Nearly 14 years ago, an influential charter school incubator put a sweeping series of proposals for education reform into writing. Among their asks: a smaller central office with the mayor put in charge of Indianapolis Public Schools.
IPS’ system of public school management, they said, was too top heavy with not enough trust placed in school principals to pick their own teachers, staff and curriculum.
Instead, the group said, IPS should operate as a network of autonomous schools connected to one another only through a few shared services like school enrollment and accommodations for students with disabilities.
Its elected school board — which the report labeled “a recipe for continued catastrophe” — would be replaced by members handpicked by city officials.
About a decade and a half later, the report’s publisher — The Mind Trust — is perhaps closer than ever to seeing such a change take shape in IPS. It would, in theory, be the latest of a number of wins that can be found among proposals in the group’s 2011 Opportunity Schools report. Other wins include a centralized enrollment system, increased autonomy for school leaders and, most recently, more tax dollars directed to charter schools.
More of the report’s ideas still could be on the table as a new group of local appointees led by Mayor Joe Hogsett prepare recommendations that could reshape IPS.
Concepts like autonomous schools and appointed board positions have resurfaced in recent weeks among charter advocates seeking to advise the new working group, called the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance.
Upcoming meeting
Indianapolis Local Education Alliance meeting
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Advocates of traditional public school systems, on the other hand, have strongly opposed removing control from IPS’ elected school board members. They say taxpayers deserve a direct voice in how schools are run.
The already tense discourse is teeing up what promises to be a fast-moving, end-of-year stretch during which the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance is expected to draft its recommendations for changes among public charter and traditional public schools within IPS boundaries.
The group was charged by state lawmakers with making proposals by Dec. 31 for how the schools could better share transportation and facilities. Though not required, legislators also suggested the alliance could look at other things such as governance structures and “increased efficiency for the central office.”
The alliance’s work has the potential to bookend what’s become a years-long power struggle for control over the city’s schools — and with it control over who hires the IPS superintendent, sets curriculum and directs school funds. Multiple members have connections to The Mind Trust or the charter sector and have voiced an interest in seeing structural change within IPS.
The leader of The Mind Trust, however, says this team is far from taking its own public stance on IPS governance in the interest of “letting the process play out.” And, despite its CEO’s repeated calls for “a bold restructuring of IPS,” local politics could be changing the influential group’s thinking around the mayor’s role in education.
“For years and years, it would have been inconceivable for Indianapolis to elect a mayor that would not be supportive of the continued growth of high quality charter schools,” The Mind Trust’s CEO Brandon Brown told Mirror Indy in a recent interview. “The political moment we’re in, both locally and nationally, makes that an open question.”
What’s in the Opportunity Schools report?
The Mind Trust’s 2011 Opportunity Schools report laid out a detailed, 160-page framework for reenvisioning Indianapolis education.
It pointed to low academic performance in some IPS buildings and blamed a top-down structure with central office administrators prescribing curriculum and hiring decisions for schools across the district.
Under The Mind Trust’s vision, every school in IPS would, with time, transform into something called an “Opportunity School” where new school leadership would be brought in to turn around struggling schools.
Each school, or a small cluster of schools, would be governed by its own nonprofit board — similar to how charter schools operate.
Teachers’ bargaining rights would be limited and educators would be recruited nationally to backfill turnover caused by the new plan. Any schools still failing to meet standards would close, clearing the way for new school models to take their
The central office would also shrink dramatically under the plan. IPS administrators would only oversee a limited scope of services such as accommodations for students with disabilities, school enrollment and academic monitoring. All told, the 2011 plan would have redirected an estimated $188 million from district administration to individual schools, or $271 million when adjusted for inflation.
The mayor would also take on new authority. Under the proposal, IPS’ seven-member elected board would shift to five appointed seats — three appointed by the mayor and one appointed by each major party’s caucus on the City-County Council.
“When the mayor is in charge, the public knows precisely whom to hold accountable for success or failure,” the report reads. “And voters can exercise that accountability directly in the next mayoral election, replacing a lackluster performer with a new mayor.”
Some Opportunity Schools ideas already adopted
The report had influential backers. IndyStar reported in 2011 that the Indiana Department of Education, led by then-state Superintendent Tony Bennett, invested $500,000 to support the 18-month study.
And, former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson sat on The Mind Trust’s board at the time of the report’s publication. (Peterson now serves on the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance.)
However, as now-Mind Trust CEO Brandon Brown mentioned in a recent podcast appearance, many of the report’s ideas were seen as too drastic at the time.
“In 2011, that thing was political suicide,” Brown said on a recent CharterFolk Chat appearance. “They literally had to lock the doors of The Mind Trust and leave for a couple days when they released it because people hated it so much, right? And, again, even in reform circles, ‘Oh, that’s cute. Another idea by The Mind Trust. That’s not gonna happen.’”
But, with time, The Mind Trust secured small wins.
