Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThis story was originally published by Chalkbeat Indiana.
This school year, Ace Prep Academy Principal Amanda Liles started getting in her car and driving to pick up her students herself.
The K-5 school of 110 students on the city’s northeast side can’t afford transportation through large bus companies. For the most part, families have to get their children there on their own—which means even one car issue can lead a student to miss a lot of school or withdraw from Ace Prep.
At Hope Academy, the state’s only high school for students with substance-use struggles, grant funding paid for a minibus to help pick up more students around and outside Marion County.
And at Irvington Community Schools, which does not offer universal transportation, officials have used pandemic relief funding to pay for a car service to bring students to school whose families have trouble getting them there on their own. That ends this school year, however, because those funds will soon expire.
This is the state of charter school transportation in Indianapolis, home to over 70 charters that range in size from fewer than 50 to over 1,000 students. And while they are public schools, many struggle to afford transportation for families who want to attend. In some cases, that makes charters an option only for those families who can afford to drive or live close enough to walk to school.
Unlike other states, Indiana does not offer schools any funds or incentives specifically for providing transportation. Both traditional school districts and charters must pay for transportation needs out of their operating budgets, according to the Indiana Department of Education.
But while districts often have larger buying power and can take advantage of economies of scale, charter leaders say the small size of their schools and budgets restrict transportation options in a city with a limited number of bus companies. Providing the service themselves can be costly and time-consuming.
And charters get inadequate transportation funding from the state and from local property taxes, leaders say, which makes scrounging for funding even harder.
The issue, parents and school leaders say, is one of equity.
“Maybe it’s difficult for you to be here or there at a certain time,” Liles said of families’ ability to drop off their children. “That shouldn’t determine your child’s access to a high-quality education.”
Now, the charter-friendly Better Together campaign is calling on Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner to designate Indianapolis as a pilot site for school transportation solutions. A state law passed earlier this year directs the state to present a pilot program to the state legislature with “innovative approaches” for student transportation at both public and nonpublic schools.
The law does not mandate preferences to charter, traditional public, or private schools when it comes to the pilot.
“We have an opportunity to rethink school transportation in a way that increases access to life-changing schools,” Kim Graham of EmpowerED Families, a pro-charter group that is part of the Better Together campaign, said in a statement. “Indianapolis should be strongly considered for the state’s transportation pilot, given the complexity of its school landscape and students’ diverse transportation needs.”
Asked about the status of the pilot, a spokesperson for the state education department said it’s working on a plan to submit to lawmakers.
Indianapolis charters offer patchwork of transportation services
Cristal Salgado spends about $35 to $45 on one tank of gas for her car. A significant chunk of that is used to drive her son from Wayne Township to and from the Paramount Englewood charter school on the east side every day.
Then, she rushes back home to get her daughter to her school bus stop on time. Sometimes she misses the bus if there is bad weather or traffic.
The cost of the whole morning routine is too much for the single mother, who plans to place her son back in Wayne Township schools once he graduates from eighth grade this year. That’s a tough decision. Her son, who is interested in engineering, would rather stay in the same building and attend Purdue Polytechnic High School.
“I wasn’t able to finish college—so for him talking about being an engineer, that’s not a dream that I want to shut down for him,” she said. “But I have to make sure I’m making needs meet in my house as well.”
Charter school leaders say the lack of transportation affects their enrollment and ability to serve the most underprivileged students. Cost is the most pressing challenge that many would like state leaders to consider.
A state law passed in 2021 expanded the type of vehicles schools can use to transport students to and from schools, giving charters the option of transporting students in vans carrying up to 15 people.
That hasn’t entirely solved the problem.
In the meantime, the city’s charter schools offer a patchwork of limited transportation solutions that some are still trying to refine.
At Invent Learning Hub, the school spends roughly $64,000 for each of the two yellow buses it contracts through Miller Transportation. But if families can’t make it to certain bus stops, they sometimes withdraw, said Aleicha Ostler, the school’s executive director.
PilotED Bethel Park Elementary has struggled to fill its two bus driver positions for its in-house transportation needs.
“As we’ve scaled, we found out it’s actually become less and less cost-effective for us to do it ourselves,” said Principal Jennica Anderson. “This upcoming year, we’re looking to work with a new transportation company in the area.”
The school also uses HopSkipDrive, a car service, to transport one student experiencing homelessness. But like Irvington Community Schools, which estimated a cost of about $50 each way based on mileage for their students, Anderson said she has found the service to be costly.
Some charters will soon get additional revenue from rising property valuations that could help them pay for more transportation. But it’s unlikely to be a cure-all.
“That barely cracks the egg,” said Häns Lassiter, CEO of Irvington Community Schools, referring to the new revenue. “If we were able to have our fair share in property tax revenue sharing, we could possibly have a reasonable facsimile of a transportation department.”
In Missouri, Believe Schools’ second high school will benefit from a maximum 75% reimbursement rate from the state for transportation costs. But the network’s Indianapolis charter high school won’t because there are no such dollars, said founder Kimberly Neal-Brannum.
“It’s super expensive, and other states have programs where they reimburse up to a certain percentage for transportation to make sure the schools can offer it,” she said. “The state of Indiana needs to do something similar.”
Rep. Bob Behning, the Indianapolis Republican who authored the bill that directs the state to propose a pilot transportation program to the legislature, hopes the pilot will address transportation options for all of Marion County schools, not just charters.
