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This story was originally published by Chalkbeat Indiana.
The Indianapolis Public Schools board violated the state’s public meetings law when it approved a lawsuit against the state last week, a charter group has alleged.
The complaint the Indiana Charter School Network filed with the state Public Access Counselor centers on the school board’s lawsuit that claims an exemption for IPS from a state law that requires districts to sell or lease closed school buildings to charter schools for $1. The so-called $1 law is an ongoing and significant source of tension between IPS and charter supporters as district enrollment has dropped and charter enrollment has grown.
The state’s “Open Door” law allows school boards and other governing bodies to meet in executive or closed-door sessions for specific purposes, such as collective bargaining and litigation. But the law also requires any final action to be taken at a public meeting.
“The IPS board never approved the filing of the lawsuit in a properly noticed public meeting as required by the Open Door Law,” an attorney for the Indiana Charter School Network said in the group’s complaint, which it filed Monday. “This approval of the lawsuit behind closed doors without any discussion in public violates the plain language of the Open Door Law’s provision that official action must only be taken in an open meeting.”
State law also requires governing bodies to give public notice of closed-door sessions that state the specific allowable reasons for which they are meeting in executive sessions. But the charter group’s complaint says two executive sessions held in July also do not indicate that the school board was discussing possible litigation.
IPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a Monday statement, the charter network’s executive director, Marcie Brown-Carter, said the IPS board’s lack of transparency, along with what she called the district’s violation of the $1 law, “are unacceptable and do nothing to support the public-school students of Indianapolis or promote a spirit of collaboration.”
The complaint is at least the second time the charter network has taken formal issue with the district over the state’s so-called $1 law. Last year, the group filed a complaint with the Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office, alleging that the district did not comply with the $1 law. Rokita’s office later concluded IPS did not violate the law.
Lawmakers revised the $1 law earlier this year in ways that make it easier for certain charters to lease or acquire district’s closed buildings. Yet the latest version of the statute includes an exemption for districts that share revenue from voter-approved property tax increases for operating or safety costs with “applicable charter schools.”
IPS argued in its lawsuit against the Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, Rokita’s office, and members of the Indiana State Board of Education last week that it is exempt from the $1 law, since it shared funds from its 2018 property tax increase with charters in its Innovation Network of autonomous schools.
The state education department, however, told IPS in a memo earlier this month that it is subject to the $1 law.
Chalkbeat Indiana is a not-for-profit news site covering educational change in public schools.
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These charters are an absolute cancer, leeching public funds and abusing children statewide. They exist to enrich lawyers and crooks. None of them are real respectable schools.
Agree. A dirty secret lawmakers didn’t want you to know is that universal vouchers actually cause existing private schools to raise rates.
20% of charter students leave private schools every year. 20% of newly formed charters close within in 4 years. That leaves almost 0% chance a student starting freshman year at a charter will graduate from that school.
Charters are not required to administer iStep tests, so there is no judging academic standards. There are no academic standards enforced either. Studies show widespread adoption of charters actually lowers state wide academic outcomes.
Voucher programs funnel my tax dollars to religious institutions.
Charter schools are an absolute cancer.
Check out Circle City Prep on the far east side. They had the highest improvement on the IRead test in the state and were featured in the news last week.
That’s great! It’s one school.
What learnings are other charter schools taking from that school?
As taxpayers, why aren’t we insisting that other failing charters (and boy are there a lot) copy what they do or close?
All of the parents that are voting for “school choice” in Green or Orange county are just getting duped because no charter school in its right mind will open up in rural location like that. What they don’t realize is that the state education dollars that should have gone to the local public schools are now going to for profit organizations that lobbied legislators in all of the big cites. So the only “choice” they voted for was to funnel off school funding to line somebodies pocket far away.
It’s really ‘rich’ for charter schools to complain about non-compliance with open meetings laws since charter schools don’t comply with open meetings laws. Taxpayers don’t even have a chance to vote on charter school board members. In most cases, taxpayers don’t know who charter board members are, when they meet, and don’t have a chance to see proposed or adopted charter school budgets or to comment on them even though charters are tax funded.
While refusing this accountability to taxpayers, charters still want the right to purchase vacant public schools for $1 AND to share in property tax referenda funds. Public schools would be less likely to seek additional funds from property tax referenda if charter schools had paid public schools (and taxpayers) the full market price of vacant buildings for which taxpayers have paid.
Charters are another word for chutzpah.
All of the above is true. Yet this State still keeps re-electing the super stupid super majority that does not want any input from anyone other than the lobbyists that fund their campaigns then employ them when they leave elected office .
It would be helpful to clarify in this and future articles that there is no entity called Indiana Charter School Network, even though the complaint to the PAC is in that name. This is actually the Institute for Quality Education, which is both Indiana’s largest SGO which receives and distributes corporate and individual contributions to Indiana private K-12 schools, for which the donor gets both a federal tax deduction and an Indiana state tax credit of 50% of the amount donated regardless of amount.
Indiana Charter School Network is what the Institute for Quality Education calls their activities helping charter schools to coordinate their lobbying and other efforts.
This is a link to the last Form 990 annual report filed by Institute for Quality Education with the IRS a few months ago, which shows finances, Board members, salaries, and exact dollar amounted routed to private schools. It notes briefly on p. 3 its activities “leading and convening” the Indiana Charter School Network. https://irs-efile-renderer.instrumentl.com/render?object_id=202321169349300607
See also summarized information from each year’s 990 for the past decade+ here. https://www.instrumentl.com/990-report/institute-for-quality-education-inc
The Institute for Quality Education does not follow Indiana Open Meetings Laws, and its board meetings, minutes and actions taken are not known to the public, despite being allowed by state law to keep 10% of all SGO contributions it receives, which it can use to run its programs and do extensive marketing for charter and private schools.