Latest news with #RebuildingStronger
Axios
22-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
IPS navigates budget uncertainty during enrollment window
Indianapolis Public Schools is facing millions in budget cuts and an uncertain future. Why it matters: Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said IPS is facing "a long-term challenge" from legislation passed this year that cuts property taxes and forces traditional school districts to share property tax dollars with charter schools. Analysis of earlier versions of the charter school-sharing language raised fears that IPS would face school closures and staff layoffs, but an IPS spokesperson told Axios the district is still working to understand the latest version that was signed into law last week by Gov. Mike Braun. State of play: The property tax reform in Senate Enrolled Act 1 will strip roughly $15 million from IPS over the next three years and more cuts could be coming. While schools get some funding from property taxes, the vast majority comes from the school funding formula in the state's two-year budget. The current version of the budget proposes annual 2% increases for K–12 schools, but lawmakers found out last week that they need to cut a staggering $2 billion from that spending plan. Between the lines: Statehouse leaders have said K–12 education will be the last place they look to make cuts, but schools are the single largest expense, making up nearly half of the state budget. Threat level: This is the first full year of Rebuilding Stronger, IPS' K–8 overhaul aimed at making school assignment and choice more equitable and high-quality academic programming more accessible. Cuts to funding could force IPS to scale back on planned expansions to academic paths, arts, music, team sports, foreign languages and facility improvements. While the work included in the 2023 capital projects referendum won't be impacted, smaller projects across the district could be cut. Zoom in: The uncertainty comes at a challenging time in the calendar: the middle of the enrollment process. While the most impactful parts of SEA 1 won't take effect for several years, families may start looking for school options with less uncertainty in their futures. "We know that we have many families looking forward to and making decisions for next school year," Johnson said in a message to families sent during the weekend. "Our schools have so many exciting opportunities, and we encourage you to explore those as you are making your decisions."
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
I joined the IPS board amid charter school fights. Here's how we move forward.
It is our role on the board of commissioners to serve as the governing system for providing a free, public education in grades K-12 for children within the boundaries of the Indianapolis Public School Corp. We newbies were sworn in Jan. 7, a day that will be forever etched in my mind. Not because it was a day of joy and excitement, but because it marked the day of division about school types, and a fight that pitted neighbor against neighbor. An argument that could even possibly cause the largest school district in Indiana to become insolvent. So, I quickly began researching history in hopes of coming up with a solution. Here's where I chose to start. In 2014, our district took a significant step by partnering with charters to protect our lowest-performing schools from state takeover. Charters became the gap filler for our most marginalized children. Each year since, the district earned revenue on the property tax dollars from this initiative. As partnerships expanded over time, we not only gained more high-quality collaborators, but also received more property tax revenue. Briggs: The IPS-charter school fight puts politics over children As we have educated fewer students, we invested in our charter partners through some sharing of property tax dollars, facilities and transportation resources. In 2023, we charged taxpayers for our Rebuilding Stronger plan to fix our city's oldest facilities (which also house some of our charter partners), offer families school zones and provide transportation for all students attending a school in our portfolio. Since IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson's appointment, we've seen an increase in high school graduation rates, unprecedented partnerships with local universities offering automatic admittance to any IPS graduate with a 3.0 GPA and strong community collaborations to support our students. I'm grateful for the work this administration has done to lead the charge for our students. I also recognize that we've yet to figure out an accessible and reliable school transportation system that works for all students within our boundaries. Currently, thousands of public school students lack access to transportation. Every child deserves to be safely transported to and from school — that is a foundational component of a public education. As a commissioner representing all students in our district, I believe to solve these concerns it is important to continue having key conversations with our state lawmakers on the following matters: Increase dollars in public education. The fight for public education is not against each other and which type of school we choose to send our children; the effort should be directed towards legislators, demanding more funding. Our state budget has a surplus of over a billion dollars. Yet, the message is there are not enough dollars to ensure all schools have the resources to educate all children. We can't simply rely on philanthropy — our state needs to invest in public education. Ensuring equity in our transportation services. I've spoken with families who struggle to get their kids to school on time. Some families aren't offered transportation because they live too close to the school, even though it's unsafe for them to walk to school due to high-traffic areas. I also know that some schools are spending over $200,000 of their education budget on transportation, funds that could be invested in teacher pay and curriculum. We need a system that gives everyone the option to receive reliable transportation to and from school. Decision-making remaining local. The district and board propose the establishment of a local advisory board, as outlined in statute, composed of appointed members representing the IPS school board, the charter sector, business and civic leaders, community organizations, families, and students. This advisory board should be responsible for collaboratively designing a coherent educational system that addresses the changes resulting from property tax adjustments. Key priorities must include developing a transportation system that promotes access and efficiency, as well as establishing a governance model that supports aligned decision-making. We grow a lot of things in Indiana and every child deserves to grow up great! Education is the only equalizer to achieve equity. Deandra Thompson is an at-large member of the IPS Board of Commissioners. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IPS, Indiana lawmakers need to talk. Let's move forward. | Opinion
