrollment fair later this month.

“Today, our hearts are heavy. We are grateful for the opportunity to educate and build relationships with your child and family,” Marshall said in the letter. “We hope that we have lived up to the promises we made to each family.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the number of charter schools that have opened and closed since 2001.

Indianapolis Public Schools expands virtual tutoring during the school day after some success

2023-09-18T11:00:00+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools is expanding its virtual tutoring efforts to reach more students during the school day after some of the district’s most underperforming schools saw positive growth on the state ILEARN exam from the program.

The virtual tutoring offered by Tutored by Teachers expanded this school year from 11 of the district’s chronically underperforming elementary “Emerging Schools” to 22 out of roughly 40 traditional IPS schools.

Principals were able to opt into the program, using it to fulfill one of several needs: support for vacant classroom teaching positions in math, English, science, or social studies, SAT prep for high school students, and intervention for students at a certain achievement level, according to Tutored by Teachers.

The expansion means the district is leaning even more heavily into one of its largest efforts to recover from pandemic learning loss, with help from federal coronavirus relief funds. Roughly 2,755 students will now get tutoring during the school day, according to Tutored by Teachers, up from last year’s figure of over 1,200.

IPS is also relaunching Tutoring for All, an after-school virtual tutoring program also offered through Tutored by Teachers, which has garnered just over 2,000 students so far.

School districts around the country have turned to high-dosage tutoring to help students recover from pandemic-era learning loss, although the efforts in the country’s largest districts have only reached a small fraction of students. IPS has embraced the tutoring offered through Tutored by Teachers, which offers small-group instruction during the day by certified educators from all over the country.

This year, the tutoring offered during the day at participating schools in IPS can vary by school site, said Tutored by Teachers co-founder Rahul Kalita.

“It requires some strategic thinking and effort for the entire leadership team of a school to think through, ‘Who do we want to target?’” Kalita said.

The expansion also means some students may be getting double doses of tutoring — one session at school and another at home.

Robin Hill, who signed her fourth grade daughter up for after-school tutoring, was surprised when she learned last week that her daughter will also get tutoring during the school day at George Washington Carver Montessori School 87.

Math is her daughter’s strong suit, Hill said, but she struggles with English and struggled with reading when the pandemic hit in her earlier elementary years.

“I love it,” she said of the news of tutoring expansion. “Absolutely love it. Because she needs it.”

IPS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Data from Tutored by Teachers shows positive results

Data analysis from Tutored by Teachers indicates both during and after-school tutoring showed some promising academic results.

Emerging School students who participated in more than 20 hours of tutoring on average grew more on the ILEARN assessment in math and English than students who did not, according to the company’s analysis. Those students grew by about 14 more points on ILEARN in math and 12 in English.

And students who participated in more than 10 hours of after-school tutoring in the Tutoring for All program also grew more in math and English than their non-tutored counterparts from fall to spring, according to another analysis of seven of the 11 Emerging Schools.

Funding for Tutored by Teachers has been one of the district’s largest expenditures from its federal pandemic relief coffers.

The district spent roughly $4.3 million out of its roughly $217 million in federal relief dollars on Tutored by Teachers from the start of last school year through March 31, according to records of the district’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund spending.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana attorney general hopes to block sale of two IPS school buildings in latest court filing

2023-09-14T18:50:12+00:00

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The state attorney general wants to block the sale of two buildings that Indianapolis Public Schools closed this year and hopes to sell.

It is the latest development in the argument over how to interpret the newest version of the state’s so-called “$1 law” that requires school districts to give closed school buildings to charters for the sale or lease price of $1. The controversial law is especially pertinent as IPS has closed six schools this year, two of which it currently seeks to sell.

The district’s complaint against Attorney General Todd Rokita and the Indiana Department of Education’s secretary of state and its board members argues that it is exempt from the newly revised state law. IPS asked the court last month for legal affirmation of its position, while also requesting an injunction to prevent the state from enforcing the law with respect to IPS.

The law, revised this past legislative session, exempts districts from having to sell or lease closed buildings to charters if they split funding from certain voter-approved property tax increases with an “applicable charter school.” IPS argues that it is exempt because it previously shared funds from a 2018 property tax increase with charters in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools.

But in its counterclaim filed in Marion County Superior Court on Wednesday, the attorney general’s office cited a new section added to state law this year that requires school districts in Marion County and three other counties to share certain voter-approved tax increases with charter schools. The law requires those districts to share referendum funds for any ballot question approved by a school board after May 10, 2023.

It’s the first time the attorney general has weighed in on the interpretation of the new version of the $1 law. The counterclaim offers the same interpretation as Sen. Linda Rogers, the Republican who authored the changes.

School districts must share referendum funds with charters for any ballot question passed after May 10 in order to be exempt from the $1 law, the counterclaim argues. In all other cases, they are subject to the law, the attorney general’s office noted.

IPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The legal battle has sparked a complaint with the state’s public access counselor from the Indiana Charter School Network, which argued that the school board violated the state’s public meetings law because it had failed to approve the legal complaint in a public meeting.

The school board voted to authorize its complaint against the state three days after the public access complaint in a public meeting, with board President Venita Moore stressing that the board was seeking clarity over the law’s interpretation.

“We’re not trying to start a fight with anybody,” Moore said. “But rather we’re trying to remove any uncertainty with respect to our legal rights and obligations.”

The vote passed 4-1, with board member Angelia Moore abstaining and board member Will Pritchard voting against. Board member Hope Hampton was absent.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Herron Prep Academy starts new year at former Indianapolis Children’s Museum site

2023-09-13T20:53:10+00:00

Herron Prep Academy celebrated the start of its new school year in a new building on Wednesday, the latest sign of growth for the Herron Classical Schools charter network, which has three Indianapolis schools.

The new site at 3100 N. Meridian St., which the school purchased from the Children’s Museum in 2022 for an undisclosed price, houses K-5 students who occupied the building for the first time in August. Herron Prep plans to eventually grow to serve K-8 students at the site, and is embarking on a second phase of construction at the location to create classrooms for fifth to eighth grades and a gymnasium.

All three schools are part of the Indianapolis Public Schools network of autonomous schools, known as the Innovation Network. The expansion will allow students in lower grades to enroll in Herron’s classical education offerings.

The school is the newest addition to the Herron Classical Schools charter network, which began in 2006 with Herron High School. The network created Herron-Riverside High School in 2017 at the old Heslar Naval Armory site, and Herron Prep opened with grades K-2 in 2021.

Herron Prep students look on as officials cut the ribbon for the new building at the start of the 2023-24 school year.

Enrollment at Herron Prep school nearly doubled from last school year to this year, according to school officials, with 315 students currently in the new building.

As the charter network grew, officials saw gaps that needed to be addressed.

“Ninth grade students were coming consistently to us struggling to do fractions and reading well below grade level,” Herron Classical Schools President Janet McNeal said at the ribbon-cutting. “We knew our solution was creating and building our own kindergarten through eighth grade school.”

Students previously occupied the lower level of the Herron-Riverside High School and space at Herron High School before moving into their own building this year.

The new campus, which used to be a Salvation Army facility, is just under 3 miles away from the network’s two charter high schools.

Herron Prep plans to grow to K-6 next year, with the second phase of construction expected to be completed around next July.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Corrections and clarifications: This story has been updated to reflect an accurate description of the formation of Herron-Riverside High School.

New school year for James Whitcomb Riley School 43 brings new agreement with community partners

2023-09-11T11:00:00+00:00

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James Whitcomb Riley School 43 in the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood of Indianapolis has lived through the same story over and over again:

A new year with yet another principal. Test scores that need significant improvement. Community members who are desperate to help.

But after spending the past decade floundering, School 43 could finally see change with the start of this school year.

For the school’s latest principal, Crishell Sam, returning to School 43 feels like coming home. Sam began her Indianapolis Public Schools career here in 2006 — now, some of her former students are parents at the school.

Sam was tapped for the role in part by community members who participated in the principal selection process.

This year, the district also signed a memorandum of understanding with a community group that has long tried to support School 43, requiring routine meetings during which both parties discuss the school’s improvement plan, staffing changes, and budget.

Sam acknowledges that turnaround will require hard work, but she’s not fixated on the many leaders that came before her.

“We’re talking about student achievement,” she said. “And so for me it is about: Where are we at, at this point, and what do we need to do to be able to improve?”

Nonbinding MOU outlines regular community engagement

The MOU between the district and Midtown Indy, the local nonprofit that does community work in the midtown area of the city where School 43 is located, is legally nonbinding.

But it acknowledges the desire of both parties to work together to bring community resources to students. One main goal is to allow community members to “positively influence student achievement and assist IPS with the tough work of providing equitable educational opportunity,” the MOU states.

Principal Crishell Sam talks to members of the Community Partners of James Whitcomb Riley School 43 group at a meeting at the Martin Luther King Community Center in August 2023. “The thing that I love about what happened with CP 43 is that it created a space for all of us to come together to have this common discussion,” Sam said.

Midtown Indy will collaborate with community groups, including the network of community members who have routinely met to support School 43 — known now as the Community Partners of James Whitcomb Riley School 43, or “CP 43.”

Midtown will establish an education committee — which could include CP 43 members — to work with the district and school staff on academic performance, community relations, school operations and staffing, and “overall school health,” according to the MOU.

Community members will also provide input on the school’s budget and recommendations on school staffing and facility improvements. Midtown can also assist the district with obtaining grants to support the school.

Although not legally enforceable, the agreement summarizes the kind of input the CP 43 group of neighborhood churches, alumni, and community organizations have wanted to have for years.

It’s a relatively big step for a neighborhood that has often felt blindsided or frustrated about consistent principal turnover and decisions about the school made from above.

School 43 has also already enjoyed years of support from neighborhood partners, including the Butler University College of Education, whose students help staff the library, and a journalism program launched by an alumna.

This year, a new community coordinator is welcoming those CP 43 members with open arms.

“We want to change the environment, make it a happy, wonderful utopia. I know people think that’s impossible, but we have a very positive staff, very positive principal,” Monica DeLaPaz, the school’s community coordinator, told members at a CP 43 meeting at the Martin Luther King Community Center in August. “We want you to always feel welcome to come into the building and work together.”

New principal wants data to dictate community resources

As Sam walked through the halls nearly one month into the school year, she stressed order among students as they transition to class.

Everyone walks in a straight line, on the right side of the hallway — and Sam makes sure students are moving in an organized way between classes.

First graders prepare to go to lunch at James Whitcomb Riley school 43 on Aug. 30, 2023.

“I want to provide as much consistency as I can for students,” she said. “And I also want to create a space of trust.”

Still, Sam has a daunting task ahead of her as she works to turn the school around. Scores from state tests remained largely flat from 2022 to 2023, with just 2.3% of students proficient in the ILEARN administered in grades 3-8 and 35% of third graders passing the IREAD test.

“It’s work that has to be done for students, because our students deserve the best,” she said. “I don’t have any plans of not being here. And if I’m here, I’m doing my work.”

And when the school transforms from a K-8 school to a Pre-K-5 visual and performing arts school next year — part of the district’s Rebuilding Stronger reorganization — even more work will need to be done.

Sam started almost completely fresh this year, hiring about 90% of the staff — some of whom she brought over from Arsenal Tech High School during her time as interim principal there.

As of the end of August, the school had four staff vacancies in first, fourth, and sixth grades, and an open position for English language learner students.

Sam hopes to organize the community support from CP 43 and the midtown area based on where it’s most needed, analyzing student data to make sure community partners are doing meaningful work.

“We have great things that they are affording us,” she said. “Now we have to make sure that we channel them as far as helping us.”

Community members, at least, seem ready and willing to help. And some can already tell that this school year will be different.

“We’ve been sitting in this committee talking about 43 for years now, and I want to publicly say, it really has changed,” Sheila Long, a teacher at the school and member of CP 43, said at the group’s meeting in August. “I can’t believe — I walk the hallways and I can hear a mouse run across. It’s calm, it’s orderly, it’s quiet leaning. There’s a lot of engagement, learning, and a lot of support.”

The committee broke into applause. Sam broke into tears.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Three charter schools will expand in Indianapolis next year

2023-09-06T17:41:56+00:00

Three more charter schools will open in Indianapolis in the fall of 2024 and plan to grow to a combined capacity of more than 1,100 students over the next several years.

Matchbook Learning, Paramount Schools of Excellence, and Purdue Polytechnic High School will each launch an additional campus or school after receiving approval from Education One, the charter authorizing arm of Trine University in Angola.

The new campuses for Matchbook and Purdue Polytechnic will be high schools on the city’s west side, while Paramount’s new K-8 campus will be in midtown.

The new schools will bolster the city’s charter community, which has grown to nearly 70 schools in recent years as student enrollment at traditional public schools in IPS has declined. IPS and charter schools are competing for students as well as certain facilities and funding streams. And several more charter schools are planning for Indianapolis expansions for 2025.

Matchbook Learning to open career and technical school

Matchbook Learning, a national charter operator that runs Wendell Phillips School 63 as part of Indianapolis Public Schools’ “restart” charter turnaround effort, plans to open a career and technical high school on the city’s west side. The school recently announced a $5 million grant it received from the U.S. Department of Energy to help transform warehouses in that area into a career center.

The Matchbook College, Career, and Technical Institute will serve grades 9-12 and up to 10 adult students after several years, growing to a total enrollment of 280, according to its original application.

The school had initially proposed opening in 2022 or 2023, but delayed its start date as it tried to find a facility.

Matchbook did not respond to a request for comment on its newest location.

‘High-quality high school’ coming from Purdue Polytechnic

Purdue Polytechnic High School, which has two campuses in Indianapolis and one in South Bend, also plans to open on the city’s west side after another charter authorizer rejected its plans to expand in Pike Township.

The school plans to to be a high school option for students seeking a smaller school on the west side, which lacks high school options, the school said in its application. The school also hopes to provide a “high-quality high school option” and a pipeline for students to attend Purdue University.

Purdue Polytechnic, or PPHS, initially applied with the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation, another charter authorizer, to open its third Indianapolis campus in Pike Township. But the Indianapolis Charter School Board denied the application after intense community pushback last year.

PPHS West initially planned to open in 2023, but delayed its start as it looked for an appropriate facility. The school plans to grow to 500 students by its seventh year of operation, according to its original application.

PPHS declined to comment on its new location.

Paramount’s new charter to focus on science, math

Girls IN STEM Academy, operated by Paramount Schools of Excellence, also plans to open a K-8 school for girls in 2024 in the midtown area of Indianapolis near Broad Ripple.

Paramount currently has three campuses in Indianapolis and an online academy that is part of IPS’ Innovation Network of autonomous schools.

The school plans to grow to a capacity of 325 students in the next several years, according to its application.

Paramount did not respond to a request for comment on its new location.

More charter schools planned for 2025 and beyond

Believe Circle City High School, which won approval from the Indianapolis Charter School Board last year to expand to a second location, also plans on expanding to another campus in 2025.

Founder Kimberly Neal-Brannum told Chalkbeat Indiana in June that the school is still interested in the west side of Indianapolis because that is where the majority of its families come from.

Other charter schools also have long-term expansion plans.

Circle City Prep, which plans to grow to K-8 next year, expressed interest in using the closed IPS Francis Bellamy School 102 as its second location.

Adelante Schools, which operates an IPS Innovation Network charter in the Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School building, also expressed interest in expanding to a second campus at the closed IPS Raymond Brandes School 65.

The Mind Trust, which helps establish Indianapolis charters, recently selected leaders from both Circle City Prep and Adelante — as well as Girls IN STEM and PPHS — for fellowships. The School Launch Fellowship provides leaders with support to grow an existing charter school network, the Mind Trust said in a press release.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Communities in Schools program that organizes counseling, parent groups grows in Lawrence Township

2023-09-05T10:00:00+00:00

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The staff at Winding Ridge Elementary aren’t too shy to ask for help — and Shelia Richardson is there to provide it.

For seven years, the school has received support from Communities in Schools (or CIS), a national nonprofit that brings community resources into schools through school site coordinators. As Lawrence Township schools recover from the pandemic, the assistance Richardson coordinates as the CIS liaison has come in many forms.

There’s evidence that tutors have helped Winding Ridge students boost their literacy. A growing number of parents in need of clothes or shoes are referred to Richardson, who connects them with Operation School Bell. And an increasing number of students are receiving grief counseling during the school day that Richardson helps coordinate.

With Richardon’s help, Principal Rose Graham said, “We’re getting back into our groove again.”

The experience of students, staff, and families at Winding Ridge has been positive enough for Lawrence Township to go all-in on the Communities in Schools model. And more schools around the state are following suit.

This year, $1.2 million in philanthropic funding for Communities in Schools of Indiana is helping to increase the number of participating Lawrence schools from 10 to 15; all five of the new schools are elementary schools.

Students walk in the hallway at Winding Ridge Elementary in the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township on Aug. 24, 2023. The school has benefited from the Communities in Schools program in several ways.

That means that every elementary school — and nearly every school — in the district has a coordinator like Richardson, who in turn is coached and supported by CIS staff to help make the community resources they provide more effective.

This year, there will also be two new site coordinators at schools in the Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township — one at the new Decatur High Ability Academy, and a second site coordinator at Lynwood Elementary. The Lafayette School Corporation will also receive coordinators at Amelia Earhart and Vinton Elementary schools.

Some districts, including Lawrence and Decatur, pay for their CIS coordinators but pay the nonprofit for coaching and support.

In total, Communities in Schools will provide CIS coordinators to 35 traditional public schools statewide and one charter school, compared to 27 last year. Districts receiving the funding are also providing their own matching funding.

With a CIS site coordinator, teachers don’t have to be de facto social workers, said Hadley Moore Vlahogeorge, executive director of Communities in Schools Indiana.

“That’s just an incredible benefit,” she said. “We don’t want teachers to burn out. We don’t want them to be the only ones meeting student needs.”

The CIS model has been slow to expand in Indiana, Moore Vlahogeorge said.

“I think we have this attitude among Hoosiers of ‘I’m going to do it myself, this is my responsibility to take care of my kids,’” she said. “Sometimes it can be a little scary to bring in partners to do that.”

But for the past several years, Richardson has been doing just that: running the student council, resurrecting the parent-faculty organization, and even trying out a new “dad’s club” to get fathers more engaged in the school.

Both Graham and Richardson say the efforts have paid dividends.

When Richardson started working at the school, there were no parents in the parent-faculty group, she said. This year, 37 people signed up to join the group at back-to-school night. The group had 25 people involved last year.

“Just being open to the community coming in has been a big difference since I first started to now,” Richardson said.

And the outside tutoring efforts that Richardson helps coordinate have also helped academics, according to Graham: The school’s pass rate on the third grade IREAD exam jumped by over 18 percentage points from 2022 to 2023.

Richardson has also seen increased engagement from students, who hug her or gleefully talk to her as she walks through the school.

She thinks of the people in the neighborhood who drop off school supplies just before the start of the new school year.

“They keep coming every year,” she said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools creates equity committee to address outdated policies

2023-08-31T23:43:36+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools will launch an advisory committee tasked with recommending culturally responsive and equitable policies to the school board.

The Culturally Responsive and Equitable Education Committee approved by the school board Thursday will review district policies and procedures and suggest ways to address inequities that lead to disparate educational outcomes for students, according to the group’s charter.

The inaugural group of 10 people includes parents, IPS staff, community members, and school board commissioners Nicole Carey and Diane Arnold. Although it can make recommendations, the power to adopt those suggestions will remain with the school board.

IPS has made equity a priority in recent years. Last year, it adopted the Rebuilding Stronger reorganization to expand specialized academic offerings to all geographic areas of the district. In December, the board passed a language justice policy that seeks to address inequities experienced by students whose first language is not English.

Carey, who proposed the committee and runs an equity consulting firm, said before Thursday’s vote that she hopes the committee would bring the district’s recent equity efforts together and help IPS look at the topic through a comprehensive lens.

Some district policies from the 1980s and 1990s are not centered in equity for students, Carey noted.

“Even though this is the work I do every day, I can’t make these decisions on my own, and I can’t make these recommendations in a vacuum,” she said. “They need to be community-created.”

The committee will meet every two weeks until January and will make official policy recommendations in February, Carey said. After that, the group will continue to meet at least quarterly.

Carey said the committee could also advise the district as it works on its next long-term strategic plan.

