Good evening.

We are here for the education committee meeting.

It is Tuesday, September 16th, 2025.

It's 5 32, and we are in the public assembly room, and we'll start with introductions of my colleagues to the in the front.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Josh Bain, District 21.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Derek Cahill, District 23.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Good evening, everyone.

Keith Grays, District 9 on the Indian Epic side.

Thank you, Madam Chair, John Barth, representing Council of District 7.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dan Boots, District 3, Washington Lawrence Townships.

Thank you.

I am Jessica McCormick, District 1616, serving as vice chair this evening.

Tonight we have one item on the agenda.

We will have our budget hearing from the Office of Education and Innovation, and I will hand it over to our director, uh, Shana Cavasos.

Thank you.

Hi.

Oh, thank you, Holly.

Uh good evening, Chairwoman and Counselors.

Um, thank you so much for having us here tonight.

My name is Shana Cavasos, and I am the director of the Office of Education Innovation, and I am here to present our 2026 budget.

Um, as you know, our office is the charter school authorizer housed in the mayor's office.

That means that we hold one side of the charter contract with the school's board of directors, and we evaluate schools based on academics, finances, governance, and operations.

We also review proposals for new schools or replications, and those decisions though are made by the Indianapolis Charter School Board, which has three city council appointments and six mayoral appointments.

Renewal decisions are made by OEI.

Today we oversee 48 schools serving about 19,000 students across Indianapolis.

These include K-12 schools, alternative schools, and also adult high schools.

I want to take a moment to highlight my team because these are the people who make the work possible, and there are several of them who are here with us this evening.

You can enjoy this photo.

I this was from a PD that we did last week.

Thank you to the wonderful staff at Washington Park Family Center and especially Ebony.

It's a lovely facility.

If you haven't been, please go.

So our agency is fully staffed.

We have nine full-time employees.

That includes six analysts in academics, finance, and governance, one program director for Circle City Readers, our deputy director who's sitting next to me tonight, Holly Morgan, and myself.

I've been in this role, as you know, about a year, and I've worked for OEI for nearly seven years.

Many members of our staff have also been with us for multiple years, which speaks to the strength and stability of our team.

Our team is diverse in background, race, and professional experience, with former teachers, department of education staff, military veterans, journalists, government professionals, and others.

This variety of experiences strengthens our office because it allows us to bring multiple perspectives to our work with schools and the community.

When I became director last year, we reorganized slightly to create opportunities for internal advancement and growth while remaining efficient with our funding.

We also benefit from the city's flexible remote work policy, which has helped us retain staff and balance collaboration with focused work.

We've improved our hiring and onboarding processes by standardizing interviews and creating a structured approach to leadership development and cross-functional learning.

I am incredibly proud of this team.

They are passionate, thoughtful, and committed, and I encourage you to connect with them whenever you can.

As you know, the bulk of our work is school oversight.

Um, and what you see here is an overview of our performance framework, which are the standards we hold schools to.

So each year, every school in our portfolio is evaluated under our performance framework, which includes four areas academics, finance, governance, and on-the-ground site visits, which where school contracts with an independent evaluator with OEI oversight.

The academic review looks at proficiency, growth, attendance, subgroup performance, and also gaps in subgroup performance, among other metrics.

Financial review assesses short-term and long-term financial health and stability, as well as financial management.

Those are based on yearly required State Board of Accounts independent audits for every charter school.

The governance review evaluates how boards lead, comply with public requirements, and communicate with school leadership.

Site visits, which occur throughout a school's charter term but do depend on the age of the school, add observations, desk audits, and focus groups with students, parents, and teachers.

Each school receives a public report every year in three of these areas with the site visit reports occurring at those years.

So years two, four, and six for a school in its first term, and years three and six for schools in subsequent terms.

Those reports are all posted on our website.

We believe very strongly in transparency and accountability.

I'm gonna outline just a few of our programmatic successes.

We haven't gone into as much detail about this in years past, and so I was excited that this was requested and to tell you more about the work we do as a team.

