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ILEA’s Recommendation a Blow to Democracy for IPS

The future of Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) is in jeopardy. A state-mandated commission recommended ending elected school boards in the IPS district, and with that, taxpayers’ voice and choice in governance. These recommendations would forever change the governance structure of IPS to match the charter schools’ model. Today, when an unelected corporate board not answerable to the duly elected school board operates a school in an IPS building, it is always known as a charter school. Even with a quick glance or long stare, no one may tell the difference from the outside, but how they operate is fundamentally different. No matter where one stands in the traditional schools vs charter schools vs innovation school debate, we will all agree that it's a charter school. It's not rocket science, and the issue of who governs a school defines whether it's a traditional or charter school. Enter the state-mandated commission called the ILEA (Indianapolis Local Education Alliance) 


The ILEA was created by the Indiana General Assembly to craft plans to address facility and transportation management, governance structure, efficiency, and deepen collaboration between traditional public schools and public charter schools ( IPS and Charter schools). But the 9-member ILEA board is mostly appointed by Mayor Hogsett and dominated by pro-charter interests like:

 

The ILEA recommendations seem to mainly address the following charter school related issues:


So it came to no surprise for some of us that the pro-charter dominated ILEA board found the only way to solve these mostly charter school induced problems was to end democratic control of IPS, effectively adopting a charter school governance model for everyone. That’s right, you read it correctly. Their admitted ‘imperfect solution’ creates a completely new entity and appoints an unelected board to take over IPS assets and autonomy. They’re basically saying, yes, we’re canceling democracy but at least the trains will run on time, or in this case getting the school buses to run at all. What these ILEA recommendations don’t do much of is actually address IPS problems like their own convoluted lottery system for school enrollment that underpins the even more convoluted Enroll Indy website initially funded and supported through the The Mind Trust. I have firsthand accounts from parents and educators that say the Enroll Indy website favors parents with insider knowledge of the hacks, loopholes, tips and tricks used by some to actually get the schools they want. I have no doubt that some of IPS’ declining enrollment can be tracked this The Mind Trust pushed solution that combines enrollment for IPS and some charter schools. Enroll Indy often leaves many parents I’ve talked to confused and frustrated about not being able to enroll their children in their schools of choice, with many unaware there’s even a difference in school models (charter or IPS traditional and innovation) that Enroll Indy selects for their child. Some insiders have described scenarios where some charter schools were able to cherry pick students by reviewing applications in the Enroll Indy waitlist pool, selecting the students they wanted, and simply allow Enroll Indy to send the rest to a nearby IPS school, sometimes one it shares a building with. These pro-charter lobby-dominated ILEA recommendations seek to give this newly appointed board direct authority over enrollment for all IPS and Charter schools so that these defects can be replicated instead of fixed. While the community may not understand all the nuances to what’s being done to them, they’re not oblivious to the fact that school choice isn’t being offered to all of them.


Despite the fierce opposition from the community, 8 of 9 ILEA members voted for this anti-democratic plan. ILEA board members who support the plan tout the benefits of allegedly fixing these mostly charter school lobby-induced problems but talk little of the real consequences of duplicating the same unelected governance model that created the problems in the first place. It's Indianapolis charter schools that currently:

  • Do not provide all students transportation 

  • Do not provide all students special needs accommodations 

  • Do not ensure all schools have enough licensed teachers and administrators  


Yet the ILEA says ⅔ of this new board will be made up of charter leaders and at-large members who haven’t been able to hold charter schools accountable and appointed by the same mayor’s office who also fail to hold its own charter leaders accountable. So unlike Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, who took power and promised to make the trains run on time, charter leaders have already had 24 years to do it, but still haven't. Indianapolis charter school families on average deal with at least 1 unexpected closing a year and 2025 was no exception. But unexpected charter school closures are seen as a feature of the system, not a bug. Students being systemically mistreated, cooked books, and outright fraud are tolerated until the prosecutors or news media come calling. In fact since the creation of the ILEA earlier this year in April the former superintendent of virtual charter schools pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud after prosecutors say he and several others defrauded the State of Indiana out of $44.6 million. Another charter school leader was quietly fired in February after she charged more than $200,000 in questionable purchases like $40,000 in airfare, $3,000 in alcohol purchases, $10,000 in restaurants, $6,091 for a luxury hotel in India, and $1,678 in wine service classes. Mayor Hogsett’s Office of Education Innovation which oversees these schools, wasn’t even aware that she had moved to Florida in 2023 while still serving as school leader. The Mayor’s office renewed their charter shortly before the board fired her from a different position with that charter operator. In September, WFYI Indianapolis found that acclaimed charter operator, Paramount Schools suspends students with disabilities 3 times more than the state average. But even Paramount schools' suspensions of students without disabilities are unusually high. Coincidentally, the Indiana legislature cut the social emotional learning training requirements for teachers this year that could potentially help charter schools deal with some students without excessive discipline and even improve test scores. Yet early this year none of the charter leaders or charter friendly “education advocacy orgs” like The Mind Trust, EmpowerEd, TogetherEd, Stand For Children, RISE Indy, or Indiana Charter Innovation Center said a word against it or even engaged the community about it. There’s more to supporting all children and education advocacy than just going after public money. After numerous instances of excessive discipline at charter schools, charter leaders should have been advocating to make sure all teachers are well-trained on social emotional learning. It's not that IPS is perfect but these incidents are so common in the charter school network and it exposes a systemic lack of oversight that charter leaders are not trying to address. Even as The Mind Trust was advocating for the state legislature to take away IPS’ property tax funding in February, a former charter school CEO pleaded guilty to defrauding the charter school network and likely The Mind Trust itself out of nearly $1 million. The plea agreement came after a 3rd renewal of its charter by the Mayor’s Office of Education Innovation. This isn’t the first controversy or even the first financial controversy at this charter school. If Indianapolis’ leading pro-charter org,The Mind Trust, can’t even protect itself from being taken advantage of by multiple charter school CEOs at a charter school it has a deep long time relationship with, and has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in, what do you think happens if this model is recreated in IPS? The idea that a Mayor appointed board of mostly “charter leaders" and “at large” members fixes systemic problems at both IPS and charter schools is laughable at best. 