The committee is scheduled to meet Sept. 7 at 5 p.m. at 1220 Waterway Boulevard in Indianapolis.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

These IPS schools could soon get overdue upgrades to classrooms, gyms, and air conditioning

2023-08-30T17:13:20+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools plans to use up to $95 million to upgrade athletic facilities, air conditioning units, special education classrooms, and address other facility needs at over two dozen schools.

The projects, which IPS officials unveiled Tuesday night, are part of more than $1 billion in deferred maintenance needs that the district identified in a 2020 facilities review. The majority of the projects would be completed by fall of 2024 or spring of 2025, IPS Chief Operations Officer Bill Murphy said. A bond repaid over 19 years would fund the improvements, which would not require IPS to seek new tax revenue.

The projects still need various approvals from the school board, which could approve them in November after completing public hearings required by state law.

Major high school investments would include:

Shortridge High School: Improvements to the school theater, exterior windows, main gym mezzanine, fire alarms, field and press box seats, and the artificial turf football field.
George Washington High School: Improvements to the theater room, track, artificial football turf, visitor’s stand and sidewalk, and a new sound system. The school will also receive repairs to its foundation and windows and fire alarm upgrades.
Arsenal Tech High School: Upgrading the walls in the east gym and Lone Hall and fire alarm upgrades.
Crispus Attucks High School: Improvements to exterior walls and foundation, fire alarm upgrades, new visitor and home bleachers, new press box, and the replacement of the west gym floor.

Other school upgrades target plumbing, water heaters, elevators

Arlington Middle School, Emmerich Manual High School (which houses a Christel House charter school campus), and Northwest Middle School will also receive improvements to school theaters.

Meredith Nicholson School 70 would also receive roofing and wall improvements, as well as fire alarm upgrades, a new water heater, and upgrades to plumbing fixtures and exterior windows.

The former Francis W. Parker Montessori School 56 building, which closed this year, would also receive improvements to its foundation as part of a historic preservation project. The district is exploring how to renovate and repurpose the building.

William Penn School 49 and James Russell Lowell School 51 would receive new water heaters.

The following schools would also receive fire alarm upgrades:

Anna Brochhausen School 88.
Merle Sidener Academy for High Ability Students.
School 49.
Arlington Woods School 99, which houses the Sankofa School of Success in the IPS Innovation Network.
Theodore Potter School 74.
Clarence Farrington School 61.
George H. Fisher School 93.
School 51.

The following schools would also receive elevator replacements or repairs:

George Washington High School.
Ralph Waldo Emerson School 58.
KIPP Indy College Prep Middle School, an IPS Innovation Network school.
Shortridge High School.
Phalen Leadership Academy at Louis B. Russell School 48.
Arsenal Tech.
Center for Inquiry School 84.
The PATH School at Stephen Foster School 67, an IPS Innovation Network school.
Robert Lee Frost School 106.
James Whitcomb Riley School 43.
Crispus Attucks High School.
Edison School of the Arts.
Christel House schools at Emmerich Manual High School, an IPS Innovation Network school.
Cold Spring School.
Phalen Leadership Academy at Francis Scott Key School 103, an IPS Innovation Network school.
Center for Inquiry School 27.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools board move to sue state violated open meetings law, charter group says

2023-08-28T20:22:02+00:00

The Indianapolis Public Schools board violated the state’s public meetings law when it approved a lawsuit against the state last week, a charter group has alleged.

The complaint that the Indiana Charter School Network filed with the state Public Access Counselor centers on the school board’s lawsuit that claims an exemption for IPS from a state law that requires districts to sell or lease closed school buildings to charter schools for $1. The so-called $1 law is an ongoing and significant source of tension between IPS and charter supporters as district enrollment has dropped and charter enrollment has grown.

The state’s “Open Door” law allows school boards and other governing bodies to meet in executive or closed-door sessions for specific purposes, such as collective bargaining and litigation. But the law also requires any final action to be taken at a public meeting.

“The IPS board never approved the filing of the Lawsuit in a properly noticed public meeting as required by the Open Door Law,” an attorney for the Indiana Charter School Network said in the group’s complaint, which it filed Monday. “This approval of the Lawsuit behind closed doors without any discussion in public violates the plain language of the Open Door Law’s provision that official action must only be taken in an open meeting.”

State law also requires governing bodies to give public notice of closed-door sessions that state the specific allowable reasons for which they are meeting in executive sessions. But the charter group’s complaint says two executive sessions held in July also do not indicate that the school board was discussing possible litigation.

IPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a Monday statement, the charter network’s executive director, Marcie Brown-Carter, said the IPS board’s lack of transparency, along with what she called the district’s violation of the $1 law, “are unacceptable and do nothing to support the public-school students of Indianapolis or promote a spirit of collaboration.”

The complaint is at least the second time the charter network has taken formal issue with the district over the state’s so-called $1 law. Last year, the group filed a complaint with the Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office, alleging that the district did not comply with the $1 law. Rokita’s office later concluded IPS did not violate the law.

Lawmakers revised the $1 law earlier this year in ways that make it easier for certain charters to lease or acquire district’s closed buildings. Yet the latest version of the statute includes an exemption for districts that share revenue from voter-approved property tax increases for operating or safety costs with “applicable charter schools.”

IPS argued in its lawsuit against the Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, Rokita’s office, and members of the Indiana State Board of Education last week that it is exempt from the $1 law, since it shared funds from its 2018 property tax increase with charters in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools.

The state education department, however, told IPS in a memo earlier this month that it is subject to the $1 law.

This story has been updated to include a statement from the Indiana Charter School Network.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis expands tutoring program for reading skills after literacy pilot shows promise

2023-08-23T18:41:44+00:00

The city of Indianapolis will launch a literacy tutoring program at nine schools and a Boys & Girls Club location for this school year, after a pilot program with a small group of students showed some promise.

The program, Circle City Readers, is one of a myriad of tutoring programs that both the state and school districts have launched in the wake of the pandemic. Reading scores on the state third grade exam known as IREAD dropped in 2021 and have essentially stagnated since then.

Circle City Readers, funded by $1 million from the city’s coronavirus relief funds, will provide small-group tutoring for up about 800 students at the following locations:

Pleasant Run Elementary School (Warren Township).
Hawthorne Elementary School (Warren Township).
Sankofa School of Success at Arlington Woods School 99 (IPS Innovation Network school).
Global Prep Academy at Riverside School 44 (IPS Innovation Network school).
The PATH School at Stephen Foster School 67 (IPS Innovation Network school).
Liberty Grove at Elder Diggs School 42 (IPS Innovation Network school).
Tindley Genesis Academy (charter school).
Avondale Meadows Academy (charter school).
Vision Academy Riverside (charter school).
Jonathan Jennings School 109 Boys and Girls Club.

The program, launched in partnership with the RISE Indy education advocacy nonprofit, will offer tutoring during the day at school sites from paid parents and community members. RISE Indy is helping to identify and recruit tutors.

The program adopts a curriculum based in the science of reading that emphasizes researched-backed ways of learning, such as phonics.

As evidence of the program’s potential, Mayor Joe Hogsett’s Office of Education and Innovation said that all 36 students in the Circle City Readers pilot performed better on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) reading assessment at the end of the pilot than at the start. The pilot took place over eight weeks earlier this year at Liberty Grove — a charter school within the IPS Innovation Network of autonomous schools — and at the Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center.

The four IPS schools in the program are “restart” or “jumpstart” schools in need of academic improvement. All but one of them — the Path School — posted declines in IREAD scores from 2022 to 2023. IREAD scores also dropped from last year to this year at two out of the three charters in the program, Avondale Meadows Academy and Vision Academy Riverside.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect how tutors are recruited into the program.

Indianapolis Public Schools seeks relief from law on selling buildings to charters for $1

2023-08-21T22:37:01+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools is seeking legal affirmation for its position that it is exempt from a state law governing how and when districts must make underused or closed school buildings easily available to charter schools.

In a Monday filing with Marion Superior Court, IPS sought a declaratory judgment that it is exempt from the Indiana law that requires districts to sell or lease those buildings to charter schools or state education institutions for $1. The district is also seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the Indiana Department of Education from enforcing the law with respect to IPS.

Lawmakers revised the so-called $1 law this year that made it friendlier to charters and education institutions in districts with declining enrollment, but the district stated in July that it’s not covered by the statute because of a 2021 decision it made about sharing certain tax revenue.

The district also issued a statement on Monday underscoring its view that it’s exempt from the law. But charter groups have argued that it is not. And earlier this month, the state education department directed IPS to notify the agency about its school closures, and noted that as a school corporation IPS was subject to the $1 law.

The court filing by IPS is the latest move in a long-running dispute between the district and the charter sector over facilities and resources, as charter enrollment grows and IPS enacts academic and other changes to attract students. The court’s interpretation of the law could also have big implications for the buildings that used to house Raymond Brandes School 65 and Francis Bellamy School 102, both of which closed earlier this year. The buildings have garnered interest from charter schools.

“The IPS Board is committed to complying with Indiana law, believes it is doing so, and believes Indianapolis Public Schools qualifies for the exemption from the $1 Charter Law,” IPS Board President Venita Moore said in a statement. “The IPS Board believes the courts will provide needed clarity regarding the exemption from the $1 Charter Law, and IPS will abide by the ultimate decision from Indiana courts.”

But the Mind Trust, which cultivates charter schools in the city, said in a Monday statement from CEO Brandon Brown that the court filing is “an unfortunate escalation in the district’s ongoing efforts to circumvent state law.”

“By choosing a potentially long and divisive legal battle instead of collaboration, IPS is closing the door on longstanding partners who want to work alongside the district in service to Indianapolis students,” Brown said.

The state education department declined to comment about the Monday court filing from IPS.

Lawmakers tweaked the $1 law this year after school districts successfully maintained exemptions from the law, which targets vacant or unused buildings. Sen. Linda Rogers, a Republican who authored the revised $1 law, said her intention was to create an appropriate balance between the interests of traditional public schools and charters.

But IPS maintains that even the new changes to the statute mean the law does not apply to its sale of School 65 and School 102.

The revised law exempts districts from having to sell or lease closed buildings to charters if they split funding from voter-approved property tax increases meant to pay for operating or safety costs with “applicable charter schools.”

IPS claims it is exempt because it shared funds from its 2018 property tax increase with charters in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools. The district has provided over $4 million annually to Innovation charters, IPS said in its motion for a preliminary injunction.

The school board voted in July to authorize the sales process for those two buildings, with priority given to nonprofit groups or government agencies. The district highlighted one local nonprofit that offers youth programming, Voices, as a potential buyer for the former School 102 building.

“IPS has sought to dispose of Brandes 65 and Bellamy 102 in a strategic manner that benefits the community, IPS students, and IPS,” the district said in its motion for a preliminary injunction. “IPS has not looked to simply offload the buildings to the highest bidder.”

But the district’s interpretation has been criticized by charter supporters. They have argued the district must share referendum funds with all charter schools within the district’s borders.

Rogers previously told Chalkbeat that sharing revenue from the 2018 referendum does not exempt IPS from the revised statute.

A separate state law requires the district to share tax revenue stemming from future ballot questions.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IREAD scores rise slightly for most Indianapolis districts but remain below pre-COVID levels

2023-08-17T11:00:00+00:00

The share of third graders passing the state’s IREAD literacy test rose slightly in most Marion County school districts this year, although none have returned to pre-pandemic rates.

The majority of Marion County districts and charter schools also remain well below the statewide pass rate of 81% for public school students.

Passing rates for Indianapolis Public Schools, the city’s largest district, declined from 62.8% last year to 60.6% this year. The rates for schools in Speedway, Perry and Franklin Townships also fell. Meanwhile, scores rose in seven other township districts, including Decatur, Warren, and Washington.

Proficiency rates for independent charter schools within or near Indianapolis Public School borders rose slightly as a whole, but are still far below their pre-pandemic pass rate of about 84% in 2019.

And charters within the IPS Innovation Network — which are run independently but are considered part of the district — also showed slight improvement overall.

The results for Indianapolis schools show the pandemic’s ongoing disruption to students in the early grades, which educators and others consider crucial for building students’ literacy skills.

In a statement, IPS said the district’s drop “further reinforces the need for the investments we have made to date, as well as new investments we will make in literacy throughout the district that are critical for student achievement.”

Districts and individual schools that improved significantly from last year highlighted efforts like a local summer learning initiative, state-funded coaching for teachers, and embracing training in the science of reading, which emphasizes phonetic instruction and science-backed ways of learning.

“We really leaned heavily into the science of reading, given the number of second-language learners we have,” said Alicia Hervey, founder and executive director of the Path School at Stephen Foster School 67, an Innovation charter school where the IREAD passing rate jumped more than 13 points from last year to 35.8%.

Warren Township schools see biggest growth on IREAD

IREAD scores for school districts across Marion County showed only slight increases or decreases, mirroring a stagnation in both the latest statewide IREAD and ILEARN results.

Among township school districts and IPS, Warren Township schools improved the most since 2022, increasing from 64.7% to 69.8%.

Ryan Russell, associate superintendent for Warren Township schools, said the district made K-3 literacy a priority last school year, focusing on training K-3 staff on the science of reading over the past three years.

All nine of the district’s elementary schools also participated in the state’s literacy coaching program, which guided the district’s own literacy coaches and teacher leaders.

But like all other school districts, Warren Township schools still have significant gains to make before reaching the district’s 78% passing rate of 2019. The biggest such gap is in Perry Township schools, where the gap between 2019 and 2023 IREAD scores is approximately 12 percentage points.

Russell said the district’s goal is to grow by 10% every year, reaching pre-pandemic levels at the end of this school year.

“We’re certainly celebrating our growth and we are happy to experience that growth, but at the same time we realize how critical of a measuring stick this is for our students and their future,” he said.

Independent charter schools outperform IPS

Independent charter schools in or near IPS boundaries continue to perform better than IPS as a whole, but also remain well below the statewide average.

The K-5 Ace Preparatory Academy, where the proficiency rate rose more than 14 percentage points to 76.3%, also participated in the state’s literacy coaching program to provide guidance for the school’s literacy coach.

Principal Amanda Liles also attributes the growth to the school’s small class sizes, its focus on student data, the skill and consistency of the school’s teachers, and an extended literacy-focused teaching period of 90 minutes.

“We’ve really been intentional about how we interpret our student data and how we help our scholars understand what that means for them as far as their growth,” she said.

Black students in independent charters for which disaggregated data was available had higher pass rates as a whole compared to Black students in IPS, with 67% of students passing. Data for some schools, however, wasn’t publicly reported by the state due to the small number of Black students taking the test.

The number of Hispanic and white students in many independent and Innovation charters was also too small to reach a firm conclusion about their success compared to their peers in traditional school districts.

Among all Marion County districts, IPS had the highest gap in the passing rate between white and Black students, with 52.6% of Black students passing compared to 83.9% of white students. The gap in IPS between white and Hispanic students is also the greatest of all the Marion County school districts, with 50.7% of Hispanic students passing the test.

But the IPS statement pointed to some “bright spots” from this year’s data, noting that eight schools outperformed the state average for Black students.

The district’s Emerging Schools, which are a set of low-performing schools, made gains that on average outpaced state gains, the district said.

Restart charters had significant score increases and decreases

The passing rate at IPS Innovation charters, meanwhile, increased as a whole from roughly 46% to nearly 51%. But at Innovation Restart schools, which are chronically underperforming schools that charter operators are trying to improve, there was significant variation.

Four schools’ scores dropped from last year’s passing rates: Global Prep, Phalen Leadership Academy (PLA) at Francis Scott Key 103, Adelante Schools at Emma Donnan Elementary, and Liberty Grove Schools at Elder Diggs School 42.

But there was sufficient improvement at the remaining four — the Path School, Urban Act Academy at Washington Irving School 14, Matchbook Learning at Wendell Phillips School 63, and PLA at Louis B. Russell School 48 — for the overall passing rate at Innovation Restart schools to rise.

The Path School required students who did not pass the IREAD in the spring to attend an Indy Summer Learning Lab that helped a few more students pass the test over the summer, Hervey said. The school also did after-school tutoring twice a week, she said.

Still, the school’s 35.8% pass rate is well below the 61.3% rate from 2018-19, two years before School 67 became a charter school. Hervey said the school’s goal is to reach a 95% pass rate.

“I do expect we’ll be around 80% over the next few years,” she said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

As students left Indianapolis Public Schools, leaders paid COVID aid to a company to get them back

2023-08-07T11:00:00+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools faces competition on nearly every street corner.

“Vouchers accepted,” read signs for a private Christian school strewn throughout the Fountain Square neighborhood.

“Now enrolling!” signs for multiple charter schools beckon in Mapleton-Fall Creek.

“Free college in high school,” touts one charter school on the east side.

In short, IPS is fighting for students — and the state funding that follows them — with local charters and private schools that continue to grow. And students have been leaving the school system in droves. So as IPS spent millions of dollars of federal COVID relief on high-profile priorities like academic recovery and staff retention, it also directed some of that aid to a different goal: enticing students back to the district, with the help of a private company.

The $269,600 the district paid to the Memphis-based Caissa K-12 firm to recruit and retain students as of March 31 is less than 1% percent of the district’s $217.2 million in COVID relief money. But the effort highlights the district’s ongoing challenge with long-term declining enrollment that worsened during the pandemic. At its worst, roughly one out of 10 IPS students left the district from 2019-20 to 2020-21.

Signs for Trinity Christian School, a private religious school, and Christel House Indianapolis, a charter school, in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Indianapolis.

Meanwhile, charter school enrollment within and near IPS borders has grown almost every year — as has the number of IPS students attending private schools using state-funded tuition vouchers, which lawmakers expanded this year.

Ultimately, IPS is relying heavily on its Rebuilding Stronger plan to improve academic offerings and school facilities as a strategy to attract families to the district.

Caissa K-12 President Adrian Bond said the firm works with traditional public school districts on marketing themselves to parents — something charter schools, private schools, and homeschool networks have done a better job of in years past.

“Districts have to realize this is almost like a business now,” he said. “You’re not the only business in town anymore.”

IPS says the money spent on Caissa K-12 helped a student recruitment campaign that brought nearly 400 students into IPS through a contract that lasted for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. But raising even a small portion of federal relief funds this way could raise questions.

“From my perspective, I’m seeing so many other compelling needs in terms of supporting student development,” said Thomas Dee, professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education who has tracked student enrollment declines from the pandemic. “It’s difficult to look at that expenditure and characterize it as the best available use of scarce funds.”

Pandemic exacerbated declining enrollment for IPS

For several years before COVID hit, IPS lost between 3% and 4.4% of its enrollment annually. But between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school year, that loss jumped to 10.5%.

After COVID shut schools down and ushered in virtual learning at the end of the 2019-20 school year, IPS decided to open the 2020-21 school year virtually. Such a decision may have had a significant impact on the district’s enrollment.

Schools that offered remote instead of in-person instruction saw a decline in enrollment, particularly in kindergarten and elementary grades, according to research Dee and others conducted using data from across the country.

Meanwhile, charter school enrollment within IPS borders grew from roughly 7,500 students in 2018-19 to over 9,400 in 2022-23. The number of students who live within IPS borders but use vouchers to attend private schools has also grown steadily from roughly 3,580 students in 2017-18 to roughly 4,240 in 2022-23.

Now, many districts have settled into a new equilibrium with fewer students, Dee said. They also face financial pressure to close under-enrolled schools, once federal COVID relief expires and districts face a fiscal cliff.

“Part of the critical narrative going forward isn’t so much that the exodus has stopped,” Dee said, “but rather that the kids haven’t returned.”

IPS says Caissa K-12 brought back students

The district worked with Caissa K-12 to launch a student retention campaign that focused on contacting families who had previously been enrolled in an IPS school, the district said in a statement. The IPS contract with the company lasted from May 2021 through June 2023.

The campaign reached out to families through text, email, and phone calls. The campaign focused on understanding why students left the district, and highlighting the programs that the district has to offer, Bond said.

“There’s a lot of other educational options out there that parents may see as the shiny and bright toy, and then they just don’t realize that they have similar or better programs at the traditional public school,” Bond said. “But oftentimes the traditional public schools do not have the ability to be able to put that out at a grassroots level.”

Caissa’s work requires anywhere from nine to 22 contacts with parents in order to get them to return, Bond said.

Caissa K-12 and its affiliated Memphis-based communications firm, Caissa Public Strategy, have worked with districts across the country. Since the pandemic hit, Caissa has scored contracts to recruit students with Florida’s Duval County Public Schools, which includes Jacksonville, and Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish Schools, the largest district in the state.