“It appears to me that we have a very inefficient system,” he said. “If you were creating a system from scratch, would you create 10 separate transportation systems or would you create a single or maybe regional-based [one]?”
Charter school transportation solutions may require collaboration
Finding a centralized solution for charter school transportation may prove tricky in a hyper-competitive city with lots of school choice.
Some school leaders worry about sharing a bus route with another school for liability reasons. And coordinating pick-up and drop-off times with dozens of other schools in an efficient way—amidst an ongoing national bus driver shortage—could prove challenging.
But collaboration between schools is necessary, said Carl Allen, CEO of 4Mativ Technologies, a Minnesota-based company that manages school transportation for charters across the country, including four Indianapolis charter schools.
“I think some of them have fallen into the trap of overpromising and then being forced to underdeliver, offering a service they won’t be able to sustain without collaboration,” he said. “There’s other things that they can do, but collaboration is one thing that is necessary. They need economies of scale, like a district.”
4Mativ helps schools manage their transportation vendors. In Minnesota, the company manages contracts for dozens of schools in a way that provides them stronger purchasing power with bigger economies of scale.
The challenge for Indianapolis, he said, hinges on finances and the local transportation market.
“Historically, there’s not been a lot of outsourcing and demand,” he said. “It comes back in some respect, in a big respect, for how it’s funded for schools and the resources.”
Chalkbeat Indiana is a not-for-profit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
I’ve been saying for a long time now, BUT SIMPLY BUILD EXTRA SPACE AT TRADITIONAL SCHOOLS FOR CHARTERS TO USE.
The bottom line some folks seem to be missing won’t change: all Indiana public schools must accept all students who arrive at their front door–24/7/365. No charter or voucher school has that mandate.
And the attendant facts are: a public school district must plan, construct, maintain, staff and plan for any future eventuality. Those enrollment numbers change daily in most public school districts.
It’s doubly infuriating to public school advocates, that much of the voucher money is promoted to help “those poor under-advantaged students whose needs aren’t being met by public schools…” A charter school in north-central Marion County was just approved with that exact loud (and eventually effective) claim, which is not true.
And the reality noted in this excellent IBJ story is—much of the voucher money is being used by families who don’t need the voucher.
For what it’s worth, whenever your family’s needs aren’t being met by a public school, you can choose another public school where the needs are met. Or, you can dig in and demand the needs be met. That’s not an easy path. It should be much easier.
But it is preferable in the long run, to this drip-drip-drip draining of our public education coffers, by vouchers and charters.
Children belong to their parents, and parents will decide where and who will educate them. (Not indoctrinate them). Liberals / progressives / unions have ruined most public schools. No one who loves their children would risk their futures in the morally bankrupt environment of most public schools.
Brain rot.
OK… We have a huge surge in voucher usage by upper income parents that could already afford to send kids to private schools, and now they want publically funded transit as well?
Didn’t we got sold on the idea that everyone would get school choice? Marion county already had plenty of options and now we have 70 more charters operating in Marion county alone? People in rural areas should be screaming bloody murder. They get none of these options and their state tax dollars are going to private operators in an already crowded market.
They aren’t screaming because they’re happy with their schools.
“Overall, 88 percent of parents who responded to the survey said they were satisfied with the quality of their child’s school. Satisfaction was especially high among parents whose children are in elementary school and parents in rural and small communities throughout the state — at 90 percent and 96 percent respectively.
Another key takeaway: only 2 percent of parents surveyed said they are both aware of and disagree with the subjects and topics taught in their school. Those who fall into this category were not statistically different from the rest of the parents surveyed regarding race, income, population density, education or internet access, according to a report released by the IDOE. “
https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/most-indiana-parents-approve-of-their-schools-and-what-is-taught-gallup-finds
Charter schools are a solution for which public school choice solves the problem in the vast majority of cases. Vouchers exist primarily to divert money to religious schools who indoctrinate them with garbage textbooks, hurt the teachers unions, and reward the big money “school choice” donors who give to legislators.
If referendum dollars are mandated to be shared with charters, and tax dollars are shared for transportation, then let’s
get everyone on the same page. The story continues to be the same: public schools will have to accept everyone and charters
may “counsel students out” or have a policy such as “2 F’s and you’re gone.”
This isn’t so much about school transportation as it is Indiana’s, in particular, Indianapolis’ pathetic regression when it comes to transportation and infrastructure. The city has rail overpasses that vehicles pass under daily that barely clear 10’. They haven’t been maintained since constructed 115 years ago. West Washington street (a U S highway) just claimed another pedestrian’s life because no one ever built a sidewalk in the first place! Yellow school buses for city high schools? Years ago we took designated city buses that ran dedicated routes. You got on..then dropped 15 cents in the little receptacle…or walked. My point, Indianapolis, with a far smaller population and far less local, state or federal revenue provided round the clock rail or bus, trolley transportation to every city block and 46 of the 92 counties. The state has just spent a BILLION $ to upgrade the South Shore rail line serving 1/4th of the population of Hamilton and Marion counties. This state legislature needs to make infrastructure and public transportation a MAJOR BUDGETARY PRIORITY for CENTRAL INDIANA! dedicate the time and money needed to bring us at least back to 1920, let alone the 21st century. They can begin with mass transit serving the donut counties of Indianapolis. As it is, compared to the rest of the country it’s an embarrassing joke. 🤡.