Over the past year, I am proud to say we remained fully staffed with no turnover.

We also introduced a new accountability indicator to measure progress of English learners.

We launched a public dashboard showing the impact of City Connects, the comprehensive student support program that we worked on with Marion University.

You heard from them earlier this year.

We created an updated interactive map of all Marion County public schools, which is a new resource that we're excited to provide every member of the public.

We also renewed the Charter Academy.

I'm sorry, we also renewed the charter for Daymar Charter Academy for 15 years.

Damar, if you're unfamiliar, is a school that serves some of our highest need students, specifically students with mild, moderate to severe developmental cognitive disabilities.

We gave them the maximum term allowed by state law to demonstrate our confidence in their strong program and their service to some of our highest need students.

We also took steps to increase the efficiency and strength of our office.

We now conduct all data analysis in-house rather than relying on contractors, which saves us money and builds internal expertise and opportunities for our team.

Our staff completed a wide range of professional development, all offered by the city, including trainings in Power BI, cybersecurity, project management, and data analytics.

Some of these are ongoing, but we've been very excited at the opportunities provided by various city agencies and partners.

We also improved our Salesforce-based document submission platform, which schools use to share required information with our office.

We help schools be connected to new board members by finding them interested residents, professionals in the city who are looking to serve.

We use the city's language access resources to ensure accessibility.

We allow online public comment for all of our meetings.

We support enroll Indie, which I'll talk a little bit more about later, which is our city's unified enrollment system used by nearly every school in the Indianapolis public school boundary.

And we also provide professional development for school leaders, such as recent sessions on attendance and graduation pathways changes.

Looking forward, our priorities are to maintain strong oversight of schools, ensure Circle City Readers remains efficient and sustainable, help schools recruit diverse board members, expand our use of language access resources now available to us through the city, and continue refining our performance indicators for English learners and students with disabilities.

Before I move into the budget numbers, I want to pause to talk about Circle City Readers, which is our high dosage tutoring program focused on literacy.

We've been grateful to be able to present to you a few times about that program over the last couple years.

We are now entering our third full school year of the program, and it has been a tremendous success.

For the first time, it is included in our operational budget, which I am incredibly excited about and grateful.

Circle City Readers provides targeted reading support to students who need it the most with strong engagement and promising outcomes.

We are also exploring ways to make the program more efficient and sustainable, including identifying cost-saving opportunities on the administrative side while maintaining the quality of our tutoring.

At this time, I would like to turn it over to Holly Morgan, our deputy director, who oversees that program at OEI.

Got it.

No worries.

Good evening, Chairman, or chairwoman and counselors.

My name is Holly Morgan, as Shana mentioned.

I serve as deputy director of the Office of Education and Innovation, and I also oversee the Circle City Readers program.

I should also mention that our program director is here, and she's hiding in the backbrook, Arnett Holman.

So just want to shout her out.

As most of you know, I know I've presented to you before, Circle City Readers is a high dosage literacy tutoring initiative.

As Shana mentioned, we are entering our third year.

It's really met a critical need of serving those students who are most at risk of falling behind when it comes to reading and reading fluency.

So our program employs paid community-based tutors who teach lessons to small groups of students, so two to four students three to four times a week.

Those lessons happen during the school day and they happen during small group time at the schools, so students are not missing out on any core instruction.

It is during small group time.

Our tutors are trained in the science of reading.

They deliver research backed lessons, and they also provide progress monitoring to adjust to instruction as needed.

So if a student is or a group of students are really missing like a letter sound, it'll automatically adjust that so that they are getting that skill that they need.

I should also mention the program is free to schools, so it really removes that barrier to participation.

As we look at students from the 24-25 school year, we served just over 450 students across 10 different schools in Indianapolis.

And we represented 12 languages spoken by our students.

So you can really see just kind of in those graphs the diversity among our Indianapolis schools.

We are extremely encouraged by the results that we're seeing of our program.

We saw improvement from every student who participated in the program.

And then when we look at 2025 iRead scores, I want to mention we're not really comparing.

