With little opposition, the Indianapolis Public Schools board on a 6-1 vote approved cutting school bus service for about 600 high schoolers.
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IPS is not alone in the struggle to hire and retain staff of color. School districts in Indianapolis, throughout the state, and nationwide also have labored over trying to recruit teachers and other staff of color.
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If the Indianapolis Public Schools board approves the most drastic cuts, about 5,600 high school students and 4,000 elementary school students could lose district-provided transportation.
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IBJ reporter Samm Quinn talked with Superintendent Aleesia Johnson about how returning has gone so far and other impacts COVID-19 has had on the state’s largest public school system.
Read MoreWhile significant, the cut to transportation is less than half what the district was sketching out in January, as it sought to lower operating costs amid steadily shrinking enrollment and a severe budget crunch.
To better prepare graduates for college and well-paying jobs, IPS plans to revamp its high school career and college curriculum and drop programs that don’t lead directly to jobs.
Schools still must be able to maintain 3 feet of social distancing, require masks, and ensure a strong contact tracing protocol, Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said.
More families are rethinking at-home learning because it isn’t going well for their children or they’re worried about negative long-term learning effects.
Indianapolis Public Schools swore in two new board members and two incumbents Monday night. All four have the backing of pro-school choice political action committees.
Without data to paint a picture of academic success or failure, Indianapolis Public Schools will likely delay for a year renewing the contracts of four privately run schools under its supervision.
The board faces a host of challenges, including how to cut the district’s spending, how to fulfill its commitment to racial equity, and how to stem the learning loss wrought by school closures during the pandemic.
The vigorous campaign pitted well-financed supporters of the current IPS administration against opponents who are critical of the district’s collaboration with charter schools.
Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Aleesia Johnson on Wednesday pushed new initiatives to promote equity and called out Indiana decision-makers for asking district officials to accept scarcity and to “do more with less.”
With four seats on the seven-member board up for election, the outcome could easily shift the balance of power in the district.
A candidate for the Indianapolis Public Schools board resigned from his position as president of the Indiana Young Democrats this spring amid a controversy over his unauthorized withdrawal of $3,800 from the group’s account.
Deep-pocketed political action committees have thrown their support into four races for Indianapolis Public Schools board seats, helping candidates who back partnerships with charter schools to far outraise their competitors.
The additional funding—$24,000 from the city and $64,000 from the Mind Trust—will keep three of the 14 community learning sites open through the fall semester.
Indianapolis Public Schools’ younger students headed back to classrooms Monday to resume in-person learning for the first time since March.
Four seats on the seven-member board are up for election Nov. 3. Advocacy groups have drawn the usual battle lines between candidates who back innovation schools and those who are skeptical of the strategy.
The plan is based on improved coronavirus data in Marion County. The city’s average positivity rate—the percentage of people who test positive for the coronavirus—has hovered near 5% for several weeks, according to state data.
Districts where the vast majority of students are white are more than three times as likely as school districts that enroll mostly students of color to be open for some in-person learning, according to an analysis conducted by The Associated Press and Chalkbeat.
In 1983, a chess team from IPS School No. 27 took on an elite private school from Manhattan in the National Elementary School Chess Championship—and won.
IPS struggled with the shift to remote instruction in March, but officials said they were taking steps to mitigate problems this time around.
Marion County Public Health Department Director Virginia Caine also recommended that high-risk teachers and students be allowed to opt out of in-person instruction.