And in March, the Metropolitan School District of Washington Township approved a contract with Caissa K-12 for customer service training, a student recruitment campaign at $953 per student, and $31,200 in “secret shopper” campaigns, in which the firm poses as a family interested in attending the district and provides feedback on the school staff’s response.

“Spending time and resources on recruiting and retention became necessary after Covid-19 when we noticed that a number of students were not returning to school,” a spokesperson for Washington Township schools said in a statement.

Caissa’s website frames student recruitment in terms of customer service, offering secret shopper evaluations, training, and other services “exclusively for public schools.”

Caissa isn’t afraid to be blunt when marketing its services. The firm advertises itself with phrases such as “Sick of screaming parents?” and “The customer is not always right! But we sure do need them.”

Asked about Caissa’s use of that language, Bond said the company works with districts to make sure their front desk workers and registration teams put their best foot forward to parents. The group trains staff to advocate for the goal they are trying to accomplish and emphasize how it benefits the students and parents at the end, he said.

IPS did not use Caissa’s training services. But the district said that the campaign recruited nearly 400 students into the district. At the start of this school year, Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said IPS enrollment was similar to last year’s figure, which state records show was just over 22,000 students when excluding the district’s non-charter schools. When counting the district’s charter schools within its Innovation Network, that number stands at about 31,000, per the district.

IPS believes its contract with the firm brought “significant additional revenue for the district,” but did not specify how much. Basic state per-pupil funding was about $6,000 in 2021-22, and $6,234 in 2022-23.

But Bond said Caissa’s work should be just one part of districts’ efforts to stem declining enrollment.

“It is only a Band-Aid,” he said. “What we’ve seen is districts need to make this part of their overall strategy for the stabilization of enrollment. We help recruit students in the front doors, but also districts have to figure out ways to retain those students from leaving out the back door.”

The district said in its statement that its work with Caissa inspired it to build its own recruitment and retention team. As of March, the district had spent about $5,400 more in pandemic relief funds to do so.

Dee, however, said such recruitment campaigns aren’t a “scalable solution for academic recovery.” He also said that amidst many acute challenges schools now face, such efforts have limited value because they’re “chasing a fixed population of students.”

“I bristle at the idea of simply trying to market yourself better to attract kids,” he said. “Because from a broader policy perspective, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Clarification: This article has been updated to include IPS’s enrollment with students who attend charter schools in the district’s Innovation Network.

Major IPS overhaul hits home for students at closed schools on first day of class

2023-07-31T17:18:06+00:00

Zola and Jehu Jorman climbed into the backseat of their mother DeShawn’s car on Monday morning, where bags of crayons and notebooks awaited them.

“Cool school supplies, mommy,” Zola, a third grader, said just before she tore into the packaging for a new pair of scissors.

The two siblings had been in school together at Francis Parker School 56, a Montessori school in the predominantly Black Hillside neighborhood of Indianapolis that shepherded their four older siblings through eighth grade. But with the closure of School 56 this year, the two are parting ways. Jehu, a second grader, was accepted into the Sidener Academy for High Ability Students. Zola is continuing her Montessori education at Rousseau McClellan School 91.

“I’m kind of nervous but I’m kind of excited,” Zola said. She was up at 7 a.m. — an hour before Jehu, she pointed out, even though she stayed up later last night while her older sister did her hair.

DeShawn Jorman ushers her children Zola, left, and Jehu into the car on Monday, July 31, to drop them off at their new schools on the first day of class for Indianapolis Public Schools. Jorman’s family is one of many affected by recent school closures in IPS.

The start of school on Monday marks the beginning of a monumental shift for Indianapolis Public Schools and its students. The district, struggling with a consistent decline in enrollment, has launched its Rebuilding Stronger plan to run the downsized district more efficiently and compete with private and charter schools.

The first step in that plan started this year: closing down six schools, including School 56, and moving over 1,200 students and 300 staff elsewhere.

DeShawn Jorman is used to upheaval in IPS. Her eldest daughter was a senior at Shortridge High School in 2019 when Broad Ripple High School closed and merged with Shortridge.

This time, Jorman thought long and hard about what to do next with her two youngest children.

As students of the closing School 56, Zola and Jehu had a guaranteed spot at James Russell Lowell School 51, which will merge with School 56 and become a Montessori school. But Jorman chose to send them elsewhere.

“This was not an easy decision to make,” said Jorman, who fought for School 56 to stay open. “It wasn’t as easy as the decision that they [made] to shut that school down.”

IPS: Enrollment ‘steady’ on first day of school

Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said the district’s student enrollment remained similar to last year’s figure, which stood at 22,027, for the district’s non-charter schools, according to state records. When counting the district’s charter schools within its Innovation Network, that number stands at about 31,000, per the district.

Johnson said that’s a positive sign in light of Rebuilding Stronger.

“We’ve been watching those numbers to sort of see how we’re looking and overall, I would characterize it as steady,” Johnson said Monday morning.

The district reported 152 classroom teaching vacancies last week, a vacancy rate of 12%. IPS also still needed 204 support staff, a 22% vacancy rate.

But the majority of staff who were displaced due to school closures under Rebuilding Stronger stayed in the district.

This year, the district faces even greater competition for its students. The state’s expansion of its voucher program, which funds private school education with taxpayer dollars, means roughly 97% of all students will qualify for the subsidies.

But Johnson said she does not expect vouchers, which expanded this year to cover wealthier families, to have a tremendous impact on enrollment.

For parents like Jorman whose children are undergoing significant change, Johnson reiterated a philosophy she often touted during the past year: acknowledge the grief that comes with school closures, but also hold hope for the future. She wants families to feel supported and cared for at their new schools like they did at their prior ones.

“Ultimately, I believe the shifts we’re making are going to be for the betterment of our kids and our families in terms of the experiences that we’ll get to have and what we’ll be able to offer and commit to them,” she said.

The district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan replicates academic models that officials say are in high demand, and it seeks to close learning gaps across racial subgroups by bringing these programs to schools throughout the district. The reorganization expands International Baccalaureate, Montessori, dual language, high ability, arts, and STEM programming. It also reconfigures grades, breaking up the K-8 model at many schools and creating standalone elementary and middle schools.

Nearly all of those changes, however, won’t take place until 2024-25.

‘What can schools do to keep students?’

From the backseat, Jehu watched as his mother walked Zola to the entrance of School 91. While his older sister was bubbly about the prospect of a new school, he was less enthusiastic.

“Mom, why do me and Zola go to different schools?” he asked as Jorman pulled away from the drop-off area and headed to Sidener.

DeShawn Jorman walks her son, Jehu, to his new school at Sidener Academy for High Ability Students. Jorman fought unsuccessfully for Jehu’s previous school to stay open.

“Because your school closed down, baby,” she replied.

Jorman did not want to send her youngest children to School 51 during its shift to Montessori programming. She loves Montessori education — she just didn’t want her children to be in a new school community that might not love it back.

“I’m concerned about forcing a specialized program on a community school,” she said. “They did not ask for that.”

She and her family pushed for School 56 to remain open, launching an online petition to save the building from closure. Jorman and her daughter stressed its place as an anchor in the community.

But to them, all those points fell on deaf ears.

“[School] 56 was a family, and the school board doesn’t care about that,” Jorman said. “It wasn’t just a school.”

Jorman’s eldest daughter, Mesgana Waiss, reflected on her own experience as an IPS graduate as she and Jorman discussed the best options for her siblings.

Now, as a senior in college, looking back at all the school closures makes Waiss sad.

“It’s almost like every five to 10 years, the district gets smaller,” she said. “What can schools do to keep students? And then what can they do for students that are leaving?”

Despite the difficulties, Jorman still has hope for the new school year. She hopes Jehu will be challenged at his new school. She wants Zola to continue in her Montessori education, which she thinks is good for her.

Jehu was crying as Jorman dropped him off into his new classroom at Sidener, she said.

But Jehu found his table right next to another little girl, who recognized him.

“She said, ‘Is he from Francis W. Parker?’ And I said yes,” Jorman said. “She’s like, ‘Yes, I used to go there too.’”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Clarification: This article has been updated to include IPS’s enrollment with students who attend charter schools in the district’s Innovation Network.

IPS plan to sell closed school buildings could tee up conflict with charters, GOP lawmakers

2023-07-28T00:50:04+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools says its planned sale of two school buildings that closed this year is exempt from a state law designed to make such district facilities available to charter schools for $1.

The school board on Thursday voted unanimously to authorize officials to begin the sales process for Raymond Brandes School 65 and Francis Bellamy School 102, two of the six schools that closed at the end of the 2022-23 school year as part of the district’s Rebuilding Stronger reorganization.

But the district will only consider transferring the properties to another government agency or selling them to a nonprofit organization for the first 30 days of the process before opening up the sales to other buyers.

The state’s so-called $1 law in general requires districts to make such buildings available to charter schools or state educational institutions for a sale price or annual lease of $1. But IPS maintains that changes to the statute that lawmakers approved earlier this year mean the law does not apply to its sale of the two facilities. That interpretation of the law has garnered pushback from charter supporters.

The district’s argument underscores an ongoing conflict between IPS, charters, and GOP officials over the best way to use and reallocate school facilities as IPS enrollment declines and the district looks to shore up its finances.

Charter schools had previously expressed interest in occupying some of the six buildings closed this year, including Adelante Schools, which had hoped to start a second school at School 65. Last year, the Indiana Charter School Network filed a complaint with Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office that IPS had failed to comply with the $1 law by not making the six schools it planned to close available to charters. Rokita’s office later ruled in favor of the district.

State lawmakers revised the $1 law in their most recent session to allow the Indiana Department of Education to force the closure of schools operating at less than 60% capacity in districts that have lost at least 10% of their students in the past five years. Once closed, districts must offer to sell or lease those schools to charters. That change gave charters a new edge, at least in theory.

Yet the revised law also exempts districts from having to sell or lease closed buildings to charters if they share funding from voter-approved property tax increases for operating or safety costs with “applicable charter schools.”

Francis Bellamy School 102 on the far eastside previously housed prekindergarten and a Step Ahead Academy for students who were retained, before it closed at the end of the 2022-23 school year.

In 2021, the IPS school board voted to share funds from its 2018 property tax increase with charters in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools. On Thursday, the district in its resolution cited that revenue-sharing to argue that it is exempt from having to sell or lease its closed buildings to charters for $1.

“In 2023, there were significant modifications to the so-called dollar law that we believe exempt IPS from” the statute, the district said in a statement after the vote. “Our legal team will continue to engage in the analysis and implications moving forward.”

But Sen. Linda Rogers, a Republican and the author of the change to the $1 law, previously told Chalkbeat that the exemption would not cover IPS just because the district had shared funds from a previous referendum.

Instead, she argued, the exemption only covers districts that share such revenue with charters through measures that voters approve this year or in subsequent years. (In fact, under a separate state law, IPS and other Marion County school districts will be required to split revenue in this way with charters for any future ballot question that voters pass.)

“We don’t think IPS has met the requirement of the statute to share property tax dollars proportionately with all charter schools in the IPS boundaries, and thus the action they are taking violates the law,” Marcie Brown-Carter, executive director of the Indiana Charter School Network, said in a statement before the vote on Thursday.

Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said the directive to prioritize a sale or transfer to a nonprofit or government agency will give “mission-aligned organizations … the opportunity at the front of the line” to acquire the buildings.

VOICES, a nonprofit that offers youth programs, told the school board that the space at School 102 would allow it to grow.

Circle City Prep founder and executive director Megan Murphy told Chalkbeat that the school is also interested in pursuing a partnership with IPS to use School 102 for a second campus as the charter school grows. But she said the school is not interested in purchasing the building at this time, even for $1.

Both School 65 and School 102 were built in the early 1960s and had low utilization rates in the 2022-23 school year. School 102 on the far eastside operated at just 24% capacity, and School 65 operated at 45% capacity. The sale price for these buildings is not yet determined.

School 102, which housed a prekindergarten center and the Step Ahead Academy for students who had been retained, was given a building condition score of “poor” in a third-party assessment. School 65 was rated as “fair.”

Although the district had discussions with Adelante about potentially occupying School 65, IPS Chief Operations Officer Bill Murphy said the neighborhood in the south side area would not have sustained a second Adelante campus. Adelante, a charter school in the Innovation Network that operates in the district’s Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School building, has an enrollment that only uses 35% of the capacity available in that building, Murphy added.

“We really want to make sure that they have an opportunity to thrive,” he said. “When we looked at the projections, splitting them in between two campuses, for example, would have engineered their failure in at least one.”

Adelante Executive Director Eddie Rangel declined to comment on the plan to sell the buildings.

School for the blind to lease two other closed schools

Board members also approved lease agreements with the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ISBVI) to occupy two other schools that closed this year as part of Rebuilding Stronger.

ISBVI will pay $8,885 per month to occupy Floro Torrence School 83 in the northeast part of the district through July 2030, while its campus undergoes renovations. The school will pay $13,845 per month for George Buck School 94 on the far eastside.

Paul Miller School 114, which also closed this year, will serve as a new campus for the Excel Center adult charter high school. The district is still working on plans for Francis W. Parker Montessori School 56, the sixth school to close under the reorganization.

Correction: This article has been updated to accurately describe the state law governing the lease or sale of closed and underused school buildings to charter schools and education institutions under certain circumstances.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

School staffing improves in Indianapolis, but math and science teaching jobs remain tough to fill

2023-07-26T11:30:00+00:00

Apryl Lysell’s son is starting fourth grade Wednesday after being completely uprooted from his friends at his former Perry Township school.

The district’s decision to redraw elementary school attendance zones meant that 36% of its elementary school students were moved to new schools this year, a change that could affect more than 2,000 students. That includes Lysell’s son, who she said is definitely upset.

“I was really trying hard to keep him in the same consistent schooling,” said Lysell. “So this kind of just threw all that right out the window.”

But the district had a reason for moving so many students around: Ensuring every bus route actually had a driver.

Across Marion County, several school districts report a better staffing outlook for the new school year than around this time last year, as they continue to recover from the staffing crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. But some are still struggling to fill roles that were a perennial challenge to staff even before COVID — such as special education, science, and math teachers.

School districts have implemented a variety of new strategies to keep workers. Perry Township’s aforementioned strategy involved eliminating bus routes. The Metropolitan School District of Pike Township increased salaries for bus drivers. Indianapolis Public Schools allocated $15 million in federal emergency funding to entice teachers to stay. And districts say some of those changes have worked.

“I’m feeling a lot better than we were this time last year,” said Laura Hammack, superintendent of Beech Grove City Schools, which increased average teacher salaries by a little over 6% last fall.

But addressing the problem can require difficult adjustments by educators and parents like Lysell.

Some districts report better staffing outlook

The nameplate on Perry transportation director Patrick Murphy’s desk has a succinct phrase etched beneath his name: “Livin’ The Dream.” If one compares Perry’s bus driver situation this year to last fall, that phrase rings true. This year feels “normal” to him staffing wise.

“This is the best start to the year on paper that we’ve had in a long time,” he said.

Nine days before the start of school, every bus route in the district had a driver — a far cry from this time last year, when the district was 30 drivers short of the ideal 120 drivers. The shortage meant anyone in the transportation department with a commercial drivers license — including mechanics, office staff, and supervisors — were pulled from their offices to drive.

The story is familiar for districts nationwide, especially for bus drivers. Twenty percent of public schools reported they were understaffed before the pandemic in August 2022, according to a national School Pulse Panel survey from the Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education.

The pandemic made a difficult situation harder. Almost half of the public schools surveyed said they had been unable to fill teaching positions, and 60% said they couldn’t fill support staff vacancies.

Three years out from the beginning of the pandemic, some school districts say things are improving. But not everyone necessarily sees it that way.

Perry Township provided transportation for students who wished to attend a school outside of their neighborhood boundaries before this school year. Now, families who want their children to stay at schools outside of their normal attendance zone must provide transportation for themselves.

That is not an option for Lysell due to her work schedule. So her son has switched from Jeremiah Gray Elementary to Southport Elementary.

Now, she’s worried about the transition for her son and all of his classmates. When she visited her son for lunch at Jeremiah Gray Elementary on the last day of school in the spring, she said, students were crying about leaving their friends.

“It was honestly one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever been a part of,” she said.

School buses await the first day of school in the Perry Township Schools transportation yard.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan School District of Washington Township changed school hours to alleviate its own bus driver shortage. Due to the shortage last year, the township planned for longer routes with fewer drivers for this upcoming year.

David Klaus, whose three children have taken the bus to school in Washington Township, said that his family is aware of bus driver shortages and sympathizes with the district.

“I would hate to be a transportation director in Indiana,” he said. “I am grateful for the people who do take on this position. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

Klaus said he likes the changes the district has made ahead of the first day of school. Busing hasn’t been perfect in the past, but he said he’s in full support of anything that can get kids to school and back home.

Even with the changes, the district still had nearly 20% of its driver positions open just 15 days before this school year. Still, the district says that’s better than last year, when it had 84 drivers, 31 fewer than its target. As of July 19, it had 97 bus drivers.

The Metropolitan School District of Pike Township, which canceled all in-person classes in favor of virtual learning for some days in 2021 due to its bus driver shortage, reported no driver vacancies as of July 13.

“In addition to increasing pay and adjusting routes, several initiatives [were] developed to enhance training, support, and overall work experience for our drivers and transportation staff,” spokesperson Sarah Dorsey said in an email.

In Beech Grove, Hammack said that after the district increased average salaries, teacher turnover this year has declined. Officials report lower turnover rates and the need to onboard fewer new staff — Last year, the district onboarded 35 new teachers, compared to just 14 this year.

“The pandemic was just so devastating for so many reasons, and one of them was just the impact on teachers [who] were just exhausted coming out of 2021, in particular,” Hammack said.

IPS, meanwhile, used a similar strategy by offering three rounds of retention bonuses, each worth $1,000 and $1,500, spread throughout 2022 and 2023. The district also raised starting teacher salaries to $50,400 in 2022.

There’s evidence that this approach had an impact. The district’s retention rate jumped from retaining just 55% of teachers from 2018-19 to 2019-20 to 74% from 2020-21 to 2021-22, according to an analysis of state data by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation.

The district reported a 12% vacancy rate for all teaching positions about one week before the start of school July 31, which represents 152 vacancies for classroom teachers. Support staff positions were 78% filled, with a need for 204 more support employees.

Districts still struggle to fill certain teaching jobs

Though vacancies in some positions have declined from last year to this year, other positions still remain difficult to fill. And some districts have staffing situations that are no better, or worse, than last year.

Pike has improved in terms of bus driver vacancies, but reported that the number of overall staffing vacancies are about the same as the start of last school year. In mid-July, IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said the district’s teaching vacancies are also about the same.

Districts also frequently reported that hiring instructional assistants, who mainly assist teachers in the classroom as support staff, is particularly difficult. In Warren Township, for instance, 13 of the 17 staff openings as of July 24 were instructional assistant positions.

Districts also continue to struggle with teaching positions for math, science, and special education. In Beech Grove, for example, the six vacant teaching positions two weeks before school started included vacancies in some of these hard-to-fill areas, such as science.

Last year, the need for special education teachers statewide was so great that the state announced millions in federal funding to train more of them.

“It’s the last thing that we want for the school year to start without having a highly qualified certified teacher in place,” said Hammack, the Beech Grove superintendent. “When we get to a situation where maybe we don’t have a fully licensed teacher, we will explore how we can navigate emergency permits.”

Lysell, the parent in Perry Township, enters the new school year hoping for the best. Many students will need support to adjust to a new school with new classmates, she said.

“I hope they’re prepared to have more patience with these kids,” she said. “Because it’s going to be a huge adjustment.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

IPS ILEARN scores improve some, but remain below independent charters

2023-07-14T12:00:00+00:00

Indiana’s latest ILEARN scores show that Black and Hispanic students in independent charters in Indianapolis continue to outperform their peers in Indianapolis Public Schools and the district’s own charter schools.

IPS, however, is inching along in its pandemic academic recovery with a greater share of students proficient in both subjects than in 2019, while independent charters and charters in the IPS Innovation Network as a whole have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.

The results for the three public school systems serving students within IPS attendance boundaries show slow growth in some areas and stagnation in others, in some cases mirroring a recent national analysis showing students experienced little to no academic progress in the 2022-23 academic year. (Chalkbeat’s analysis of independent charters included some schools that are physically outside of IPS boundaries but enroll a majority of IPS students).

