SBOE Approves IPS Transition Plan For Arlington And Emma Donnan

The State Board of Education approved a transition plan for two failing schools in Indianapolis Public Schools. photo credit: Indianapolis Public Schools

The State Board of Education today approved a transition plan for Arlington High School to return to Indianapolis Public Schools and for the district to partner with a charter school company to run a new K-6 program.

The Northeastside high school remains in state takeover due to years of chronic failure, but today the state board approved a plan for IPS to run the school starting this summer. Tindely Accelerated Schools has operated the 7-12 school since 2012 but announced last July it could not continue financially.

IPS Superintendent Lewis Ferebee had sought to fully recover the school from the state, but the board has remained unmoved to release its control.

Board member Tony Walker raised concern that IPS would not have a contract with the board, like other companies who oversee failing schools in state intervention. But board members pushed forward saying they trusted Ferebee.

Ferebee issued academic goals for Arlington to reach after the first year, including: improving graduation rates by six and half percentage points to 60 percent and increasing ISTEP+ scores in math by more than five percentage points and English scores by more than four percentage points.

Mass Insight, a Boston-based education consultant, will partner with the district to manage Arlington. The board had requested the district have a so-called “lead partner” in running the school. Mass Insight just began working with IPS at two other troubled high schools.

The state board also approved extending Charter Schools USA’s contract to run the 7-8 Emma Donnan Middle School from two years to five years and gave preapproval for the company to manage a K-6 school in the same building.

The IPS School Board has yet to approve if Charter Schools USA can partner with the district to manage the program.

Charter Schools USA has operated Donnan since 2012 when it was taken over by the state board for academic failure, like Arlington and two other IPS schools.

Ferebee wants to use Public Law 1321 for the charter company to run the new K-6 program inside Emma Donnan. This allows the district to create autonomous schools, not bound by collective bargaining, at struggling or underused buildings. The law also makes it easier for IPS to share resources, such as transportation and food services, with outside management companies.

Of the five schools under state board control, only one has shifted from a F to D on the state’s A-F accountability system.