A new bill may dismantle Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) and four other school districts.
House Bill 1136 proposes that if most students in a school district are not attending that school in fall 2024, then the district should be dissolved. Then all those schools “must be transitioned to operating as charter schools,” according to the bill.
I think this is what many people feared about charters all along.
For the opponents of charter schools, many felt they were taking away the support that should have been going to IPS. There are also four other school districts this would affect, but the majority of the students affected live within IPS’s boundaries.
In recent years, people blamed the introduction of charter schools for the lack of investment in IPS. Residents within the IPS district often shared their displeasure at the charter schools they believed were taking money away from other schools. The funding system is designed to make sure the money followed the student. This meant, the charter school only received funds based on the number of students that were enrolled, and charter schools often received less money than the district.
In hindsight, I think the fears people had were steeped in the distrust of government systems that have repeatedly promised one thing and delivered something else. If we’re honest, this is a pattern in U.S. history that cannot be ignored.
Every few years, someone comes into “urban” neighborhoods and makes changes without the residents’ input. Every few years their plans fail, and the residents are left to pick up the pieces.
The families that I have spoken with who transitioned from their district school to a charter school wanted safety and a different academic environment for their children. Some just wanted their child to go to a smaller school or one that was closer to home.
For many, the illusion of school choice is just that, an illusion. Only families who have resources can select certain schools. That leaves behind families with the least resources. Far too frequently, the so-called solutions leave out the people who need the most help.
However, if this bill marks the end of IPS, we cannot simply blame charter schools. The district has been losing students for decades. This has been a death by a thousand cuts.
After schools were desegregated, the district saw a mass exodus of people who did not want their children to be in a racially mixed environment. The demographics within some IPS schools changed dramatically within the first few years of integration, and not in the way that was intended.
Unigov continued the racial divide. With the goal of combining the urban and suburban areas in Marion County under a unified municipal government, Unigov left out the schools.
“A good number of people really wanted to keep at least their school segregated,” then-Mayor Richard Lugar and later a U.S. Senator told Chalkbeat.
Then comes mandated busing in the 1970s. Black students were transported to suburban township schools for what was deemed a better education. This plan did not prove to be effective in the long run; the school district is more segregated now than when busing began.
It’s still peculiar to me that Black students were bused to the townships instead of the other way around. Integration is supposed to work both ways, right?
IPS has a storied history with lots of proud alumni. Anyone I met who attended Crispus Attucks High School during its heyday still has pride in their school. Attucks boasted teachers with PhDs who maintained high standards for their students. A similar pride is found in lots of alumni of Broad Ripple. So many Ripple rockets still bleed orange and black to this day.
In full disclosure, I attended IPS. My children did, too.
I have no opposition to IPS, but even a supporter can agree there were and are changes that need to be made within the district. Some schools within IPS had greater resources than other schools, namely the schools in more affluent neighborhoods. That was in part due to the ability of the families to kick in some funding and raise money for the schools.
From the outside looking in, the disparities are staggering.
The dissolution of IPS may not be the right choice, but we cannot ignore the decades of choices that brought the district to this point.
Contact Editor-in-Chief Camike Jones at camikej@indyrecorder.com or 317-762-7850.
