Marion County Public Health Department Director Virginia Caine said she is “very optimistic” that schools will be able to reopen, and she aims to have a definitive answer by July 15.
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With the next school year rapidly approaching, the state’s largest district is planning for the challenges it must tackle for staff and students to return safely for in-person instruction.
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Indianapolis Public Schools said schools remained open, but students who are unable to get to them because of no buses would not be marked absent.
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Nearly eight years after Indiana seized three struggling campuses from Indianapolis Public Schools, the State Board of Education voted Wednesday to hand the schools back, bringing to a close a turnaround experiment that sparked enduring change in the state’s largest district.
Read MoreTwo Indianapolis school leaders warned Thursday that the costs to reopen schools in the fall will likely exceed what their districts received in federal aid to pay for additional safety precautions against the coronavirus.
Rhondalyn Cornett, 55, was also ordered to pay more than $154,000 in restitution to the Indianapolis Education Association and will serve two years of probation.
Throughout Indianapolis, where the school system allows parents to choose where their children attend, enrollment for the next academic year is in upheaval as families and schools grapple with urgent crises.
The owner of WISH-TV Channel 8 and WNDY-TV Channel 23 on Monday announced an agreement with Indianapolis Public Schools to produce and broadcast academic lessons to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Mayor Joe Hogsett said that left unchecked, the coronavirus “has the potential to wreak untold damage on our families and the very social safety net that protects our most vulnerable residents.”
Following a successful school-funding referendum in 2018, IPS has doled out millions of dollars in raises to most staff. That boost in pay has been a boon for district teachers, but it has left the city’s charter schools at a disadvantage.
The State Board of Education’s decision to end the takeover confirmed the waning enthusiasm in Indiana for state oversight of failing schools. But it also revealed how much Indianapolis Public Schools has transformed in recent years.
The graduation rate at Emmerich Manual High School plummeted to 57% last year after a state audit found the school did not have the proper documentation for many of the students designated as leaving to be home-schooled.
A month after its bid for charters was rejected by a state authorizer, a not-for-profit with ties to Charter Schools USA appears to be looking for another backer—raising concerns that Indiana law makes it too easy to shop around for a friendly overseer.
Aleesia Johnson, a longtime ally of charter schools, was named superintendent of the state’s largest school district—Indianapolis Public Schools—in June, after filling the job on an interim basis for several months.
Five years into Indianapolis Public Schools’ unconventional partnerships with charter operators, the district appears likely to renew its first contracts amid some positive initial results.
Christel House Academy, a politically influential charter network, wants to relocate its south-side school to Manual High School if oversight of that campus is returned to Indianapolis Public Schools.
The Indianapolis Public Schools board decision comes just weeks before the Indiana Charter Schools Board is set to decide whether to grant charters to CSUSA to continue running Donnan and two other Indianapolis campuses—Howe and Manual high schools—that were also taken over by the state.
A 2018 voter-backed referendum funded the latest round of pay increases. Some teachers will see their salaries go up by as much as $9,400 this year, a significant increase designed to account for years of recession-era pay freezes.
Potential partners include one of the city’s earliest charter networks, a campus with a mindfulness focus, and a school for teens who have struggled with drug and alcohol addiction.
Teachers across the district would see substantial pay increases under the proposal, with the district’s starting salary for teachers rising to $45,200 this school year, according to a union official.
The newly released data, which comes from annual state-mandated disclosures, is the first indication of how members have responded to the Indianapolis Education Association’s tumultuous year.
Hope Academy, which opened in 2006 inside the Fairbanks Addiction Treatment and Recovery Center in Lawrence Township, aims to move closer to downtown and develop stronger partnerships with Marion County school districts.
When students are recorded as leaving for home schools in Indiana, they’re left out of a school’s graduation calculations, as though they never attended at all.
The district next month plans to issue a request for proposals for a comprehensive study of all 71 of its schools and other buildings.
