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This story was originally published by Chalkbeat Indiana.
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 took over the former Riverside High School to become Herron-Riverside High School in 2017, and Herron Prep opened with grades K-2 in 2021.
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 three 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.
Chalkbeat Indiana is a not-for-profit news site covering educational change in public schools.
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Purchased from the Children’s Museum, but originally built by IBM for their local offices.
They sold it to the Salvation Army, who in turn sold it to the CM after using it a number of years.
The property’s ownership was transferred in November 2022 for $800,000 according to public tax records.
Herron High School Inc aka Indiana Classical Schools started and ran Riverside HS from the start, after it purchased and renovated the old Naval Armory with extensive federal, local and private funding. The change to Herron Riverside HS is just a name change/rebranding after enrollment consistently fell short of projections in the charter application.