IPS rates remained low: 14.8% of students scored proficient in both math and English, up slightly from 14.1% the year before, and more than 4 percentage points above 2021 scores. The most recent scores are one point higher than rates from 2019, the first time students took the exam.

The gains since 2021 have largely been driven by the district’s white students, whose proficiency rates have jumped by roughly 10 percentage points since the pandemic low in 2021 and are even higher than when students first took the ILEARN in 2019. Black and Hispanic students in IPS, however, have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

Charter schools within the IPS Innovation Network — a consortium of autonomous schools considered a part of IPS — collectively also increased combined English and math proficiency rates slightly from 6.7% to 6.9%.

On average, independent charters that are not affiliated with IPS slightly increased rates from 17% to 18% proficiency in both math and English. Black and Hispanic students in these schools continue to perform better than their peers in IPS. As a group, however, these schools have yet to reach pre-pandemic proficiency levels.

The results are similar to statewide rates that have also largely stalled — proficiency rates in both subjects increased from 30.2% to 30.6%.

IPS, however, is the only school district in Marion County that has exceeded 2019 rates for the percentage of students proficient in both subjects.

Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said she’s not satisfied with the outcomes, but is pleased to see continued progress.

“The fact that we stayed stable in English language arts, saw some positive movement in math, I think is a positive for us as a district given the context of the past year,” she said.

IPS mirrors statewide math gains and English losses

In IPS, proficiency rates in English dipped minutely from 22.3% to 22.2% while rates in math slightly increased from 19.5% to 21.1%.

IPS maintains a significant gap between white students on one hand and Hispanic and Black students on the other for percentages of students scoring proficient in English, math, and both subjects.

Johnson said the district has to double down on successful initiatives to drive student achievement, including tutoring programs.

This year, the district is expanding virtual tutoring during school hours to all schools that wish to participate. The district began an overhaul in curriculum in 2020.

“We have to be really urgent about the work we’re doing,” Johnson said.

Different circumstances may affect scores for school systems as a whole. For example, eight Innovation Network charter schools are chronically underperforming schools. To improve achievement, the district assigned them to a charter operator, but several still struggle.

Half of the eight so-called restart schools last spring increased the percentage of students proficient in both subjects.

Combined proficiency at Adelante Schools at Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School dipped slightly from 12.4% to 12.2%, but the school still maintains the highest rate among restart schools. Adelante’s individual rates for English and math also declined.

Eddie Rangel, Adelante’s executive director, said the school enrolled 194 new students in the 2022-23 year. He said new students had lower proficiency rates than longer-enrolled students.

“I don’t think any of us really know what’s going on, and it is frustrating to think we can’t pinpoint one thing,” Rangel said of national reports of stagnant learning. He said Adelante is focusing on grade-level scores and improvement.

Rangel said he hopes new state standards and revised school attendance boundaries will help stability and academics.

Black, Hispanic students in independent charters perform better

Independent charters continue to show higher rates for students proficient in both English and math.

This group of schools also maintains the highest proficiency rates for Black and Hispanic students, rates that have risen the most since 2021 but have still not reached 2019 levels.

“I do think that we have enough evidence that the independent charter schools in Indianapolis for Black students in particular are making tremendously larger academic gains than what we’re seeing for other schools,” said Brandon Brown, CEO of the Mind Trust nonprofit that helps incubate charter schools in Indianapolis. “The question is ‘What are the conditions that are driving those gains?’”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana charter schools could now have an easier path to acquiring district buildings

2023-06-11T12:00:00+00:00

A change to state law this year could make it easier for Indiana’s charter schools to acquire buildings from school districts by targeting those that are losing students and have schools that are nearly half empty.

The change means that the Indiana Department of Education can now force school districts that have lost at least 10% of their enrollment in the past five years to close schools that have been operating at less than 60% capacity and sell or lease them to charter schools for $1.

Lawmakers approved the revision to the state’s so-called “$1 law,” which has been on the books for years and requires school districts to make certain buildings previously used for classroom instruction available to charter schools at next to no cost. It’s the state’s latest attempt to provide help for charter schools that frequently have problems finding buildings to use. But some charters might not have much time to take advantage of it.

The previous version of the law, which deemed “vacant” or “unused” classroom buildings available for purchase, largely did not prove successful for charters. School districts argued that they were still using or planning to use the buildings they had closed for instruction. The attorney general’s office ruled in favor of districts eight out of the nine times it investigated allegations that districts were violating the $1 law.

The new version of the law targets districts with declining enrollment like the South Bend Community School Corporation and Indianapolis Public Schools, which had an average building utilization rate of 60% in 2021-22.

It’s unclear how many charter schools may take advantage of the new law, or how districts will respond. IPS, for example, said in a statement that it’s still examining the new law to understand its impact.

Republican Sen. Linda Rogers, who wrote the language in Senate Enrolled Act 391 that changed the $1 law, said she believes the change will bolster fiscal responsibility.

“Trying to be understanding and create a balance between traditional publics and charter schools is my goal,” she said. “The taxpayers paid for these buildings to educate the community’s children.”

Districts with declining enrollments must also review the utilization rates of their buildings and share it with the state department of education annually. Charter schools must work with districts to try to reach a deal to acquire or lease a building.

Buildings targeted for closure must meet certain criteria

Schools that could be closed by the Indiana Department of Education and made available for charters to buy or lease for $1 under a revised state law must first meet a number of criteria to be classified as underutilized.

Eligible buildings must be located in a school district that has lost at least 10% of its population in the past five years that also has more than one building serving the same grade level as the school targeted for closure.
Eligible buildings must have previously been used for classroom instruction.
Eligible buildings must have operated with an average capacity of less than 60% for the current school year and the past two school years. If the building’s capacity is unknown, it is determined by the average maximum full-time equivalent enrollment in any of the last 25 years.
Districts must have another school building with sufficient capacity to take students in from the closing building that is no more than 20 minutes away by car from the school slated to close.

Districts can still claim that a building is in use and exempt from closure if:

They use at least 30% of the building’s capacity for a special student population, such as those in an alternative education program.
They use at least 50% of the square footage of the building for office space, so long as the cost is not more than other available office space in the district.
They use at least 50% of the square footage for storage, so long as the cost is lower than other available storage space in the district.
They use at least 50% of the square footage for a combination of office space and storage that does not cost more than other space available for such uses.

Source: Indiana Senate Enrolled Act 391

If they can’t reach a deal within 45 days, a charter school can petition the department to determine whether the building meets the criteria for closure. The department can order a school to close, and if needed, the department can request the attorney general to enforce the order to close the school.

Rogers, however, noted that the department can consider a school’s unique circumstances when deciding whether it must be sold or leased.

The department could soon release guidance to school districts about the revised law’s impact.

However, school districts that share revenue from property tax increases for operating or safety costs, which voters would pass through a ballot question, are also exempt from the law.

That exemption could significantly reduce the impact of the new $1 law in Lake, Marion, St. Joseph, and Vanderburgh counties. That’s because, under a separate change to state law enacted this year, districts in those counties must share such tax revenues from future ballot questions.

All of that means charters in these four counties might have a limited window of time to acquire underused buildings. In other words, once a district with declining enrollment in those counties gets a ballot measure passed for operating or safety costs, they’ll no longer have to make underused buildings available to charters under the $1 law.

In January, the IPS school board tabled its plan to ask voters for a tax increase this year to fund its Rebuilding Stronger revitalization plan for academics and grade reconfigurations. It remains to be seen if IPS will revive that plan.

Districts like IPS and South Bend aren’t the only ones that could be affected by the new $1 law.

Elkhart Community Schools in Elkhart County, for example, has lost 12% of its student population from 2018 to 2023, according to state data. And Brown County School Corporation has lost 17% of its enrollment from 2018 to 2023. Now, those districts will be required to report the usage rates of each of their buildings, information that charters looking for space could find useful.

Charter schools, districts examine new law

Charter schools aren’t necessarily leaping at the change to try to take control of buildings under the new $1 law.

Tommy Reddicks, the CEO of Paramount Schools, which has three locations in Indianapolis and is opening another in South Bend in a former district elementary school building, said the charter network does not have an interest in taking advantage of the new law just yet.

“We’ll likely keep an eye on it and see how it is utilized in the coming years,” Reddicks said in an email.

Rafi Nolan-Abrahamian, chief of staff for South Bend Community Schools, said the district has six or seven buildings that may fall under the law’s definition of underutilized. But South Bend, like IPS, is undergoing a massive reorganization to address a loss of enrollment that he said will close some schools but lead others to operate at closer to full capacity.

He said he doesn’t expect the new law to result in any forced closures. Instead, he said, the new law — and the requirement for South Bend to share future referendum dollars with charter schools — could foster increased collaboration between the district and charters.

“Should the district pursue another referendum after the expiration of our current operating referendum, we’re certainly hopeful that we can work together with other public schools in the area,” he said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Reported graduation rates for Indiana schools could dip after change to state law

2023-06-06T12:00:00+00:00

Schools across Indiana could see a dip in their reported graduation rates after a change to state law requiring districts to limit the portion of students who graduate with waivers from the calculation.

Students who graduate with a waiver — an exemption from certain graduation requirements — can account for no more than 9% of the total graduating class in reported graduation rates for the 2023-24 school year. That percentage declines to 6% in 2024-25 and 3% for each year after.

The changes could have a large effect on publicized graduation rates, which are often used as a measure of success for school leaders and can be a key metric parents use to determine the quality of their child’s education. In Marion County schools, the 84.2% graduation rate for the 2021 student cohort dips to 73.1% when students with waivers are excluded, according to an analysis of state data by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation.

Beginning with the Class of 2023, students in Indiana must choose from one of several graduation pathways to graduate, and also must pass a competency requirement of some sort. Prior to that class, districts could choose whether to offer the new graduation pathways requirements or offer old graduation requirements, which included passing the old ISTEP state exam.

But state law allows schools to grant graduation waivers to students who try but fail to pass the competency requirement, which can include the SAT, ACT, and the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Test (ASVAB) used for entrance into the military. Those districts that operated under the old graduation requirements could also issue waivers to students who tried but failed to pass the ISTEP test for 10th graders.

The change to the law does not restrict the number of waivers districts can grant. Instead, proponents argue, it will add transparency to graduation rates that they said were previously inflated.

“My hope is that greater transparency into the number of students who are graduating from high school with a high school diploma will lead to productive dialogue between parents, school principals, school superintendents, policymakers and others to improve not only our high school school graduation rate, but the number of students that are entering into postsecondary education,” said Jason Kloth, president and CEO of Ascend Indiana. The waiver recommendation was part of a report Ascend Indiana conducted with Business Equity for Indy.

School leaders argue that waivers are a valuable tool for students facing extenuating circumstances, such as those who transfer into a new school for their junior or senior year.

“When you as a school have a new student who starts in their senior year with you, and … they don’t already have those pathways, it’s certainly a challenge,” Samantha Goldsmith, principal of the online Hoosier College and Career Academy charter school, previously told us. “And our goal is to help them graduate.”

In Marion County, schools with the highest percentage of waiver graduates for the 2022 student cohort included Ben Davis High School in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, the Phalen Virtual Leadership Academy charter school, and the GEO Next Generation Academy charter school.

At Ben Davis High School, roughly 31% of the 2022 cohort graduated with waivers, or nearly 37% of the 863 students who graduated, according to state data. If the new law had gone into effect last year, it would have meant the school could only count 77 of its 317 waiver graduates in its 2022 graduation rate.

The Wayne school district did not respond to a request for comment about the new law’s impact.

The law, House Enrolled Act 1635, also requires students who use the ASVAB as a competency requirement to submit documentation that demonstrates their intent to enlist in the military.

That change was also prompted by concerns that too many students are using the test as an easier way to graduate — without actually intending to enroll in the military. Just 2% of Indiana students who took the ASVAB from August 2022 to February 2023 tried to use their score for military consideration, according to data from the Indianapolis Military Entrance Processing Station.

The score required to pass the ASVAB as a graduation requirement is set at 31, which is lower than what some branches of the military require if military candidates do not have a high school diploma. The State Board of Education voted in April to maintain that score.

Correction, June 6, 2023: A previous version of this story included an incorrect description of the Ascend Indiana group. Ascend Indiana is a separate entity from Business Equity for Indy.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana school librarians worry new law banning ‘obscene’ books will harm their work and students

2023-06-05T12:00:00+00:00

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“Pornographer.”

That’s the insult Chad Heck remembers, hurled by the people behind him as he testified in the state legislature earlier this year.

Like other Indiana school librarians who spoke against legislation seeking to restrict school bookshelves this session, Heck tried to dispel the notion that he and his colleagues were peddlers of porn — and found himself part of the national culture wars that have pitted some parents who mistrust public education against school leaders and staff.

Ultimately, lawmakers passed a bill that forbids books deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors” on school library shelves, following hours of heated public comment. House Enrolled Act 1447 also requires school districts to establish procedures to publish their school library catalogs, and to set up a process for a parent or community member to request removal of obscene or harmful material.

Now, Heck and other librarians with the Indiana Library Federation (ILF) who fought against the legislation are learning to live with the law, but they are still trying to clarify misconceptions about it. They stress that the law is not an outright book ban. They also say many districts already post their catalogs online, and already have procedures for challenging books.

School librarians say that contrary to what some might think, they don’t have obscene or harmful material in their collections. Instead, they worry the law will create what amounts to self-censorship among school librarians — who for the past few years have been the target of public scorn and scrutiny over what, exactly, is on their shelves.

“It contributes to this culture of fear that many librarians are operating under, which does have a chilling effect on our collections,” said Heck, the advocacy co-chair of ILF, which has a subgroup known as the Association of Indiana School Library Educators (AISLE). “And I’m concerned about this.”

In his office, Republican Sen. Jim Tomes — who has tried to pass some version of the new law for years — keeps six books he says are examples of pornography in schools. These include “This Book Is Gay” and “Gender Queer,” both of which are among the top 13 most challenged books in the country, according to the American Library Association. Parents across the state, he said, have reported to him that they’ve found these books in school libraries.

Some of the books offer advice for young LGBTQ adults navigating their sexuality, or serve as a sexual education guide for teens. But Tomes, who co-authored a variation of the bill language that eventually became law, says they show that school libraries have a problem.

“This was raw, 100 percent pornography,” he said. “The wording, the stories, and also the pictures in the books, the illustrations. If this is not pornography, then I don’t know what you could call it.”

Backlash against libraries is worst some have seen

Censorship battles in schools have existed for decades and have origins on the political left and right, librarians say.

How Indiana law defines material school libraries must remove

House Enrolled Act 1447 requires schools to remove library books and other materials that are “obscene” or “harmful to minors.” A key element of the law is how it defines those terms.

Here’s how the law defines obscene material:

“1) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, finds that the dominant theme of the matter or performance, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in sex;

2) the matter or performance depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct; and

3) the matter or performance, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Here’s how the law defines material that’s harmful to minors:

“(1) it describes or represents, in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic abuse;

2) considered as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors;

3) it is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable matter for or performance before minors; and

4) considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

Source: Indiana Code 35-49-2-1 and 35-49-2-2

But school librarians say they’ve seen an increase in concerns over what’s on their shelves in the past three years, as mistrust of public schools grew in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. And some say the anger they’re facing now is the worst pushback against their profession they’ve ever seen.

The outrage has come from groups such as the Indiana chapter of Purple for Parents, which rails against the dangers of social-emotional learning and critical race theory in the classroom. Like Tomes, Purple for Parents insists that there is porn in Indiana schools.

An Indiana version of the “Mary in the Library” Facebook page, which features passages from what it deems to be “naughty children’s books,” has also escalated the controversy surrounding the issue.

But just as those inflammatory social media posts don’t necessarily tell the whole story, Heck said that people involved in discussions of the new law would “just point out one passage in a book” while missing important context.

While the new law prohibits schools from providing students with material deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” it also requires that the material in question lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. In addition, the material must be considered as a whole by readers.

Some school librarians say they don’t have materials in their libraries that meet the statutory definitions of material that libraries must pull from their shelves. And the books in Tomes’ office illustrate how differently both sides view the content.

With the exception of one book he was not familiar with — “Dead End” by Jason Myers — Heck argued that none of the books Tomes kept in his office would fit the statutory definition of obscene or harmful to minors.

Among those books, “Let’s Talk About It” is a guide for teens on sex and relationships that has depictions of sexual organs and sex. “This Book Is Gay” bills itself as an instruction manual for young adults trying to understand their sexuality and “what it’s like to grow up LGBTQIA+.”

And “Gender Queer” is a memoir about the author’s journey in identifying as nonbinary and asexual, described on its back cover as a “much-needed, useful, and touching guide.”

Tomes argued that such books are so inappropriate that he refuses to keep them in his house. But Heck countered that those books do so much more than appeal to an interest in sex, and must be read in their entirety to appreciate their intention. They discuss common issues LGBTQ people face, he said.

Librarians also argue that the process of adding materials to their collection requires careful consideration that includes consulting professional sources, like Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal, to determine what is age-appropriate.

“There’s a lot of thought and effort and time put into having the books in the collection,” said Diane Rogers, vice president of the Indiana Library Federation who’s a librarian at the Ben Davis Ninth Grade Center in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township. “I don’t purchase books on a whim, just like I won’t remove books on a whim.”

But as challenges to books and school libraries have intensified, critics of laws like Indiana’s have worried that groups will target books serving underserved communities — such as LGBTQ youth — for censorship or restrictions, increasing those students’ feeling of isolation.

“Right now, I am more concerned about librarians removing materials that meet the needs of our communities because they’re worried about backlash, or worried about being personally attacked,” Heck said. “And that is having a huge impact on libraries in our state.”

These books in the office of Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, are some of the books that Tomes called pornographic. But librarians argue the content in books must be considered as a whole.

And even though the text of the law targets books that lack artistic or other merits, the prospect of ongoing and intense arguments over what is actually “obscene” or “harmful to minors” has some librarians worried that their colleagues may start preemptively pulling material from their shelves just to avoid a fight.

“There are people who are asking themselves: Is it worth it for me?” said Rogers. “There’s librarians who are asking questions because their administration is coming to them and asking them to pull certain titles, you know, usually in an abundance of caution.”

Librarian leaders hope focus can return to kids

Just how much the law will change school districts’ handling of book challenges may vary when it takes effect Jan. 1.

In Marion County, at least three of the 11 school districts told Chalkbeat they already have some sort of procedure for challenging books or requesting that they be removed. Those include Wayne, Perry, and Indianapolis Public Schools.

The new law requires school districts to hear requests to remove materials during public school board meetings. At least six of the 11 Marion County districts told Chalkbeat that they did not receive any formal challenges to books in the past year.

Tomes did not say whether he had personally seen the books that he keeps in his office in schools; he stressed that parents reported to him that these books were in school libraries. He said it’s great that some school districts and librarians already comply with parts of the new law.

“I’m glad that they are already doing that,” he said. “Not everybody was.”

The law also tweaked the various defenses individuals can claim as protection from prosecution for disseminating material harmful to minors — classified as a felony under state law.

The new law removes the previous defenses that allowed sharing such material if it was done for an educational purpose or shared by a school. However, librarians with ILF and the Indiana State Library maintain that school employees can still claim a defense from prosecution under the law if they are acting within the scope of their employment.

“Whether or not this is intentional or will be changed in some sort of future clean-up action remains to be seen,” the Indiana State Library said in a legal memo it sent to school libraries in May.

As school districts statewide adapt to the new law, librarians with ILF are urging colleagues to lean on each other and embrace a collection method informed by research and professional book reviews.

Mainly, though, they hope the intense public scrutiny aimed at them in recent years will soon end.

“I’m hoping that this is just a storm that we’ll be able to weather, and it’ll pass,” said Emily Wilt, chair of the AISLE group. “And we’ll be able to turn our attentions and our energies more fully back toward the reasons we all got into this profession, which [is] serving our kids.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Former Edison CEO files complaints against school alleging defamation, wrongful termination

2023-05-31T14:34:21+00:00

The former head of an Indianapolis school alleges the school board let him be defamed in a termination proceeding that violated state law and essentially canceled him, according to a tort claim and a federal discrimination complaint filed in March and April, respectively.

Nathan Tuttle, the former CEO and executive director of the Edison School of the Arts, is seeking at least $300,000 in damages from the school in a tort claim, which individuals must file in Indiana and have denied in whole or in part before suing a government entity. He also filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), often the first step before filing a federal discrimination lawsuit.

