In Brief:
- The new law creates a more coordinated system across charter schools and Indianapolis Public Schools. It could eventually serve as a model for other cities.
- Advocates for Indianapolis Public Schools see the law as part of a larger push to favor charter schools.
- Charter and school choice advocates say the plan creates better organization across the school landscape and corrects a funding disparity between charter and public schools.
Indianapolis is revamping its education system, significantly changing the relationship between charter and public schools. Depending on how the changes play out, observers think this could become a model for other cities.
This month, the governor signed a law reducing the powers of the Indianapolis district school board and granting several of its responsibilities to a brand-new mayor-appointed body, the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation. This new organization will be charged with building and transportation management for both charter and traditional public schools. It will also be charged with creating a single set of evaluation criteria for both types of schools.
The law will also grant charter schools a cut of property tax dollars, a funding stream normally reserved for traditional public schools.
Charter schools are a major presence in the city, and supporters say the law will bring much-needed coordination across the two kinds of schools while giving charters an important financial boost.
“What it will do is really put charter schools within the Indianapolis Public Schools district on equal financial footing with the district, because charter schools will, for the first time, have full access to local property taxes for facilities and transportation,” says Scott Bess, president and CEO of pro-charter policy and advocacy organization the Indiana Charter Innovation Center. “This gives [charter] schools a chance to increase their programming, to serve more students, to have another building.”
Detractors say the law dangerously diminishes local control over education by reducing the power of the traditional public school system’s elected school board. Some traditional public school advocates suspect the law was designed to favor charter schools at the expense of the traditional school system.
“This has been a slow slide — a very obvious, well-funded, organized effort — to fully give charter schools control over public schools,” says Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, president of advocacy group Indiana Coalition for Public Education. The law itself is based on recommendations of a mayor-appointed group, which was “stacked with the very powerful charter school lobby,” she says. The Indiana Coalition for Public Education also argues that the law adds unnecessary bureaucracy and cost by creating a new governing and administrative body and giving it a share of property tax collections, too.
But Robin Lake — director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research and policy analysis organization that supports school choice — says school boards will be freed up to focus on academic outcomes rather than on tasks like facility and transportation management, which historically have been “time-consuming and difficult for elected boards to manage.”
The money will come with some conditions for charters. It has traditionally been optional for Indianapolis charter schools to provide students with transportation, but to get property tax dollars under the new law, they will have to opt in to being part of a forthcoming transportation plan from the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation. They’ll also have to agree to let it control their buildings.
The new law comes as both types of schools face financial challenges. Indianapolis Public Schools is dealing with a major budget deficit, and charters say they need more money to expand. Charters are a significant presence in the city, attended by about 40 percent of students in the Indianapolis Public Schools district area. While they get other public funds, charter advocates say getting property tax dollars would make a big difference.
All sides seem to agree that what happens in Indianapolis could set a precedent for the state or elsewhere.
Lake says the overhaul makes Indianapolis the first city to bring the district school system and charter schools together into one coordinated citywide system. (While New Orleans also technically has a coordinated system, it has almost no traditional public schools — as of 2025, all but one school were charters.)
The law “is a big deal,” Lake says. “If it plays out well, it could be a model for other cities that are high-choice like Washington, D.C.” or other jurisdictions where about half of students go to charter schools.
Fuentes-Rohwer sees bigger implications, too: “The biggest impact is the precedent it sets for all other school districts that the state decides are not worthy of their democratic process and wants to take over.”
The law implements many of the ideas of the Local Education Alliance, a mayor-appointed body charged with creating recommendations for a more collaborative and unified plan for the local school system. In December 2025, the alliance published a final set of recommendations, which only one member voted against. (The only detractor, a public school teacher, was not available for comment.)
The law leaves the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation to fill in details of everything from a facilities management plan to a unified school accountability framework. The mayor will appoint the board members by March 31, 2026.
