Indianapolis private school plans to increase enrollment by 400-plus

An Indianapolis private school dedicated to promoting racial and economic integration is planning to grow by 50 percent in the coming years.

The growth, which school officials say was made possible by larger-than-expected donations, will set the Oaks Academy up to potentially bring in even more in voucher funding from the state.

The Oaks is a private Christian school with three campuses in the city’s urban core. Leaders plan to expand the school to educate 1,224 students, up from its current enrollment of 815, according to a release.

The school consistently earns top marks from the state because of students’ test scores and, unusually, has a racially and economically diverse student body. Chalkbeat visited the Oaks in 2015 as part of a series that documented how widely segregated Indianapolis schools remain decades after students began being bused to township schools.

The Oaks, founded in 1998, was designed to draw middle-class families with options back to the city.

The school’s three campuses are set in low-income, heavily black, urban neighborhoods. But the aim of the school has always been to serve not only the children of those neighborhoods but also families that had migrated to the suburbs, said Andrew Hart, CEO of The Oaks schools.

“The origin of the idea of The Oaks was, ‘Let’s start a school that provides an education of such quality that families will pull their kids up from the finest, most elite private or suburban schools,’ ” said Hart, who started volunteering at the school in its early years. “But also let’s actively serve and reach out to neighborhood children.”

Because the Oaks enrolls a high number of low-income students, it is also one of the largest beneficiaries of Indiana’s voucher program, which gives state money to eligible low-income and middle-class families to pay tuition at private schools.

The school decided to expand after exceeding its fundraising goal of $4 million by $1.5 million, Hart said in a written statement last week.

“Originally our plan was to grow to 870, but we were overwhelmed with the support of the community and interest from families,” Hart said. “We are now seeking an additional $2 million in donations to fund infrastructure, hire new teachers and make modest facility improvements to accommodate 1,224 students total over the next several years.”

The Oaks has also won praise from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who mentioned the school in March when asked whether school choice policies should be structured to promote integration.

“I clearly think that having diversity, racial and socioeconomic measure of diversity, is a real benefit in schools,” DeVos said. “I think about a school I visited in Indianapolis, The Oaks school. The mission is to really have a wide range of diversity school economically, racially. And it’s a successful school model.”

Chalkbeat Indiana is a not-for-profit news site covering educational change in public schools.