Edison’s board terminated Tuttle in March after allegations from parents and staff that he used a racial slur when speaking to Black students; Tuttle countered in the claim and EEOC complaint that he repeated the slur while disciplining a student who had used it, but did not direct the slur at a student. He also alleges staff at the school let students chant homophobic insults about him during an on-campus protest.

The allegations against Edison mark an escalation in hostilities between the school’s former CEO and the Edison community at large. A public meeting in March to address the incident boiled over when parents, students, and staff publicly criticized what they called a toxic working and learning environment under Tuttle’s administration. The school board fired Tuttle a week later.

Tuttle’s allegations also come as Edison wraps up a challenging school year and tries, under new leadership, to change the school’s climate. After the public fallout following Tuttle’s dismissal, the board halted its plans to expand its programming into James Whitcomb Riley School 43.

Tuttle alleges he was also deprived of his due process rights under the 14th Amendment, which would allow him an opportunity to clear his name at a pre-termination hearing.

“He has, in effect, been cancelled,” the documents state. “The mob mentality that was allowed to pervade the Edison Board meeting on March 7th, carried over to their decision to terminate Tuttle.”

In a statement from the school’s executive committee of the board of directors, the school denied all allegations made in the complaints — noting that as an Innovation school in Indianapolis Public Schools, Edison is not required to comply with termination proceedings outlined in state law for traditional public schools.

The school also argued that its investigation into the incident gave Tuttle the opportunity to weigh in and respond to the public allegations at length.

“The Board appreciates the service that Mr. Tuttle made to the School, but will be clear that Mr. Tuttle was terminated in compliance with Indiana state statute and pursuant to the requirements to release an at-will employee,” the committee said.

A spokesperson for IPS did not provide comment.

Tuttle: Traditional public school labor protections should apply

In both complaints, Tuttle is seeking two years worth of his $150,000 annual salary at Edison, plus bonuses and benefits. They also seek unspecified compensation for damage to his reputation.

A key dispute between Tuttle and Edison is the interpretation of state law governing Innovation Network schools, which have more autonomy in staffing and operations than traditional public schools. Innovation schools do not have to follow a collective bargaining agreement with a union, for example.

Tuttle’s attorney, Chip Clark, said the school breached his three-year contract that began in 2022. Both the tort claim and EEOC complaint cite state law that governs “regular teacher contracts” for traditional public schools and notes that Tuttle was also a choir teacher at the school. The board’s policy also requires the CEO to be employed in the form of a regular teacher’s contract, argued Clark.

The complaints also cite due process rights for school superintendents outlined in state law, which states that a superintendent can only be terminated for cause and can request a hearing before the school’s governing body when the board decides not to renew a superintendent contract.

But Edison argued that those statutes do not apply to Tuttle, and that he was an at-will employee of the nonprofit that operates Edison.

State law gives operational autonomy to Innovation schools, and says other statutes applicable to school corporations do not apply to them. While most IPS Innovation schools are run by charter operators, Edison is one of the few that is run by a nonprofit with its own board instead.

The school argued that Tuttle’s assertions are “further evidence that Mr. Tuttle did not understand his role as an Innovation School Leader.”

“Mr. Tuttle was terminated by the Board for his failure to comply with employee policies and procedures, lack of leadership and management of the school, significant concerns raised by numerous employees as part of the Board’s employment investigation, among other reasons,” the committee said in its statement.

If the school deemed Tuttle’s work unsatisfactory, the board’s policy requires it to give Tuttle opportunity to correct the conditions, which the board did not do, the complaints argue. But the school through its attorney argued that this policy only applies to the renewal or non-renewal of the CEO’s contract, and that the policy also states the board may terminate the CEO’s contract during its term in accordance with the law.

Both complaints also allege the school discriminated against him based on race and sexual orientation, noting that Tuttle is a gay white male who is the father of a Black child.

The complaints also claim that in a protest during lunch on March 3 that appeared on social media, Edison students called Tuttle homophobic slurs while he was on leave.

“The teachers and administrators in charge of Edison during Tuttle’s administrative leave allowed this to happen,” Tuttle’s complaints state.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana’s new ‘science of reading’ law requires districts to adopt research-backed curriculum

2023-05-25T21:01:35+00:00

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Indiana has joined a growing number of states that require schools to use curriculum materials that emphasize phonetic instruction when teaching children how to read.

A new state law, which passed with bipartisan support and was signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb on May 4, requires school districts to adopt a curriculum that’s aligned with what’s commonly called the science of reading.

Districts are also forbidden from adopting curriculum that relies primarily on using context clues and pictures for literacy instruction, an approach known as the three-cueing model. In addition, teachers licensed after June 2025 to teach a content area involving literacy instruction in prekindergarten through fifth grade must earn a new literacy endorsement to prove they are proficient in the science of reading standards.

The new law comes amid concern from lawmakers and education officials in Indiana and nationwide about elementary school students’ reading ability — an issue exacerbated by the pandemic. Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said last year that literacy instruction and the use of phonics varies from classroom to classroom. Elsewhere, New York City recently required elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program, and Illinois advocates said students there have struggled to read because schools haven’t relied on the science of reading.

Below, we break down how Indiana defines the science of reading, what the new law actually says, and what it all means for students, teachers, and schools.

What is the science of reading?

The new state statute defines the science of reading as a “vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically based research” that requires the “explicit, systematic” use of five elements in literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Phonemic awareness means being able to understand that different sounds form words, said Brandon Sherman, a research project manager in the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis School of Education. Phonics is the ability to break down that word into its different phonemes, or sounds.

State law defines “science of reading” as research that also has a record of success and increases competency in those five elements, as well as oral language skills, writing, and spelling. The research also informs how proficient reading and writing develop, why some students may have difficulty with reading, and how to effectively teach reading to all students.

But the term itself has different meanings to different people, Sherman said.

Do Indiana students struggle with reading?

Just 33% of Indiana’s fourth graders were proficient in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress last year, while 31% of eighth graders were proficient in reading. Those scores were roughly in line with the national average. Eighth grade reading scores dropped from their pre-pandemic level in 2019, although the fourth grade scores were statistically about the same as in 2019.

Last year, 81.6% of third graders were proficient on the state’s IREAD exam in 2019; schools may hold back students who don’t pass the test. That’s a decline from pre-pandemic scores. In 2019, for example, 87.3% of students were proficient on the IREAD.

But many students of color have scored much lower on the IREAD than the statewide average. In Indiana, 64.1% of Black students and 69.6% of Hispanic students were proficient on the 2022 IREAD.

What does Indiana’s science of reading law do?

The law requires school districts and charter schools to adopt curriculum or supplemental materials that are aligned with the science of reading by the 2024-25 school year. The state board of education must also develop academic standards for reading based on the science of reading by 2024-25.

It forbids districts from adopting curriculum that is primarily based using context, pictures, or syntax clues to teach students to read.

The law also requires teachers who teach literacy in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade to receive a literacy endorsement through the state if they receive their teaching license after June 30, 2025. School districts are required to offer extra pay for teachers who have the literacy endorsement. The amount of additional pay is up to the district.

The endorsement requires 80 hours of professional development aligned with the science of reading, plus a written exam to demonstrate that educators are proficient in “scientifically based reading instruction skills.”

The state board will adopt the exam, and will establish the procedure for current teachers who wish to add the literacy endorsement to their license.

Teacher preparation programs in Indiana must also use a curriculum that instructs teaching candidates on the science of reading by July 2024. The state education department will develop guidelines for this requirement, and will conduct a review of all accredited teacher programs to ensure the programs adhere to this requirement.

What will change about students’ reading lessons?

This depends on the district.

For example, some districts reported using a curriculum that aligns with the Orton-Gillingham approach, which has systematic lessons on phonics, according to its website.

Others report using the Into Reading curriculum by HMH, which lists phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension as among the components of reading instruction.

The state education department will provide a list of curriculums that are based on the science of reading for districts to consider when reviewing whether their current curriculum complies with the law.

In Marion County, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township says it does not believe it needs to change its curriculum, which includes the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum, but is awaiting state education department guidance.

Perry Township, which uses the HMH Into Reading curriculum, said its own investigation concluded that all components of science of reading were heavily supported in the curriculum, although there was less use of phonemic awareness in grades 3-5.

“We have reinforced this area through additional training of our teachers in Orton-Gillingham and through the focus of The Science of Reading components during our Professional Development (cluster) time,” a Perry Township spokesperson said in a statement.

The Metropolitan School District of Pike Township did not specify which curriculum the district uses, but said it provided K-2 educators the opportunity to participate in training in LETRS, a professional development tool that says it is based on the science of reading on its website. A spokesperson said the district will provide professional development to ensure its curriculum aligns with science of reading principles.

“When we go through our next curriculum adoption process, we will intentionally select materials that meet the needs of our learners, while adhering to all IDOE [Indiana Department of Education] criteria,” a Pike Township spokesperson said in a statement.

Will Indiana provide new funding for science of reading and literacy?

The state’s biennial budget for 2024-25 allows up to $20 million to fund science of reading initiatives from the state education department each year.

The department can distribute this money to districts for literacy coaches to train teachers in the science of reading, or to use for efforts that increase instructional time, such as summer literacy programs or high-dosage tutoring for struggling readers. Districts can also use this funding to cover the cost of teachers to obtain the new literacy endorsement.

The state’s budget also provides up to $10 million each fiscal year for literacy achievement grants to school districts and charter schools.

This funding is in addition to the $111 million the state announced it would use to train teachers in the science of reading last year.

What’s driven recent interest in literacy instruction?

The so-called “reading wars” over the best approach to teaching literacy date back to at least the 1920s, Sherman said. Some researchers say the debate in the U.S. originated more than 200 years ago.

But the issue became more prominent in recent years due to reporting by American Public Media about school districts’ use of disproven methods of literacy instruction; its coverage of literacy includes the “Sold a Story” podcast. Mississippi also brought attention to the science of reading after embracing the approach and increasing its reading scores in a turnaround effort deemed “the Mississippi miracle.”

The reemergence of literacy instruction as a major issue has also highlighted disagreements between supporters of different teaching methods. For example, researchers and advocates frequently contrast the science of reading with “whole language” instruction, which emphasizes contextual clues to help students learn to read.

Sherman says that historically in the U.S., the popularity of different instructional methods for literacy has waxed and waned.

“We see that again focusing on systematic phonics is the emphasis,” he said. “And then the pendulum kind of goes the other way. And this is where we see whole language. And then the pendulum goes again and we see phonics come back in.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis school for students with substance-use struggles guides another class to graduation

2023-05-19T09:00:00+00:00

Looking back, Ashley Mash is somewhat thankful that a few years ago, her father called the police after her sisters found the two blunts she had put in a drawer in the basement.

Months before, she had gotten high for the first time as a freshman in the Carmel High School bathroom, an experience that turned into a coping mechanism to deal with feelings of insecurity and anxiety. When her parents sent her to Hope Academy — a charter high school in Indianapolis for students struggling with substance use — she did not want to go.

Now, Ashley is the valedictorian in a class of seven graduates who will celebrate their diplomas in a ceremony on Saturday. She is heading to Ball State University to study wildlife conservation with nine months of sobriety under her belt.

“Obviously I still have cravings and stuff,” she said. “But I realized how many problems I don’t have when I don’t smoke.”

Valedictorians at Hope Academy don’t earn the title based on grade point average alone, but also on their service to the school and their commitment to staying sober. Ashley has been active in the school, even giving a speech at the school’s regular fundraising event.

“I don’t know how to ever repay you,” she said about the school in the speech she gave at the event in November. “But I can start today by continuing to be sober and living the life that you saved.”

The graduation for Hope Academy is among the first in the wave of high school graduations that begin this month for the Class of 2023.

Hope Academy is celebrating its 17th graduating class this year since opening in 2006 as the state’s only recovery high school. It is one of 42 across the country, according to the Association of Recovery Schools.

The challenges for Hope Academy and other recovery schools have changed since then. With a shortage of proper treatment programs, schools like Hope are now increasingly on the front lines of students’ recovery efforts, said Rachelle Gardener, the school’s co-founder and executive director.

“They find us first and we’re doing a lot of referrals to treatment, if we can find treatment,” she said. “We’ve had to kind of adjust the way we look at that student when they come to us, not having a lot of knowledge of addiction, not having a lot of knowledge of recovery.”

In an attempt to reach more students, Hope moved to a more central location on the southside of Indianapolis in 2020 and joined the Indianapolis Public Schools as an Innovation Network school that same year.

The legalization and prevalence of marijuana in recent years has presented a new challenge, Gardner said. Now, all of the school’s students have a marijuana substance use issue, whereas nearly two decades ago students primarily struggled with other substances such as alcohol.

At Hope, students take a traditional academic curriculum to align to the state’s Core 40 standards required to graduate. But they also have recovery coaches who help guide them through their addiction, and a recovery and wellness class that breaks up the standard academic day.

After two years at the school, Mash realized she didn’t like the feeling of smoking weed and the anxiety it would bring. When senior year hit, she knew she had to graduate because she didn’t want to be in school forever.

She was also motivated to change when she realized how much she was hurting the people around her, she said.

“My parents were really worried and for a while, I knew that they were worried and I didn’t care,” she said. “Senior year hit and I was like, ‘I actually have to get my stuff done and be sober and make something of myself.’”

And when her father passed away in January, she still stayed sober.

Ashley advises other students struggling with addiction: “Don’t be selfish.”

“You have to think of your future,” she added. “No matter how badly I didn’t want to think about it, I knew that if I was 20 and still in school I wouldn’t be happy. I think that everyone that’s still struggling with it needs to just try their best to do better, because it’s not perfect, but as long as you’re trying to help yourself then that’s all you can do.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools’ Teachers of the Year reflect on teaching, equity, and hands-on learning

2023-05-18T16:11:03+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools named two Teachers of the Year in surprise announcements on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week.

The award goes to one educator each at the elementary and secondary level who is nominated by a school principal to represent the best in excellent teaching and accomplishments. Local Teachers of the Year may choose to compete in the statewide Teacher of the Year competition run by the Indiana Department of Education.

Below, Brandon Denning and Robin Houdek answer questions about their work and reflect on the joy of hands-on learning, the importance of reflecting on their teaching practices, and what teaching means to them.

Butler Lab School 55 teacher Robin Houdek, left, and Center for Inquiry School 84 teacher Brandon Denning are the Teachers of the Year for Indianapolis Public Schools.

Embracing the arts and unpredictability while teaching

Robin Houdek, the K-6 winner, works with teachers at Butler Lab School 55 to incorporate hands-on activities into their curriculum. She is called an “atelierista,” a term from the Reggio Emilia philosophy of learning that Butler Lab schools adopt. The Reggio Emilia style of teaching embraces the theory that children have multiple modes of expression and understanding, and emphasizes learning through the environment and participation.

She studied at Indiana University’s School of Fine Arts, later earning a master’s degree in art teaching from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She’s also a former IPS student.

What was your own education experience in IPS?

Houdek attended the now-closed Key Learning Center, which was based on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences that people have different capabilities in processing information.

As a student at Key, Houdek learned in an environment where art was valued as much as reading and math, she said.

At Shortridge Junior High, Houdek also participated in the performing arts program.

“I learned a lot about intrinsic motivation as a young child so I think that had the biggest impact on me,” she said. “But I didn’t realize it until down the road in life when I got in more traditional settings and was able to see how much that progressive, non-traditional experience shaped just my learning and life.”

How do you incorporate art into your role as an educator?

Houdek works with teachers to think about what kinds of projects they want to do in their classroom, and how they can teach it for different learning styles in accordance with the Reggio Emilia philosophy.

“If kids are really interested in rocks and worms we might bring dirt into the classroom and explore with dirt. Go outside and go to parks,” she said “If they’re doing memoirs, we might try to start exploring spoken word or we just kind of play around with different ways.”

What does teaching mean to you?

In her essay for her Teacher of the Year application, Houdek answered a version of this question.

“Teaching is not perfect or predictable. It is knowing that you will never arrive but caring enough to stay on the journey. It is a constant fight for optimism and hope in the face of limited resources and limited time,” Houdek wrote. “It is joy and courage. Curiosity and commitment. Teaching is listening to students, to families, to yourself. It is changing over time and knowing where you need to grow for the sake of our children. It is making mistakes and trying again.”

Houdek then carefully listed Ava and Eva, Javonte and Jerome, and 30 other student names and summed up why they all matter: “Teaching is not me, it is us.”

Making sure students feel valued, included, and respected

Brandon Denning, the 7-12 winner, is a math teacher at the Center for Inquiry School 84, where he serves on the school’s equity team. He gravitated toward education after studying business at Purdue University (or “the greatest school on earth,” as he calls it).

At CFI School 84, Denning has participated in the school’s racial equity team and was a spokesperson for the district’s staffing recruitment campaign known as “Proving What’s Possible.”

Why was it important for you to join the school’s equity team?

Denning, who is one-quarter Japanese, said he grew up with a lot of interesting questions from his peers that could sometimes be seen as microaggressions.

“I wanted to be a part of the solution moving forward,” he said.

As part of the team, Denning presented a teacher equity reflection rubric, which allows teachers to consider whether they are making their lessons inclusive and accessible to students of all backgrounds.

“It’s basically a way to reflect on your teaching practice, both in the way your classroom is set up and your actual instruction,” he said.

Why did you participate in the district’s recruitment campaign?

When administrators approached Denning about being part of the district’s “Proving What’s Possible” recruitment campaign, the thought of trying to recruit and retain high-quality teachers greatly appealed to him.

“Our kids deserve it,” he said. “That’s the bottom line of all of this. Students in IPS, just like students in any other district, deserve to have quality education.”

Dening said if his simple message could attract even one educator, then he was happy to put that message out there.

“If we can bring in talented individuals, then the sky’s the limit for our kids,” he said.

What does teaching mean to you?

To Denning, being an educator also means being a guiding hand to students even outside the classroom.

“There’s a lot of tough things in the world, and life can be really hard for kids in this day and age in a lot of ways,” Denning said. “So any positive impact that I could have in the classroom or in extracurricular activities is something that I wanted to be a part of.”

Helping students feel valued and respected as individuals in a time when it’s really hard to feel those things — especially with social media — is important, Denning said.

“If I could do that, that means I could have an impact I could leave behind,” he said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana charter schools get state funding boost with help from influential voucher supporters

2023-05-17T21:24:25+00:00

The argument in the video was simple.

Two fictional students, Andy and Anna, both go to a public school — but Andy’s school receives less state funding because it is a charter school. The ad from the Indiana Student Funding Alliance prompted viewers to ask: Shouldn’t Indiana lawmakers close this unfair funding gap between charters and traditional public schools?

The message reached voters throughout Indiana just as state lawmakers convened for this year’s legislative session. The roughly $500,000 ad campaign was the latest in a years-long push to direct more state and local funding to charters with the help of the alliance, an influential group of charter backers and nonprofits.

As the session began, charter schools and their backers had particularly pressing reasons to step up their lobbying and marketing efforts. Indianapolis Public Schools, the state’s largest district, planned on seeking roughly $413 million in new property taxes through a 2023 ballot measure. And charter schools were frustrated with the prospect of getting a relatively small slice of that money; some charters wouldn’t get any of it. Additionally, property values in general were rising, sending extra funding to some local school districts but not to charters.

Although the alliance had existed informally for a few years, last year its members organized the group under a formal name. It got support for its marketing campaign from groups like the Hoosiers for Quality Education nonprofit — which also has a political action committee that has donated nearly $1 million to lawmakers in the last three years alone and supports school choice of various kinds.

The Indiana Student Funding Alliance’s campaign paid off. After lawmakers enacted several changes this year, charter schools scored one of their biggest wins since they started in Indiana over 20 years ago: a modified state funding system that gives them more money. The changes, combined with a nearly universal voucher system lawmakers passed this year, mark a critical milestone for an Indiana education landscape that favors school choice now more than ever.

Education interest groups and PACs have long lobbied state lawmakers and tried to sway public opinion. The Indiana Political Action Committee for Education, for example, is the political arm of the Indiana State Teachers Association that consistently gives money to lawmakers’ campaigns.

But the changes this year represent a critical juncture for school funding in Indiana. In addition to increasing the state’s per-student charter funding, school districts in Marion County and three other counties now must not only share referendum funds for operating expenses with charters, but also future property tax increases as well.