Yet most ILEA members claim to believe this nonsense, with IPS teacher Tina Ahlgren, being the lone holdout and voice of reason after IPS Superintendent Dr Johnson faltered. Most of the votes weren't surprising for those who knew about the cast of characters assembled and many community members expressed skepticism about the ILEA board makeup from the start. The community also knew the same Mayor Hogsett that wanted to make the ILEA meetings private in the first place and already said he was open to anti-democratic measures to appoint the school board himself doesn’t respect democracy or community voice. Even Dr Johnson’s surrender vote to the pro-charter lobby, while disappointing, was not inconceivable, as the only 2 plans left on the table were anti-democratic. 


To be clear, Dr Johnson's actions did not bring us to this point. It is the actions of 3 Indianapolis mayors, the state legislature, the charter leaders like The Mind Trust, previous IPS superintendents, and philanthropy who funded the charter school lobby’s cooked books, misinformation, propaganda reports the past 25 years. But what Dr Johnson did after the vote disturbed me as someone who in the past has tried to amplify her messages to the community. Her 10-minute ILEA update video fails to acknowledge reality and why there was such intense opposition coming from the community at large, her own IPS teachers, principals, MADVoters, Concerned Clergy, IPS Parents, Greater Indianapolis NAACP, African American Coalition of Indianapolis and Indianapolis Urban League. Instead she discusses a failed bill to dissolve IPS that never was heard for a vote and the dissolution of a tiny single building school district in a town of 150 as the reason we must appease them and agree to work with admittedly flawed recommendations. She then says she’s fighting for retention of an IPS School board that she knows won't be in charge of IPS and will be answering to an unelected board that is the authority on IPS’ enrollment, funding/tax revenue splits, facilities, transportation, and deciding academic accountability. It was fear-mongering, then pandering for the purpose of encouraging distraction and inaction. Her use of phrases like “this is an imperfect solution “ but “we're focused on minimizing disruption” are simply euphemisms for: “We're sorry this ends democratic control of our schools” but “we're negotiating to have the most destructive changes happen after we leave IPS.” Despite some of their denials, it really is shirking the responsibility to do right by our children and kicking the can down the road for someone else to fix these problems. I no longer believe Dr Johnson is speaking for me or my community because she's not having an honest conversation with us. I’ve lost confidence in her ability to properly inform us, and I’ve lost faith in her capacity to advocate for the community's best interests. And If you don't see a legitimate path forward in an unelected corporate board to running IPS, picked by the institutions that created most of these problems, then Dr Johnson doesn't speak for you either. You see, historical analysis reveals that Mussolini and his Italian fascists never did end up making the trains run on time. It was a scam, just like this. These ILEA recommendations are a way to lower standards and cook books across the entire IPS district by eliminating the pesky oversight of an elected board. Were this not another scam, a duly elected school board chosen by the people would be the only choice to run so-called public schools.


We as a community must fight! Fight like hell to prevent democracy from being stolen from us. 

That means demanding to see exactly what the ILEA sent the state legislature, not just what they say they’re sending.


It means showing up in force to tell the Indiana Statehouse that these ILEA recommendations didn’t come from us or anyone listening to the community and don’t match our values and aspirations as citizens and Hoosiers. Because we know when private corporations use false promises to take away democratic control of public institutions from the community, it's a play out of the Project 2025 playbook, but historically it was just called fascism.


Sign up to Organize with the IPS Parents Council: https://ips-parent-council.org/ 

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