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The IPS-charter school fight puts politics over children
Indianapolis Public Schools appear safe from dissolution for the time being. Let's take a deep breath. The struggle for resources between IPS and charter schools has pushed many people too deeply into political trenches to see anything beyond their own biases. IPS advocates view charter school supporters as evil incarnate. Charter school supporters see IPS as a caricature of a failing inner-city school district. Hicks: I support school choice. It hasn't worked in Indiana. The ensuing debate has revealed the ugliest side of Indianapolis, a side in which many people are so committed to interest group turf wars that they've lost sight of the actual stakes: educating children. I've been frustrated for weeks while listening to some charter school advocates and state lawmakers talk about IPS as though the district is hopelessly incapable of delivering on its core purpose. Hi, IPS parent here. As many people on the internet like to remind me, I used to live in Carmel. My wife and I moved (back) to Indianapolis' east side in 2022 after exhaustively considering where we wanted our child (now children, plural) to attend school. We could have stayed in Carmel, moved to a different suburb or landed on charter or private schools. We're two parents with graduate degrees and the wherewithal to live wherever we want and overthink school choices for our children, which we did. We settled on moving to Irvington because we loved the neighborhood and felt highly confident in multiple IPS schools. We're not traditional public school absolutists. We didn't go with IPS to make a political statement. Our children are not virtue signals. We determined that IPS schools could provide an all-around education as good as, if not better than, every other possible option in metropolitan Indianapolis. Simply put, we chose IPS. Our son has been in traditional IPS neighborhood schools for two years now. We had one hiccup this year, when we decided that his class wasn't a good fit for his fidgety, high-energy personality, and we transferred him to another IPS neighborhood school, where he is engaged and hugging his teacher as we pick him up in the afternoons. I wouldn't profess to being IPS for life. Like all parents, we want the best for our children, and we will change course if we feel like we need to. But, right now, our son is developing at a rate that tells us he's receiving the highest-quality education possible. As confident as I am that my son is receiving the best possible education, I am equally confident that is not the case for every child living within the IPS boundaries. Parents recently expressed displeasure with the district in large numbers. IPS' enrollment fell by 800 students, or about 3.7%, this school year largely because of the district's recent choice to break out grades 6-8 into middle schools as part of the Rebuilding Stronger plan. It's not just that. I've known parents who have moved their kids out of IPS schools for a range of distressing problems that couldn't be resolved through meetings with teachers or principals. One key issue is that many parents don't have the flexibility my wife and I have to find the best fit for their children. Our son, for example, goes to a neighborhood school well outside our zone and doesn't have bus service. We're only able to send him there because our jobs enable us to drop him off and pick him up ourselves. Parents with job- and transportation-related constraints don't have as many options — and many parents are limited to IPS schools that may or may not be suitable for their children. That gets to the heart of the problem with many urban schools. What many people perceive as school underperformance is often a matter of economic disparities. Children who come from poverty are not as well prepared to succeed in school as children who come from financially secure households — and that reflects on school test scores, regardless of how well teachers and administrators are doing their jobs. Taking those disparities into consideration, though, research has suggested that charter schools have had more success closing achievement gaps than traditional public schools in Indianapolis. It seems to be the case that many children across Indianapolis only have access to high-quality schools because of their proximity to strong charters operating affiliated with IPS. You can quibble with causal conclusions and you can certainly point to poorly managed charter schools, but ignoring the data on outcomes altogether is a disservice to children who deserve good schools regardless of our political preferences. At the very least, we should be able to have a rational conversation about the proper balance between IPS and charters without vilifying people who have opposing views. As I wrote above, I think many people have attacked IPS based on misunderstandings, at best, or bad faith, at worst. It also seems like many of the loudest charter school opponents are childless activists (nothing wrong with that) who have never considered these issues through the eyes of an anxious parent just trying to do what's best. Tribalism, plus the absence of empathy in many cases, has been toxic to this discussion. On the other hand, I've also been part of many recent conversations in which charter school advocates have expressed sincere desires to create better futures for children in Indianapolis. I trust that IPS administrators and teachers are working toward the same goal — and I see it first hand. These encounters give me hope. We can't treat education policy as a zero-sum game, an existential feud between charters and traditional public schools. We should debate education based on the understanding that many Indianapolis schools already offer excellent opportunities for children — and that it's in our collective best interest to find ways to make them even better. Contact James Briggs at 317-444-4732 or Follow him on X and Threads at @JamesEBriggs. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IPS schools serve Indy well. So do charters. | Opinion