Even with the Republican supermajority’s strong support for school choice in general, it was important for advocates like the Indiana Student Funding Alliance to highlight charter schools’ funding challenges, said Scott Bess, the executive director of Purdue Polytechnic High School, an Indianapolis charter that is part of the alliance. The group had existed loosely for years, he noted, but the IPS referendum — and charters’ inability in general to tap local property tax revenue — elicited a more organized response.

“Those two things happening at the same time really sent home the message that if we don’t do something and do something more aggressively, these gaps are going to get to a point where it’s not financially sustainable,” Bess said.

Rep. Ed Delaney, a Democrat on the House education committee who has consistently opposed charter schools and vouchers, sees lobbying by the alliance and similar efforts as the work of an “education industrial complex.”

“I think they’ve reached a point of excessive power,” he said. “And what comes with that is greed and a lack of judgment.”

Charter school backers turn to Facebook ads

How these changes will affect traditional public schools’ budgets is unknown, given fluctuating property values among other factors.

The Mind Trust, a powerful Indianapolis nonprofit that advocates for charter-friendly policies and which joined the Indiana Student Funding Alliance, estimates those changes will ultimately provide an additional $2,259 per student for charter schools within IPS.

Changes to Indiana charter school funding

The new laws for charter funding stem from two bills, one from the Senate and the state’s budget legislation from the House. The laws:

Require school districts in Marion, St. Joseph, Vanderburg and Lake counties to proportionally share revenue increases from rising property valuations with charter schools, beginning in 2025. This would apply to charters located in the same county that enroll students living in those districts. The provision means that altogether, school districts in those counties will lose $9.3 million in 2025 and $12.5 million in 2026 to charter schools, according to the fiscal analysis from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency (LSA).
Require school districts in Marion, St. Joseph, Vanderburg and Lake counties to proportionally share additional property tax revenues from any operating or school safety referendum passed by voters after May 10 with charter schools that enroll a student living in that district. Virtual and adult high schools do not receive this funding. The LSA estimates that if the law were applicable in 2022, school districts in these four counties would have distributed about $23.9 million of $210.1 million collected in referendum funding to charters.
Increase the annual charter school grant amount from $1,250 per student to $1,400 per student for operational costs. Statewide, the funding is set at $52.6 million in fiscal 2024 and 2025.
Provide $25 million in fiscal 2024 statewide to charter schools for facility needs.
Allow charter schools to access loans through the state Common School Fund for facility and technology needs. All charters may also now access loans for large projects — such as new buildings — through the Indiana Bond Bank at a low interest rate.

Members of the alliance are celebrating these changes as wins.

The alliance is made up of partners such as the Indiana Charter School Network and the Walton Education Coalition, an education advocacy group, said Betsy Wiley, president of the Hoosiers for Quality Education nonprofit that helped fund the alliance’s campaign. (The Walton Family Foundation, which is legally separate from the Walton Education Coalition, is a funder of Chalkbeat.)

Hoosiers for Quality Education also has a political action committee that has received funding from wealthy donors and groups frequently associated with education reform efforts such as charter schools and vouchers.

Together, the Hoosiers for Quality Education nonprofit and the related Institute for Quality Education nonprofit — which distributes private school tuition support as a scholarship granting organization — paid for at least $49,000 in Facebook ads, such as the one featuring Andy and Anna that promoted more funding for charters, according to Facebook’s Ad Library. Those ads ran from September 2022 to the end of the session in April.

“This year was different in that a group of folks who strongly believe that public charter school students deserve the same funding as their traditional district student peers came together in a more coordinated fashion,” Wiley said in an email.

Rep. Bob Behning, the Indianapolis Republican who was chairman of the House education committee in the 2023 session, had previously pushed for school districts to share referendum revenues with charters. But this year, he said, the IPS referendum elevated the issue’s importance in his mind. (IPS ultimately nixed its plan to put the referendum on the May primary ballot, although the district may revive the proposal in some form.)

The advertisements by charter backers indicated a general motivation to push for “some level of parity” for charter school funding, he said.

Lawmakers did also approve a $312 million increase for traditional public schools right before the end of this year’s legislative session. But critics such as Delaney argue the push to increase funding for charters is just part of a bigger agenda to dismantle the traditional public school system.

“The fundamental truth is they are not interested in traditional public education,” he said. “They do not support it, they do not believe in it, but they don’t have the courage to stand up and say” that traditional public schools should close.

What increased funding means to charters

Anna and Andy used in the Indiana Student Funding Alliance ads may be fictional, but Dwayne Sullivan and his mother, Susan Sargeant, are very much real.

Dwayne is in the first class due to graduate next year from the Rooted School, an Indianapolis charter school with grades 7-12 that opened in 2020.

Even though her son will graduate soon, Sargeant is hopeful the additional funding enabled by the changes to state law will support higher teacher salaries to attract high-quality teachers to Rooted.

“That’s a big, big, big deal, especially for a charter school that’s starting out,” she said.

Jack Langlois, a junior at Purdue Polytechnic High School’s north campus in Indianapolis, helped start a cafe run by students at a cost of $5,000. School officials hope more funding for charters will help cover the cost of materials for projects at the school, which emphasizes project-based learning.

At Purdue Polytechnic High School, which has two campuses in Indianapolis, extra operating revenue will also help cover the cost of materials needed for the experiential learning that the school emphasizes through robotics, woodshop, and even a coffee shop that students recently opened at the Englewood campus of Broad Ripple High School.

Both charter school and traditional public school advocates see the referendum sharing requirement as an opportunity to collaborate to convince voters to pass future property tax increases for schools.

Still, some school district officials are worried about the net effect of sharing incremental property tax revenues with charters.

Rafi Nolan-Abrahamian, chief of staff for South Bend Community Schools, said the district is grateful for the $2.1 million in additional yearly revenue it’s getting due to the last-minute change made by lawmakers. And he said each funding change favoring charters on its own is probably manageable.

“But we are concerned in particular about the precedent that some of these are setting, and the sort of underlying motivations and rationales behind them,” he said.

Meanwhile, pro-charter groups are stressing that this year’s policy changes don’t meet all their long-term goals.

“Our goal remains the same, the same that it’s been for many, many years, which is parity in funding for public charter school students,” Wiley said. “And we’re not there yet.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

4 closing IPS schools will see new uses, revival under approved plan

2023-05-17T00:36:26+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools has plans to reuse four of six schools slated to close to students at the end of this school year, including moving its facilities division to one location and partnering with the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to use two buildings.

The resolution approved by the school board on Tuesday describes next steps for Floro Torrence School 83, George Buck School 94, Paul Miller School 114, and Francis Parker School 56.

The district is still exploring reuse options for the Francis Bellamy Preschool Center and Raymond Brandes School 65.

The reuse plan is part of the district’s Rebuilding Stronger overhaul, which is closing the six schools in an attempt to operate more efficiently while expanding specialized academic programming and preschool.

Charter schools had expressed interest in occupying some of the closing school buildings through an older version of the state’s so-called $1 law, which allowed charters to buy or lease unused or vacant classroom buildings for $1. Adelante Schools, for instance, hoped to occupy Raymond Brandes School 65.

The Indiana Charter School Network filed an attorney general’s complaint against the district in December, arguing that IPS violated the state law by not offering the buildings to charter schools. But the attorney general’s office ruled in favor of IPS, noting the district still had plans to use the buildings after the schools closed.

But a revised version of the $1 law exempts school districts from the requirement to offer certain school buildings to charters if they share additional property tax revenue for operational or safety expenses — approved by voters through a ballot question — with charter schools. School districts in Marion County are required to share such referendum funds under other new legislation.

The district also plans to sell six small surplus land parcels near schools, which the district estimates would bring in an extra tens to low hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Indiana School for the Blind to use two buildings

The Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired will temporarily occupy Floro Torrence School 83 and George Buck School 94 while its permanent campus is renovated. Students will come to the campuses in August 2024 and stay five or six years.

The 100 Black Men nonprofit, which provides programs to uplift and mentor Black youth, will also use School 83 as a space for summer programming in 2023-24 before the ISBVI occupies the space.

Facilities division, charter school to use Paul Miller School 114

The Paul Miller School 114 building on the district’s south side will house its Facilities and Maintenance Division, consolidating staff that are currently located in Arlington Middle School, northwest Middle School, and the Broad Ripple High School that will reopen as a middle school under the Rebuilding Stronger plan.

The school’s open layout is much more conducive to facility needs than other school spaces, district officials said.

The newly approved Excel Center - Twin Aire, the seventh Excel Center adult charter high school to open in Indianapolis, will also use School 114 on a long-term basis.

Johnson said housing the charter and the FMD in the same building could lead to partnership opportunities for Excel students to work with the FMD team after graduation.

The district will also collect community input to determine the best use of the school’s playground and green space.

IPS hopes to preserve, repair Francis Parker School 56

The district hopes to restore the historic Francis W. Parker Montessori School 56 in the city’s Hillside neighborhood, which the district classifies as being in “exceptionally poor” condition.

The building, constructed in 1931, is located near the popular Monon Trail in a gentrifying area of the city. The district previously scrapped its plans to tear down the building amid community pushback and gentrification concerns.

“We want to continue to maintain ownership of that building,” Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said in a media briefing before the school board meeting. “We are committed to continuing to explore how we renovate and use that building for instructional purposes in the future.”

Susan Leach School 68, which has not been used for classes since 2019, will serve as the district’s new warehousing and distribution space.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

This IPS teacher infuses her English lessons with virtual travel and Shakespearean playlists

2023-05-16T13:50:58+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free monthly newsletter How I Teach to get inspiration, news, and advice for — and from — educators.

Nikia Garland takes her students all over the world.

An English and AP Language and Composition teacher at Arsenal Tech High School, she uses Google Lit Trips to take students virtually to Sweden and Norway while reading “Beowulf.” And during her lessons on George Orwell’s “1984,” Garland tasks her classes with color-coding countries according to the level of government surveillance.

“I strive to teach students how to think critically using real-world examples. I want students to take responsibility for their learning,” she said. “I like to provide intriguing lessons that cause my students to want to know more about what I am teaching.”

That means she adapts Shakespeare to a teenager’s palate by occasionally assigning students to create a playlist of 15 songs, each accompanied by a paragraph that explains how the song connects to “Macbeth’s” plot and themes.

“I layer my teaching, sort of like a blooming onion,” she said.

Always looking to enhance teaching and learning, Garland has applied for a number of grants. One funded a field trip earlier this year to the Candles Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Terre Haute, an experience that paired with “The Book Thief,” a novel set during the Holocaust. Another grant allowed Garland to study oral traditions in Africa with a visit to Kenya and Ghana — an experience that she later reflected on as “returning home to the Motherland.”

Now, she’s one of 50 educators to be selected as a Grosvenor Teaching Fellow, which will bring her to the fjords and Arctic Svalbard of Norway aboard the National Geographic Endurance expedition ship. She’s hoping the trip will inform her curriculum in a way that inspires her students to become environmental stewards.

Garland previously taught ballet at the former Nicholson Performing Arts Academy at School 70, and she studied at the Jordan College Academy of Dance at Butler University. She’s also a proud Broad Ripple High School alumna. (“Rockets for life!” she said.)

She spoke recently with Chalkbeat about her latest fellowship, the value of teaching environmental and community stewardship, and the most memorable class of her 24-year teaching career.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How do you plan to use the experience from the Norway fellowship in your everyday English teachings?

I believe the fellowship will give me more tools to continue building geographic awareness.

I would like to start locally within their own communities. I haven’t yet decided what this will look like, but I have reached out to a few agencies — The Nature Conservancy and Indy Parks — to partner with me on this initiative.

I also want to do something community-based as well, possibly about the impact of gentrification and redlining in their neighborhoods. I want to center whatever I do around them. I want to know what they are curious about and start there.

Why is it important for you to teach your students to become environmental stewards?

The city of Indianapolis is only a small piece in the global puzzle, but everything we do or don’t do to take care of the planet has a deep impact worldwide. Continuing to disregard issues such as global warming and pollution is dangerous to humanity. It reminds me of a book I’ve taught by Octavia Butler, “The Parable of the Sower.” I also teach “The Space Traders,” a short story by Derrick Bell.

I believe we can do small things that, if done consistently, turn into great acts. I hope to inspire them to become more engaged with their immediate communities. Texts such as the ones I mentioned help kids understand why caring for the environment is important. I also want to provide them with the tools and knowledge necessary to live eco-friendly and sustainable lives.

What is one interaction with a student that has changed how you view the profession of teaching?

It would be impossible to name just one student. I have a collective — the Arlington High School class of 2007.

I must begin by saying that most of them did not like me initially. I have always been a strict teacher with high expectations and rigorous content. However, I was able to loop with that particular class of students for three years.

The three years I spent with them allowed me to get to know my students on a deeper level and vice versa. I became invested and grew to truly love them. And the love, loyalty, and respect they showed me was unmatched.

For example, my husband and mother both died in the same year. This was after they had graduated. But so many of them came back to give me flowers and comfort me. So many that my principal had to tell the secretary to waive the no-visitor policy during the day and allow them all in. One of my students from that class had lost contact with me, so she Googled me one day and saw that I was now a breast cancer survivor. She found me on Twitter and sent me $100 so I could buy myself some flowers. I could really go on and on.

There’s an urban saying about such relationships, “locked in.” We are bonded — through celebrations such as weddings, births, and college graduations and even in trials such as death and incarceration. I consider them family, and my life has been infinitely blessed simply because I was allowed to be their teacher. I am the lucky one. They are the loves of my teaching life.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

That’s a tough question because I have so many. But I really enjoy teaching poetry. I love the complexity of some poems, the critical thinking and reading required to comprehend the content, the way it engages students, and the ability to use it as a springboard for longer writing assignments. It also brings out student creativity. We have a lot of rich, provocative discussions and assignments when I teach poetry.

Tell me about your own experience with school as a child and how it affects your work today.

I loved school. I am a product of IPS, K-12, and I had some stellar educators. As a result, it has motivated me to give my students the same kind of education I received. It was rich, diverse, interesting, rigorous, and relevant.

What is one piece of advice you’d give to college students pursuing an education career?

Understand that teaching is both an art and a science, and you cannot have one without the other. Science is the pedagogy. Art is the creativity used to engage students. Be fluent in both.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS Chief Academic Officer Warren Morgan chosen to lead Cleveland schools

2023-05-10T14:18:44+00:00

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District has tapped Warren Morgan, chief academic officer for Indianapolis Public Schools, to lead its district of roughly 36,000 students next school year.

The announcement in a press conference on Tuesday means IPS will need to find a new leader to manage issues such as graduation, state test results, and curriculum.

Morgan joined IPS in 2020, and has overseen the district’s attempts to help students rebound from learning loss during the pandemic. He previously served as executive director of Teach For America St. Louis and as a principal at a turnaround school in Chicago. He also worked two years in the Cleveland district as an academic superintendent from 2014 to 2016.

Morgan was one of two finalists in the Cleveland schools CEO search.

In the press conference Tuesday, Morgan said “it felt great to be home.”

“Thank you for trusting me with this incredible task,” he said. “I know [there] is a lot of work ahead of us, but I’m ready, and I’m so excited.”

IPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Morgan will start as CEO of Cleveland schools in July.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS announces new principals at eight schools as part of Rebuilding Stronger plan

2023-05-04T22:20:04+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools and statewide education news.

Indianapolis Public Schools announced on Thursday new principals for eight schools as the district prepares to adopt specialized academic programs under its Rebuilding Stronger reorganization plan.

The district’s leadership announcement for 12 schools indicated that three principals and one interim principal will continue to serve as principals in their current school, while eight others move to new leadership positions.

Most of the schools listed in the district’s announcement will adopt Montessori, STEM, or International Baccalaureate (IB) programming in 2024-25 as part of Rebuilding Stronger.

Principals at three school buildings slated to close at the end of this school year, Raymond Brandes School 65, Francis W. Parker School 56, and Paul Miller School 114, are becoming principals at other IPS schools.

The schools with newly announced leaders, who will begin in the 2023-24 school year unless otherwise indicated, are:

Carl Wilde School 79: Brandon Warren, current principal at Raymond Brandes School 65.
Robert Lee Frost School 106: Dwayne Lucas, current principal.
Eleanor Skillen School 34: Krista Douglass, current principal.
Northwest Middle School: Nichole Morrow-Weaver, current assistant principal.
Arlington Middle School: Iesha Billups, current interim principal.
Henry Longfellow School 28: Keisha Odom, current resident in the IPS Principal Residency Program.
James Garfield School 31: Amanda Faulkner, current principal at Carl Wilde School 79.
Anna Brochhausen School 88: Carmen Sharp, current principal.
James Russell Lowell School 51: Christine Rembert, current principal at Francis W. Parker Montessori School 56.
Frederick Douglass School 19: Daria Parham, current principal at Paul Miller School 114.
George W. Julian School 57: Camille Haley, current principal resident at Paul Miller School 114, joining current Principal Chante Campbell in 2023-24 for planning purposes and becoming the school’s sole principal in 2024-25.
William Penn School 49: Phil Shults, current principal at Northwest Middle School, joining current Principal Jessica Barnes in 2023-24 for planning purposes and becoming sole principal in 2024-25.

“We know each school community is unique, as is each leader, and it is important that we map the needs of each program and school community to the strengths and experiences of each leader,” Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said in a statement.

The district is launching a search process to fill principal positions at T.C. Howe and Broad Ripple middle schools, which will reopen to students in 2024-25 as IB schools, according to the announcement.

IPS has also been working with the James Whitcomb Riley School 43 community to find a new principal there.

The district has created “district administrators at large” to help school principals prepare for the programmatic shifts taking place in 2024-25. Those administrators will perform day-to-day administrative tasks as principals plan for the academic changes.

Stacy Bottley, current principal of Longfellow Middle School, will also serve as an executive director of schools to ensure middle schools receive support based on their new academic programming, the district said.

The district previously named Adrienne Kuchik, the former principal of Garfield Elementary, as an executive director of schools.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Voters pass Indianapolis Public Schools, Speedway, and Warren school ballot measures

2023-05-03T02:30:52+00:00

Voters on Tuesday night approved property tax increases or renewed existing referendum funds for Indianapolis Public Schools, the School Town of Speedway, and the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township.

Unofficial results for the IPS ballot question showed that roughly 59% of voters supported the $410 million measure, compared to 41% who opposed it. The largest of the three ballot measures, the IPS tax increase will fund upgrades to 23 school campuses.

Superintendent Aleesia Johnson thanked voters in a statement released shortly after the results.

“Their support of our capital referendum means IPS can Rebuild Stronger and immediately get to work on projects across more than 20 schools — from design to construction starting this year — so that every student who walks through our buildings feels valued and loved, knowing that something joyful and important happens inside those walls,” Johnson said.

Voters in the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township narrowly passed that district’s ballot measure with roughly 52% supporting it and 48% opposed, while the ballot measure from the School Town of Speedway succeeded handily, with roughly 79% in favor and 21% against.

Polls closed at 6 p.m. with a total of 78,237 voters casting ballots. That turnout represents a 45% increase over the last municipal primary election in 2019, according to the Marion County Election Board. The number of early voters also rose dramatically, increasing by 306% from the 2019 municipal primary.

Tuesday night’s election results are unofficial until the Marion County Election Board certifies them on May 15.

Johanna Dix, 29, casts her vote with her “almost” 2-year-old daughter on her lap at the Indianapolis City-County Building on May 2.

Indianapolis Public Schools ballot question focuses on buildings

IPS officials have stressed the need for building improvements, which vary by school and include new HVAC and plumbing systems, roof upgrades, new athletic fields, and classroom additions.

“We need to update those things so that students have a safe and welcoming place to spend their day,” Deputy Superintendent Andrew Strope previously told us.

Approval of the $410 million question will allow the school district to issue bonds that the district will pay back over 30 years, using revenue from increased taxes. IPS officials estimate that residents with a home valued at the median value of $138,500 will see an extra $3.18 per month on their property tax bill.

Roughly $66 million of the proposed $410 million will fund a two-story addition to Arlington Middle School as it transforms into a STEM school in 2024-25. The money will also establish science labs and a “makerspace” — a collaborative area for creative projects — and upgrade the school’s athletic fields.

At George Washington Carver School 87, funding will support a building addition, new art and music rooms, a larger parking area, and more green space for the play area.