In 2014, Indiana legislators passed the state’s first law allowing for innovation schools — a type of blended education model that allows a nonprofit to run a school while still receiving some IPS services.
About two years later, the IPS school board agreed to join Enroll Indy, a centralized enrollment platform that allows families to apply to dozens of IPS schools and nearby charter schools in one online form.
And, this year brought the charter sector’s biggest win to date — a successful push for increased property tax sharing, a change that’s expected to direct millions of dollars away from IPS to nearby charter schools.
Brown shed light on this strategy during his recent podcast appearance.
“You expand what can be mainstream, what can be possible, and you do it over time,” he said. “You just chunk it out, right? And, you get to a point where 20-25 years later — it might seem like a full generation — but you’ve collectively and methodically transformed a system.”
During the conversation, The Mind Trust leader also hinted at an unfulfilled proposal of the Opportunity Schools plan.
“It called for the mayor to be in charge of IPS,” Brown said, “which is now on the table as the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance manages through its work.”
Should the Indianapolis mayor run IPS?
There’s no school districts in Indiana controlled by a mayor. Large cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., have different levels of mayoral involvement.
In New York City, the mayor selects the public school system’s top administrator and appoints most members to the city’s education policy panel. In Washington — where former IPS Superintendent Lewis Ferebee now leads — the schools chancellor is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the district’s version of a city council.
But, some cities are moving away from mayoral control. New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani made waves this summer when he advocated for an end to mayoral control. And Chicago held its first school board election in nearly 30 years last November as the city phases control away from its mayor.
So should the city of Indianapolis consider increasing its influence over education?
The Mind Trust’s Brown told Mirror Indy in a recent interview that his organization hasn’t taken a public stance yet on what the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance should recommend about IPS governance.
The charter reform group did, however, lead with the topic in an ongoing series of online explainers about issues the alliance is likely to discuss in the coming months.
The Mind Trust’s governance post lays out three possibilities for IPS — one, the district maintains status quo with an elected school board; two, it adapts to a hybrid board with elected seats and mayoral appointments; or three, the mayor appoints all board members.
While the Opportunity Schools report of 2011 clearly points to the latter option, Brown — who joined The Mind Trust in 2015 and became its CEO in 2018 — says the group’s thinking has recently become more nuanced.
That’s thanks in part to legislation introduced last session at the Statehouse — and the evolving state of Indy politics. An amendment, tacked onto a school funding bill, would have converted any charter school enrolling fewer than 500 students into a traditional public district school. The legislation, which failed, would have applied to most charter schools and was mainly put forward in protest of other bills that sought to disband IPS or to redirect its property tax dollars to charter schools.
Senate Democrats voted in favor of the amendment. That included Sen. Andrea Hunley, a former IPS principal whose name has been floated as a possible mayoral candidate in 2027.
The vote seems to have changed the thinking of The Mind Trust, which has historically found support within the city administration.
“I, for one, will never support shifting the governance of a system to give a mayor who voted to close 70% of charter schools in our state all of the power,” Brown said.
Other education advocates weigh in
Regardless of where The Mind Trust stands, several advocacy groups have called for changes to school board structures. These groups historically have been friendlier to charter schools but bring a mix of ideas for what reform should look like.
RISE INDY has called for an elected school board with some appointed seats. Stand for Children has advocated for an elected board with some appointments made by the Mayor’s Office of Education Innovation, which authorizes dozens of charter schools across Indianapolis.
And, the Indiana Charter Innovation Center has called for an all-charter system with each school run by nonprofit organizations with their own boards.
Meanwhile, other groups like the IPS Parent Council, the Indianapolis Education Association, which represents IPS teachers, and Central Indiana DSA have made clear that they’d like to see the elected IPS board keep its full authority.
In recent comments to the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, members of Central Indiana DSA’s Fully Funded Fully Public campaign pointed to reporting that has raised questions of ethics within the Hogsett administration, and asked whether the mayor could be trusted to make decisions about Indianapolis’ children.
The IPS board also put out a lengthy statement supporting an elected body. During public conversations about the matter, only one trustee — Deandra Thompson — voiced an interest in board appointments. And, even then, her comments spoke to the merit of a partially appointed board.
“There is some value to establishing positional appointments to our board, such as an attorney, a finance professional, and other key roles,” Thompson said during a September school board meeting. “These positions provide critical expertise to guide our work with credibility and sound judgment, but I don’t believe they are meant to serve as part of the elected whole or replace anyone that has been elected.”
Indianapolis Local Education Alliance members, who have been meeting since June, are expected to meet in committees soon to discuss facilities and transportation planning. Those meetings are not expected to be open to the public.
The alliance’s next public meeting is at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, in the public assembly room on the second floor of the City-County Building, 200 E. Washington St.
The public agenda for the meeting doesn’t say much about what members will discuss. It simply states there will be presentations from different school systems.
You can visit the city’s website to learn more about the alliance’s work and sign up for public comment at the next meeting.