David Spencer, chief operating officer for KIPP Indy Public Schools, stands in the gym of the elementary and middle school building, which will receive about $800,000 in upgrades after voters approved the $410 million ballot question for Indianapolis Public Schools on Tuesday, May 2.

And at KIPP Indy, one of the school district’s Innovation Network charter schools, funding will help fix the roof, upgrade the gym, and replace old flooring. KIPP officials estimate that replacing the floors will save roughly $30,000 annually in maintenance costs.

Warren Township proposal will fund COVID-era initiatives

Warren Township asked voters for an extra $88 million over eight years to cover the school district police department, 24 school counselors, and a few programs launched with the help of federal coronavirus relief funds that expire in 2024.

The ballot question will raise the property taxes that support the district’s operating expenses from 21 cents per $100 of assessed value to 30 cents.

Eastridge Elementary in Warren Township received a family engagement liaison with the help of federal coronavirus relief funding. On Tuesday, May 2, voters approved The Metropolitan School District of Warren Township’s ballot measure for a tax increase to continue funding that position and other initiatives supported by federal COVID relief funding.

The additional money will help the district pay bus drivers after the district increased the starting wage by $4 per hour last year. It will also help cover support staff pay, which the district boosted to $15 per hour using federal coronavirus relief.

“It’s just simply more expensive to run a school district in 2023 than it was in 2018,” when the last referendum was passed, Matthew Parkinson, the district’s chief financial officer, previously told us.

Speedway schools hope for third renewal of operating referendum

The School Town of Speedway sought a third renewal of its operating referendum, which Superintendent Kyle Trebley previously said will help pay for staff in the small district of roughly 1,850 students.

The approval of the ballot question maintains the current operating tax rate passed in 2016 of 59 cents per $100 of assessed value.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Newly approved adult charter high school hopes to open in closing IPS building

2023-04-25T23:40:27+00:00

This story has been updated.

A seventh Excel Center adult charter high school has the green light to open in Indianapolis, and it’s hoping to open in a school that Indianapolis Public Schools will close at the end of this school year.

The Indianapolis Charter School Board on Tuesday approved the Excel Center - Twin Aire. The center, operated by the not-for-profit Goodwill Education Initiatives — which was created by Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana — hopes to open in the building currently occupied by Paul Miller School 114.

IPS will vote on whether to lease the site to the group around May, said Lakia Osborne, a regional director for Goodwill Education Initiatives, at the board meeting. The school plans to open with an initial 100 students in the fall of 2023, growing to 300 by its second year.

IPS said in a statement that it has discussed the possibility of the Excel Center and other organizations using School 114, but said no final decisions have been made and that it would be inappropriate and premature to discuss specifics.

“We are also considering the needs of the district and possible internal uses for any building at which instruction has ceased or will cease at the end of this school year,” the district said.

Last year, another charter school, Victory College Prep, announced its intent to acquire the School 114 building. State law allows charter schools to acquire or lease empty school buildings for $1, but lawmakers are considering sunsetting the statute.

The centers primarily help students ages 18 or older to graduate from high school. The centers are geared toward those who have dropped out of school or are significantly behind their graduating peers.

The group’s goal in opening near Twin Aire is to provide educational opportunities for those who are exiting the criminal justice system, said Anne Davis, vice president of education initiatives at the Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana. The Twin Aire neighborhood is home to the city’s new Community Justice Campus that houses the court system and the jail.

“We know that there is a need in communities for individuals who are reentering society to make sure that they understand that they have opportunities for a diploma if they need it,” Davis said.

The city’s charter school board authorizes the six existing centers in Indianapolis. Statewide, Goodwill Education Initiatives runs 15 Excel Centers. It also operates the charter Indianapolis Metropolitan High School.

Goodwill Education Initiatives is seeking an increase in the current legislative session for the number of seats that Indiana will fund statewide for its adult Excel Centers, which state statute currently limits to 4,900. The group is asking for an additional 1,650 seats, Davis said. The session ends this week.

If the centers are not given an increase in seats, Davis said, the group would need to reevaluate to make sure it can still open Excel Center - Twin Aire.

The Twin Aire campus will have an educational model similar to current centers, focusing on three main pillars: a structure that meets the needs and goals of the students, a focus on college and career readiness, and coaching, the school said in its application.

The model focuses on instruction with licensed instructors mixed with online credit recovery, emphasizing dual-credit courses and relationships with local employers. One-on-one coaching, flexible scheduling, and child care for students also seek to keep adult learners enrolled in school, according to the application.

This story has been updated to include a statement from Indianapolis Public Schools.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Hillsdale-linked Valor Classical Academy drops Pike Township plans, eyes new Hamilton County site

2023-04-25T19:59:00+00:00

This story has been updated.

A charter school affiliated with the private Christian Hillsdale College has abandoned plans to open in Pike Township after significant backlash, although it still hopes to open a campus in Hamilton County this fall.

Valor Classical Academy had been exploring a location at 3600 Woodview Trace, after failing to acquire a Carmel Clay Schools building 10 miles away in Hamilton County.

But dozens of residents from Pike and Washington townships opposed the school’s opening at a public hearing earlier this month.

Valor supporters said the school would put academics front and center and attract those who lack faith in traditional public schools. But opponents objected to its ties to conservative education ideology, and argued that the school would focus exclusively on Western culture and cater to white students in an area where most students are students of color.

The school’s curriculum includes Hillsdale’s 1776 history and civics curriculum.

The school’s authorizer, the Grace Schools Charter Authority — which is affiliated with Grace College, a private Christian institution — posted a notice on its website within the past week that Valor is no longer pursuing the Pike Township location.

Valor school board President Holly Wilson said that instead, the school has found a new site it hopes to use in Hamilton County, and added that the school’s plan has always been to stay as close to Hamilton County as possible.

Wilson said that the Hamilton County site is very close to the Orchard Park Elementary building, which Valor previously tried but failed to acquire from Carmel Clay Schools under the state’s $1 law that allows charter schools to buy or lease unused public school buildings for $1.

“We’ve still got some negotiations to do but we’re closing in on it,” she said. “And working day in and day out.”

In its charter application, Valor said it plans to open with 378 students in grades K-6 and grow to full capacity in 2029 with 702 students in grades K-12.

Valor had previously sued Carmel Clay Schools over the use of Orchard Park Elementary. But the district fought against the attempted acquisition, arguing that the building would still be in use. A Hamilton County judge sided with the district in January. The school, however, filed a notice of appeal earlier this month, according to court records.

The demographics and targeted enrollment zone of the Valor school would not change based on the new proposed site, she said. She did not share the exact site location in Hamilton County.

The school will submit another addendum to its character application to account for the new site, Wilson said.

This story has been updated to include Valor Classical Academy’s appeal of a Hamilton County judge’s ruling.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Inflation, lack of vocal opposition key for $410 million Indianapolis Public Schools ballot measure

2023-04-21T11:00:00+00:00

Voters will soon decide whether to support a property tax hike to pay for improvements at 23 Indianapolis Public Schools buildings — and factors ranging from economic headwinds to a lack of organized opposition could be crucial.

The IPS ballot question, which goes before voters on May 2, seeks $410 million in extra property tax revenue to upgrade and repair school facilities. Rejuvenating buildings and campuses is part of the district’s Rebuilding Stronger reorganization, which aims to consolidate schools and strengthen academic and extracurricular activities amid declining enrollment.

Political science and economic experts say there are a variety of factors that could help or hinder the measure’s passage.

On the one hand, the ballot question comes after months of sharply rising inflation and rising property values that ultimately lead to higher property taxes, both of which could make the referendum a tough sell.

The district estimates that the referendum would generate an extra $3.18 per month in property taxes for a resident whose home is valued at $138,500, what officials estimate as the median home value within IPS boundaries.

“I can’t say whether one would think that bad economic times would have an impact,” said Larry DeBoer, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at Purdue University who has studied school referenda at length. “But the evidence is pretty darn murky from our own history.”

At the same time, powerful political actors that might have tried to defeat the ballot question have so far stayed on the sidelines. Meanwhile, those who want voters to pass the measure appear to be more active.

IPS referendum gets campaign fundraising help

Community members have formed a political action committee called Yes4IPS to drum up support for the referendum. The PAC has raised nearly $69,000 so far, according to campaign finance records.

That includes $12,500 from the Indiana Political Action Committee for Education, the political arm of the state teachers union, and $50,000 from the PAC for Stand for Children, a parent advocacy group that supports charter schools.

If passed, the $410 million IPS referendum would help fund roughly $40 million in improvements at Thomas Carr Howe Middle School, including a renovated space for 80 early childhood seats through a partnership with Early Learning Indiana.

RISE Indy, another advocacy group that’s friendly to charters, has also said it supports the ballot measure for capital expenses, although the latest campaign finance filing shows it hasn’t contributed to Yes4IPS.

History might be on the ballot question’s side. Despite current challenges in the overall economy, DeBoer noted that voters approved 16 out of 18 Indiana school ballot measures in June 2020, during the sharp economic downturn caused by COVID.

And the amount that IPS is proposing — roughly 21 extra cents per $100 of assessed value — is also lower than the 25-cent threshold that DeBoer said appears to separate referendums in the state that pass from those that fail.

Still, the money Yes4IPS has raised so far is well below what the Vote Yes for IPS PAC was able to raise in 2018 for the district’s two ballot questions projected to raise a total of $272 million. That PAC brought in roughly $249,000, including $52,500 from the Indy Chamber PAC and $327,803 from Stand for Children, according to campaign finance records.

Previous IPS ballot questions have passed with comfortable margins. In 2018, both ballot questions proposed by the district passed with the support of more than 70% of voters. In 2008, a ballot question for capital expenses passed with roughly 78% of voters in favor.

But past successes should be seen as evidence of IPS officials’ political skills and not proof that the current ballot measure will pass, said Andy Downs, professor emeritus of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Meanwhile, the influential Indy Chamber of Commerce announced in January it would not support the ballot measure for capital expenses. But it does not appear to be actively campaigning against the measure either. A chamber spokesperson said its PAC has not done any campaigning with respect to the referendum.

And the Mind Trust, which incubates charter schools in Indianapolis, has previously said it will not take a stance on the $410 million ballot question.

The timing of the question during a primary election (when turnout is often lower than in general elections), as part of a municipal election cycle, may also give IPS a boost.

“Oftentimes with these low-salience [elections] it’s just a gut feeling for people,” said Aaron Dusso, associate professor and chair of the political science department at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. “I think generally in Indianapolis, most people [say], ‘Yes I want my schools to be better.’”

Ill will over charter funding doesn’t spill over

The lack of significant public opposition marks a contrast to a separate ballot measure IPS has hoped to put to voters next month.

For months, IPS worked on a ballot measure for May to pay for the academic, extracurricular, and other operational expenses associated with its Rebuilding Stronger overhaul. Yet groups like Stand for Children mobilized vocal pushback to the ballot measure, on the grounds that it did not share money equitably with charter schools.

After the Indy Chamber of Commerce announced it would not support the draft ballot measure, the district pulled the plug, although it later announced it would still move ahead with elements of Rebuilding Stronger.

Stand for Children’s contribution to Yes4IPS comes after parent advocates met in March to discuss the organization’s position on the capital referendum, the group said in a statement.

“Kids 30 minutes away attend schools that are luxurious in comparison and give them huge advantages solely based on their ZIP codes,” Sherry Holmes, a parent at George Washington Carver Montessori School 87, said in a statement via Stand for Children. “Those advantages equal opportunity. I support the IPS capital referendum because our kids deserve an upgrade, and they even deserve more.”

Arlington Middle School Principal Iesha Billups stands in the school’s planetarium, which is currently used as storage space but will be restored if voters approve the $410 million ballot question in May.

Recent financial relief Indianapolis provided to property owners might mitigate hostility to the prospect of new taxes.

Property owners throughout the city are getting a tax credit to their upcoming bills, an initiative the mayor’s office and city-county council approved using funds with the federal American Rescue Plan Act. The credit is listed as $150 for people with homes valued at $250,000 or less.

“However, that $150 is also just eaten up by inflation and increases in the valuation of property,” Downs said. “Forget inflation at the grocery store — just the value of your property has gone up.”

Early voting at the City-County Building ends on May 1. Eight other sites offer early voting from April 22-30.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

IPS chief academics officer one of two finalists for Cleveland schools CEO

2023-04-20T21:01:42+00:00

The chief academics officer for Indianapolis Public Schools is one of two finalists in the search for the next chief executive officer of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

Warren Morgan, who joined IPS in May 2020, oversees curriculum and instruction for the district as a member of the executive leadership team. He previously worked in Cleveland as an academic superintendent supervising the city’s turnaround schools.

“There’s just an amazing opportunity to return home and to be able to connect and work with so many great people that have invested in me, and we’ve invested in each other,” Morgan said in a video introduction on the Cleveland school district’s website.

Rocky Torres, the assistant superintendent of student support services for Seattle Public Schools, is the other finalist. Morgan directed questions to a spokesperson for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

Morgan was also a finalist in the superintendent search for New Haven Public Schools in Connecticut last month. The district finalized the selection of its new superintendent, Madeline Negrón, this week.

The Cleveland school district, with about 36,000 students, plans to have a new superintendent announced by this month, according to a timeline on its website.

Morgan has overseen academics for IPS as it recovers from pandemic learning loss — the district’s gain in statewide ILEARN testing scores for 2022 has brought students back roughly to pre-pandemic proficiency levels.

Before landing in Indianapolis, Morgan served as a high school principal in Chicago Public Schools and as the executive director for Teach for America in St. Louis. He also was selected as a White House Fellow and previously taught science in St. Louis through TFA.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Many IPS schools are losing nurses staffed through IU Health, prompting parent concerns

2023-04-18T11:00:00+00:00

Nineteen schools in Indianapolis Public Schools will lose their nurses provided through Indiana University Health when this school year ends, prompting concerns from parents about schools’ ability to respond to emergency health situations or oversee other health care needs.

The announcement from IPS last month means IU Health will end its three-year pilot with the district prematurely. The district, meanwhile, has said that it will search for other nursing providers to fill in at those schools — although four of the 19 are slated to close at the end of this school year.

The partnership with IU Health was meant to last from 2021 to 2024 with funding from federal coronavirus relief dollars. But Indiana University officials cite the nursing shortage as a ubiquitous challenge that has worsened since the start of the pandemic. IU Health officials did not detail why staff shortages prompted it to pull the plug on the nursing program in IPS, but said in a statement it is investing in its workforce to ensure it can meet patient demand and “provide the best clinical care possible.”

The end of the IU Health partnership could leave a large number of IPS schools without a registered nurse or licensed practical nurse to dispense medication or respond to health emergencies, such as hypoglycemic shock. IPS board documents from April 2022 show that 49 buildings out of the district’s 76 school programs (a figure that includes traditional district schools and those in the IPS Innovation network) had either a nurse employed by IPS, a health professional staffed through IU Health, or a school-based health center.

“We understand the vital role that school nurses play in ensuring the health and safety of our children and we are working in close partnership with IPS to find alternative solutions and ensure a seamless transition for student care,” Melissa Cash, vice president of retail and employer health solutions at IU Health, said in a statement.

The district did not respond to several requests for comment, but said in its March statement that it is exploring other potential ways to keep nurses at the schools.

“We have begun early conversations with other community partners who are eager to come alongside IPS to continue this invaluable service,” the district said.

The news has left some parents concerned about whether their children will have their health needs properly addressed while at school.

Krista Searles, whose daughter at Butler Lab School 55 has asthma and a condition known as ketotic hypoglycemia, said having a qualified nurse at the school provides an extra layer of protection for her if she becomes hypoglycemic.

But there are other students at her daughter’s school who have even greater health care needs, said Searles, who is a nurse herself.

“I think it’s really important that we’re providing those resources in the community because those kids are already working hard enough just to get through the day,” she said.

Searles also worries that the lack of nurses at some schools — particularly those that offer special programming such as Butler Lab — could also exacerbate educational inequities.

“It really creates a lot of disparities for kids with more significant health care needs and it really limits their educational options,” she said.

COVID fallout, salary disparities affect school nurses

School nurse shortages have been a perennial issue in Indiana and across the country. Indiana Administrative Code recommends a ratio of one registered nurse for every 750 students, but does not impose any penalty on districts that don’t meet that ratio.

A November 2018 report from the Indiana Department of Education found that 1,017 nurses responding to a statewide survey reported a ratio of roughly one nurse per 917 students.

State code does require, however, that school districts hire at least one registered nurse with a bachelor of science in nursing to coordinate all health services.

In the absence of a school nurse, state law allows school staff to administer certain medications or health care services to students with immunity from any damages in a potential civil lawsuit that may follow. Registered nurses can also delegate certain tasks to those without nursing credentials.

School nurses were often receiving the brunt of parent anger over health rulings during COVID, said Deb Robarge, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Nurses.

“There’s been a lot of older nurses saying, ‘I don’t need this, I was doing this because I loved doing it for the kids,’” she said. “And they had a pretty good relationship with their families and stuff. But just as the U.S. in general has descended into so much incivility to each other, I think school nurses and teachers and administrators have more of the brunt of a lot of that.”

School nurses also generally make less than nurses in a hospital setting, Robarge said.

A 2022 report from the Indiana Governor’s Public Health Commission recommended implementing policies to improve the student-to-nurse ratio and to address low pay.

Board documents show that registered nurses provided through IU Health had a maximum pay of $57 an hour working 37.5 hours per week, while licensed practical nurses had a maximum pay of $33 an hour.

Parents at schools slated to lose nurses through IU Health hope the district will be able to keep nurses at their schools.

“She does so much for our students and helps our teachers focus on their job: teaching,” Megan Alderman, a parent at Center for Inquiry School 70, wrote in a public comment to the school board last month. “Without our school nurse, medical care will once again be relegated to our teachers who do not have medical training and are busy in the classroom.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

‘I need a plan.’ As NRA convention begins, Indianapolis teens share fears about gun violence.

2023-04-14T16:59:48+00:00

Raina Maiga looked out her school’s windows from the second floor on Thursday, trying to imagine what she would do in a school shooting.

“I’m hopeless. I can’t jump out the window,” said Maiga, a sophomore at Purdue Polytechnic High School’s Englewood campus on Indianapolis’ east side. “There’s nothing to do. Our school is exposed with windows. If someone walked in here with a gun, I mean, it’s over.”

These are the conversations that Raina and her classmates have on an almost weekly basis.

But this week, those conversations are happening with the backdrop of the National Rifle Association’s three-day annual convention, which is expected to bring tens of thousands of attendees to downtown Indianapolis beginning Friday.

The convention for the powerful lobbying organization — and the warm reception from some Indiana lawmakers — feels tone deaf to Indianapolis-area teens who say gun violence in their schools and communities is their reality and fills them with anxiety on a regular basis.

Ryan Evans, a Purdue Polytechnic junior, remembers the day in 2013 that his sister survived the Arapahoe High School shooting in Colorado. His classmate Huma Moghul recalls the night she heard gunfire in her neighborhood and woke up to a bullet hole in her living room wall. And they all remember the lockdowns they have experienced this year — anxious moments that they try to ease with dark humor about whether they’d survive if a shooter was outside their door.

So far this year, eight people age 18 and under in Indianapolis have been killed by a firearm, per the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. Sixteen people age 18 and under in the city died by firearms in 2022, up from 14 in 2021.

Among those who died was a 17-year-old Purdue Polytechnic High School student James Johnson III, who was killed in February.

“Nobody ever thinks that it’s going to happen to them,” said Evans. “And I definitely think that James Johnson didn’t think that as well. Because it’s not a thought that somebody should have.”

Students prepare for school shootings

The NRA annual meeting comes roughly three weeks after a person shot and killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville. Their deaths sparked outrage during Tennessee’s legislative session, and students rallied for tougher gun laws at the Tennessee State Capitol.

Indiana lawmakers are considering a bill to provide state funding for firearms training for teachers. Rep. Jim Lucas, a Republican from Seymour and the bill’s author, said in February his legislation is a response to mass school shootings across the U.S., according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

But to students like Evans and Maiga, that legislation is not the solution. Instead, they say, legislators should stop and think about how the situation is affecting students in schools.

And the onus should not be on schools to arm teachers, or transform buildings into iron fortresses, some students argue.

“We shouldn’t have to be wanding children into schools to prevent guns from entering schools or teaching them how to evacuate to mobile bomb shelters that can be built in schools,” said Evans.

(The convention also starts on the same day that dozens of Indiana school districts received a bomb threat, prompting the closure of school buildings.)

Katie Bolduc, a freshman at Westfield High School, said she’s only known a world with gun violence in schools, where active shooter drills are as commonplace as fire and tornado drills.

“There’s a lot of complacency, it’s something that’s normal and accepted that you have to prepare for,” she said.

But it leaves her feeling unsafe.

“There are weapons that can cause mass casualties in a few minutes, and all I have is a pencil pouch or a water bottle to throw at the shooter, best-case scenario,” Bolduc said.

Lucy Rutter, a junior at Burris Laboratory School in Muncie, said she first started to hear about school shootings in middle school. At that time, it seemed like it wouldn’t happen to her. That’s changed.

“The more I see it, the more I feel like it is going to happen to me, and I need a plan,” she said. “It’s so hard to hear about it in the news every day and feel like I can’t do anything about it.”

NRA convention in town prompts disappointment from students

Having the NRA convention in their backyard only exacerbates the disconnect between lawmakers and the students who spoke to us.

“I do wonder what the conversations are like when talking about actually caring about the lives of people, but then choosing to be a public face at this convention,” said Maiga, who lamented the scheduled presence of Gov. Eric Holcomb and former Vice President Mike Pence at the convention.

Students said that having the convention so close to home is a reminder of how tense and politically charged the topic of gun violence prevention is — and of the sway of organizations like the NRA.

Salsabil Qaddoura, a North Central High School sophomore, leads her school’s chapter of Students Demand Action, a national group of high school and college students that aims to end gun violence and is affiliated with Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action.

She said the NRA convention has her thinking about gun industry accountability, and how it can profit off of young people. The access to guns is there, she said.

“It’s disgusting and insensitive,” she said of the NRA coming to Indianapolis.

The NRA did not respond to a request for comment.

Students consider how to change views on guns

Being a high schooler means having pressures to fit a certain standard, Qaddoura said. That means students are influenced by what they surround themselves with, and there’s a thought of “if you have guns you have that tough-person persona,” she said.

Students said they want to shift the narrative around guns with their classmates to make having a gun less of a status symbol, and to know that it’s OK to ask for help and to talk about gun-violence prevention.

In all the years of doing active shooter drills, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a teacher or school officer talk about how we feel, get under the desk and find what you’re going to throw and prepare,” Bolduc said.

She hopes to start a Students Demand Action chapter to change that.

As leaders of their own Students Demand Action chapters, Qaddoura and Rutter have worked to start a discussion about gun violence. They’ve registered voters, signed petitions, and attended protests and other events.

“A lot of people assume that my only goal is to ban guns, but there are so many other solutions besides banning guns outright,” Rutter said, listing gun safety education, safe storage, background checks, and red flag laws.

Students at Purdue Polytechnic, meanwhile, are organizing a walkout for April 20, the 24th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Students said they know change can be slow.

“I always hear that change is gradual,” Qaddoura said. But she added that when it comes to gun violence prevention, “We can’t wait.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief and covers higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis neighborhood calls for a community-run school after years of instability and discontent

2023-04-14T11:00:00+00:00

James Whitcomb Riley School 43’s future changed merely by chance.

Edison School of the Arts was slated to take over the school in the fall. It would have been yet another change for the school that community members say was enacted by Indianapolis Public Schools without their input.

But Edison fell into chaos earlier this year, when parents accused its executive director Nathan Tuttle of using a racial slur, while students and staff said he created a hostile working and learning environment. Last month, IPS and Edison nixed the plan for Edison to run School 43 as an autonomous school in the district’s Innovation network.

Over the past decade, the major storyline of School 43 has been one of instability, high staff turnover, low test scores, and declining enrollment. But the collapse of Edison’s plan has left community members in the tight-knit Butler-Tarkington neighborhood with an unexpected, albeit small window of opportunity to change the trajectory of its K-8 school.

And this time, they say, it will be different: Instead of waiting for the district to drum up its latest fix for School 43, they’re making demands for exactly what they want for the school — and explaining how they plan to bring change themselves.

A group of advocates known as the Butler-Tarkington Education Committee have also submitted to the district their vision for School 43, and are working with the district on a memorandum of understanding about how to overhaul the school for at least the 2023-24 school year.

A James Whitcomb Riley School 43 parent speaks at a town hall at the MLK Center about the school’s future on April 5, 2023.

Essentially, their plan is to create a community-led school with a neighborhood school advisory committee and a coordinator in charge of community partnerships that already exist — such as tutoring, literacy efforts at the local community center, and the neighborhood’s mental health support center. Their plans, which they’re still developing and discussing with neighborhood residents, are similar to a model used by another IPS school community that banded together in 2017 to help run its own school without a charter operator.

“We’ve been patient,” said Sabae Martin, who graduated from School 43 more than 50 years ago and has worked for years to revive it. “And we’ve worked with them long enough to learn that unless we take the bull by the horns, we’re going to continue to get gored.”

The district did not respond to a request for comment about School 43. But IPS school board member Hope Hampton, whose District 3 includes the school, told community members that they have her ear at a recent public meeting about the school.

Neighborhood seeks organized effort for community-run school

One window into the school’s troubles is its decline from an A rating with the state in 2012 to an F by 2016, a grade it retained through 2020, the last year the state used A-F letter grades for accountability. It cycled through five principals in a five-year period from 2014 to 2019.

Just 1.5% of students were proficient in both English and math on the state’s 2022 ILEARN test.

But the school has also enjoyed a strong web of neighborhood support for years. Butler University College of Education students help staff the library. A mentoring program through the National Council of Negro Women has helped middle school girls believe in themselves. Another alumna, Brenda Vance Paschal, helped launch a journalism program.

The community itself is anchored by a number of churches, the MLK Center, and lifelong residents.

The school has plenty of partnerships and caring organizations, said Jim Grim, a member of the committee who helps run the Indiana Community Schools Network, at a recent meeting.

“The missing ingredient,” he said, “is the coordination.”

Community schools across the country are based on the idea that the schools serve as neighborhood hubs for a variety of educational, family, and social services. The federal government’s Full Service Community Schools grant program, among other efforts, supports such schools.

In addition to its long-term plans for the school, the Butler-Tarkington Education Committee has a seat on the interview committee for the school’s new principal, which should be placed by the end of May, said Allison Luthe, executive director of the MLK Center.

The model that School 43 advocates are envisioning closely resembles the community-run model at Thomas Gregg School 15. There, community members and the John Boner Neighborhood Centers stepped in six years ago to take their neighborhood school into their own hands. Today, School 15 is one of the few Innovation schools in IPS that isn’t a charter.

Getting to that point took many community meetings and hard work.

But James Taylor, the CEO of the John Boner centers, said that process led the School 15 community to realize it could not only influence the school, but take ownership of what it provides to students and families.

Now, Taylor says, the school has community support embedded in the school that can direct families to services such as housing assistance or tutoring. The school itself has also become much more open to assistance from the community, Taylor said.

But the Thomas Gregg model might not work for School 43 and the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood, he added.

“We looked at our ingredients, and we ended up at Thomas Gregg,” Taylor said. “Their community needs to explore what kinds of ingredients they have and make their own recipe.”

And some Butler-Tarkington community members bristle at the mention of becoming an Innovation school, a term that for many means becoming a charter. Notably, Thomas Gregg is not run by a charter operator.

How the community gets IPS on board with its desires, however, is “the $64,000 question,” said Vance Paschal, who like Martin graduated from School 43 over 50 years ago.

“We first want them to be accountable and to listen and to just trust us, since we have trusted them and they have failed,” she said. “We’re on the ground. They’re like the generals out in D.C., we’re the troops out here who are fighting.”

Staff need help with student behavior, parental involvement

The school’s challenges inside classrooms underscore community concerns.

Staff at the school said they’re dealing regularly with behavioral issues among students and need more people in the building.

Endia Dunner, the school’s assistant principal, said at the recent meeting that teachers are running themselves ragged. Having more people in the short-staffed school to provide more support would boost teachers’ own mental health and morale, she noted.

”They just need a little bit of time so that they can make sure they stay healthy for themselves, for their own families, so that they can continue to come back day after day after day,” Dunner said.

Staff from James Whitcomb Riley School 43 listen to a community member speak at a town hall at the MLK Center on April 5, 2023.

Johnnie Rivera, a parent at the school, said his son struggles in class because of distractions.

“He says the teachers have to keep pulling the kids out of the classroom because of the kids behind him keep acting up,” he said after the community’s first town hall. “And he’s like, sometimes, I can’t learn nothing because they have to keep stopping.”

Rivera said he’s thought about transferring his son to a different school if it doesn’t get any better.

Hampton told community members at the meeting that she hoped to hear from them so she could be an advocate for the school as well.

“It’s sad to hear some of the things that you’re dealing with, but the commitment and the passion means everything,” she said.

Residents hope efforts to restore School 43 will help more than the school itself.

“It’s possible it can come back,” said Martin. “And you know what, we’re going to end up with a better neighborhood because of it.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Washington Township schools terminates North Central principal after student discipline probe

2023-04-13T13:59:33+00:00

The Metropolitan School District of Washington Township has terminated the employment of North Central High School Principal Evans Branigan III, following an investigation into allegations of verbal misconduct and a failure to follow district protocols in a student discipline matter.

The announcement, which the district sent to families on Wednesday, ends an investigation that began last month. Branigan had announced his retirement earlier this school year before being placed on leave.

The school district did not offer additional details about the allegations or the investigation. Branigan could not be reached for comment.

“Washington Township Schools is firmly committed to maintaining a learning and work environment with no tolerance for harassment and discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, and other protected classifications,” the district said in the statement to families. “We continue to encourage staff and students to report any misconduct they witness.”

The decision is part of a difficult year for North Central. Last month, the school board approved a $245,000 settlement for a federal lawsuit involving alleged sexual harassment and predatory behavior by a former staff member.

In its statement, the district said Branigan had the opportunity under state law to challenge the decision but declined to do so.

The school board on Wednesday approved the hiring of a new permanent principal for North Central, a school of roughly 3,600 students and the district’s only high school.

Daniel Mendez, principal of Seymour Middle School, will lead the school beginning in the summer. Eugene White, the former superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools and Washington Township schools, is leading the school on an interim basis through mid-June.

Mendez has earned the statewide Middle School Principal of the Year recognition for Indiana, making him a contender for the National Principal of the Year honor.

“Dr. Mendez brings not only exceptional Principal leadership experiences but proven success with raising achievement for diverse populations of students in urban public schools,” Superintendent Nikki Woodson said in a statement released Thursday.

In a statement, Mendez said he has always had great respect for the district.

“It is an honor to join the North Central High School and Washington Township Schools family,” he said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Valor Classical Academy eyes Pike Township after failing to win building in Carmel

2023-04-11T03:35:20+00:00

A charter school affiliated with the private Christian Hillsdale College seeks to open in northwest Indianapolis amid significant backlash after failing to acquire a school building in Carmel.

Valor Classical Academy is now interested in opening in the fall in an office building near I-465 and Michigan Road near the intersection of Pike Township, Washington Township, and Carmel Clay school districts.

Valor is authorized to open in Hamilton County, as originally proposed. State law requires the school’s authorizer, the Grace Schools Charter Authority affiliated with the private Christian Grace College, to hold a public hearing about the new proposed location in Marion County. Valor’s school board president said the site, at 3600 Woodview Trace, is one possibility and that school officials recently toured another location in Hamilton County that may prove a better fit.

Dozens of parents and community members protested at the public hearing on Monday, arguing that the school’s ties to Hillsdale are problematic.

Opponents argued that the school’s curriculum, which includes the Hillsdale 1776 history and civics curriculum, will create an ethnocentric school focused solely on Western culture that will isolate students of color and serve primarily white students.

“It’s clear that Valor’s Hillsdale curriculum will be pushing its own political agenda,” said Metropolitan School District of Pike Township Superintendent Larry Young.

The school’s new proposed location pits a community with strong anti-charter tendencies against a charter school backed by a Christian college that has become central in conservative education ideology.

Supporters of the school said Monday that it would provide quality education for those who do not have faith in traditional schools.

Jackie O’Keefe, a parent who spoke in support of the Valor, objected to opponents who painted the school as a politically conservative force.

“When it comes to education, the word conservative to me lends itself to a focus of academics, math, science, reading, spelling, pencil, and paper,” she said. “Not sitting in front of a screen. Not social justice, not pronouns or sexuality. For our family, a classical education checks all of those boxes.”

Valor seeks to open in Marion County instead of Hamilton County

The Grace Schools Charter Authority authorized the charter of Valor Classical Academy in October. The small private college in Winona Lake, Indiana, authorizes four other charter schools in the state including Seven Oaks Classical School, another Hillsdale-affiliated school.

Valor initially applied to open in the Carmel Clay school district with a plan to buy the district’s now-closed Orchard Park Elementary. State law allows charter schools to purchase unused school buildings for $1.

But Carmel Clay Schools fought against the acquisition, arguing that the building would still be in use. After the state attorney general sided with the school district, Valor sued the district. A Hamilton Superior Court judge in January sided with the school district.

Legislators are considering letting the $1 law lapse in 2025.

Facing a potential dead end in Carmel, Valor filed an addendum to its application to instead pursue a 15-year lease with an option to buy a 70,000-square-foot office building along I-465 and Michigan Road, moving the planned school from Hamilton to Marion County.

In its addendum to the charter application, Valor noted that the planning department has recommended approval of the school’s use.

But the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development said through a spokesperson that the site’s zoning does not permit a school use and Valor would need approval to operate one there.

The school plans to open with 378 students in grades K-6, growing to full capacity in 2029 to 702 students in grades K-12, according to the charter application.

Valor says the new location would enable it to draw students from 10 school districts across multiple counties, serving roughly the same area that the school would have served in its previously proposed location at Orchard Park. The school anticipates attracting “privately-educated students who align with Valor’s mission,” according to the March addendum.

“Hamilton, Marion, Hendricks, and Boone counties are ripe with students who have fled from district public schools to alternate sources of education and many more seeking alternatives,” the school wrote in its March addendum. It notes that families are transporting their children outside their district and paying up to an average $6,000 to $8,000 tuition for a “non-secular, classical” education.

The school would offer what it calls a classical, liberal arts curriculum including Latin, a math curriculum known as Singapore Math, and an emphasis on civics and classical virtues, according to the school’s charter.

The school touts civics-centered education with a classical education philosophy dating back to ancient Greece that is also “grounded in the foundational tenets of our Western heritage.”

Parents oppose Valor, citing Hillsdale College’s role in school

But parents from Pike and Washington Townships expressed strong opposition at the hearing Monday, arguing that Valor’s book list, referred to as the “great books,” did not reflect the culture of Pike Township — which has an overwhelming majority of students of color.

Valor’s website lists books for every grade level, including those by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Oscar Wilde, and Emily Bronte. Opponents of the school argued that they did not see themselves or their children of color reflected in the collection of literature.

“My children attend schools led by Black leaders who are intentional in ensuring that they see themselves in the literature and material that they study on a daily basis,” said Pike Township parent Alexandra Hall. “The great books promoted by Valor Classical Academy will alienate, isolate, and demean the rich cultures and traditions that are prominent and celebrated in Pike schools.”

Community members also took exception to Valor’s adoption of the Hillsdale 1776 curriculum for American history and civics, arguing that the project was a conservative reactionary curriculum.

“I know we don’t have to send our kids to Valor,” said Gabriel Bosslet, a Pike Township parent. “But we don’t want this anywhere near us, frankly.”

If it manages to open, Valor would eventually join 23 schools nationwide as a Hillsdale College member school that receives guidance and support from Hillsdale.

Backlash against Hillsdale-affiliated schools has spread after a video surfaced last summer of Hillsdale President Larry Arnn commenting that teachers “are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”

Arnn chaired President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission, which recommended that states and school districts reject curriculum that “promotes one-sided partisan opinions” and “activist propaganda.” The commission was created after The New York Times published The 1619 Project that reframed America’s historical narrative around slavery, a perspective that Trump criticized as “warped” and “distorted.”

A network of Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools known as American Classical Education encountered strong opposition to its proposal to open schools in Tennessee, where Gov. Bill Lee had urged Hillsdale to open more charter schools using its classical school model.

Proponents of Valor in Indianapolis argued that the school will fill a need in Marion County for a public classical education.

“Wherever this building is going to be, our goal is to invite in a radius from five miles in a circle out to 10 miles anyone who would like an excellent classical education,” said David Wright, Valor’s head of school. “This is different. It’s built on the great books. It’s built on discussion and reflection.”

Others argued that the school would be a higher-quality option than the traditional public schools that serve the area.

“I want to know, since when does respect — all these things, the core values that Valor stands for, since when are those exclusively some sort of right-wing Christian foundation?” said parent Joel Harsin. “Those are such things we should all strive for. Manners, respect — all those things.”

Valor school board President Holly Wilson said after the meeting that the list of books on the school’s website is just a sampling of the literature incorporated at the school. Teachers would also have the freedom to bring in whatever texts align with the curriculum, she said.

She said Hillsdale College’s political activities would not affect the school.

The Grace Schools Charter Authority board may vote on whether to approve the amendment to the school’s charter later this month.

Correction: April 11, 2023: A previous version of this story described Grace College as Valor Classical Academy’s authorizer. The authorizer is the Grace Schools Charter Authority affiliated with Grace College.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Science labs, athletic fields, and a planetarium: An IPS school waits on voters for funding

2023-04-07T18:30:07+00:00

The planetarium at Arlington Middle School has been left unused for years, collecting dust as a storage space full of chairs, keyboards, and boxes.

But if voters say yes to a $410 million ballot question in May, the abandoned gem — which was the first high school planetarium in Indiana when it was dedicated in 1965 — will be restored.

Indianapolis Public Schools’ proposed tax increase would pay for building improvements at Arlington and 22 other schools as the district rolls out its Rebuilding Stronger reorganization.

The plan also aims to create a more efficiently run district with better academic offerings, close six schools, and offer specialized academic programming at others.

Arlington Middle School’s planetarium has sat unused for years. If voters approve a ballot question in May, new funding will bring the space back to life.

It also breaks up the district’s K-8 schools, creating distinct elementary and middle schools, so that students can receive better academic and extracurricular offerings — from band and world languages to softball and baseball.

Arlington Middle School will receive $66 million if the ballot measure is successful, making it the single largest beneficiary among the 23 schools. Arlington would transform into a STEM school in 2024-25 and integrate the planetarium into the curriculum. The school would also add sixth grade to its existing seventh and eighth grades.

It would also add an 81,000-square-foot, two-story addition, create a new media center and family resource center, and establish science labs and a makerspace.

“The next chapter of Arlington is exciting because we get to write a new narrative,” said Principal Iesha Billups.

The ballot measure’s revenue would also revive the school’s athletic fields, which were critical when the school served grades 7-12 but which students don’t use much now.

The upgrades will transform those fields into high-quality, competition-ready fields.

“When it’s done, kids will be able to practice six sports simultaneously across this space,” said IPS Chief Operations Officer Bill Murphy on Thursday morning, as he stood behind the school and looked over the fields.

IPS Chief Operations Officer Bill Murphy explains proposed upgrades to Arlington Middle School’s athletic fields. Although the school has a softball field and tennis courts, middle school students don’t currently use them. Officials hope a $410 million capital referendum will change that.

A key goal of the tax increase is to bring all elementary and middle schools into good condition within the next eight years, so that those buildings only require routine maintenance instead of massive investments involving HVAC or roof repairs.

Officials say that more than 30% of the district’s are in “poor” condition, meaning the cost to renovate the building is between 30% and 40% of the cost to replace the entire building. A 2020 analysis commissioned by IPS reported that Arlington was in “good” condition, meaning that the cost of upgrades the school needs is only between 10% and 20% of the cost to replace the entire building

But Arlington, built in 1961, would still get upgrades to its roof, interior lighting, fire alarms, and cameras and security, Murphy said.

“If you think about the student experience every day, showing up at a school that is too hot or too cold, that doesn’t have water that runs clean, clear, and quickly, is a real downer,” he said. “And these are the sorts of preconditions that set students up for success.”

Improvements at other schools include upgrades to enable Thomas Carr Howe Middle School to enroll students once again, and a new building at the site of Joyce Kilmer School 69.

Early voting is currently available at the Indianapolis City-County Building, with additional sites opening on April 22.

Election day is May 2. Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Marion County residents can vote at any of the county’s voting centers.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.