I mentioned those students in our program are those who have the highest need.

So they were selected by their teachers, by their schools as likely not passing assessments or being at grade level by the end of the year.

And so when we compare them to other cohorts of students, it's not really a comparison we want to make.

But it's really exciting though when we get to because you can see in our results for iRead that 76% of our students pass iRead3, which is that assessment that students take that they now have to pass to go on to fourth grade.

Which is outperforming IPS and right on par with Marion County as a whole.

So we are really excited to see those results.

On this next slide, and hopefully in your packet, you can see it a little bit better the subgroup analysis.

This only includes the groups that we had a large enough student size to be able to report out, but you can see just the great success that our program is having with these third grade students.

Another um another test that we use is our DIBLES assessment, which is a national assessment we use three times a year to track student progress.

And you can see of those students who started the year at the lowest proficiency level, 41% of those students moved out of that proficiency level into a higher level, which we would not expect to see without some type of intense intervention.

Also want to mention our students' attendance rate was 91% overall, which outpaces their peers who are not in Circle City Readers.

And then as we look to 25-26, I am so excited.

We just finished up, we've had our strongest year for hiring.

We just finished up our second cohort of tutor training.

Um we now have 37 tutors across 10 schools in Indianapolis.

Um several of the tutors are in the audience, so like I just want to shout them out if you want to stand up, thank you for coming.

Thank you, tutors.

Um because you know, without them, we would not have the success of this program.

They are the program.

So just so thankful to them, and they're caring and showing up every day.

Um the kids love, I mean, they make those relationships with them and they expect to see them every day.

Um, and it's just it's really beautiful to see.

Um so taking a look at our tutors as well.

Um, you can see we have also an incredibly uh diverse group of tutors that's similar to our students.

So, with that, um, you know, we're moving into this new year, hoping to get this passed in the budget, and you know, we're really focused as Shana mentioned on making the program more efficient, more sustainable, and really maintaining the success that we're seeing.

You know, CCR really represents OEI's commitment to equity, evidence, and impact.

So I thank you for your support, your ongoing support.

I know I've talked to most of you about this program at least once.

You've definitely gotten multiple emails from me.

Um so I thank you for that.

Um I also want to just let you know if you are ever interested in going on a tour to see a school to see it in action.

It is so great to see.

Please let me know.

Reach out to me, it's Holly.morgan at indie.gov.

So I am happy to do that.

So with that, I will turn it back to Shana.

Thanks, Harley, and really thank you so much to the tutors who came out.

Um, I just can't stress enough, we know that it's a lot to give up your time.

So we so appreciate you for coming out here and showing your support and just putting a kind of a face with this program that we've been talking about for a really long time.

So I really do appreciate it.

Okay, so we're gonna get back into some numbers.

So this year our revenue stream is a little, I'm gonna talk about it a little bit differently because we have the presence of some new programs for for the first time.

So first I'm gonna go through our main source of revenue, which I'm gonna refer to as our charter school fund, just to differentiate them.

This is the fund that is self-generating from the authorizing fee that we assess to schools, and it is restricted to the work of accountability and oversight.

We assess this fee to schools beginning in their fourth year of operation, and we delay it to until year four to ensure that new schools can establish themselves before paying any kind of fee.

The charter school fund uh so it supports our analyst oversight activities, our information systems, our data infrastructure, and our share of joint city services that enable us to conduct our authorizing work.

The fee is equal to 1% of the state's foundation amount multiplied by student enrollment.

So those are some kind of jargony school funding words.

But what that means is we are only assessing the fee based on that per pupil amount that kind of all as a baseline all students receive in any school across the state.

We deliberately exclude other supplemental funding from our fee, such as complexity funding, which can serve as a proxy for students from low-income families who might need additional support or have some other challenges, um, special education funding and other supplemental dollars because we believe that those funds should remain in the classroom.

By law, authorizers may charge up to 3% of tuition support, which is that foundation amount plus all of those supplemental fees.

Um we do not do that.

We charge only one percent of the foundation amount, and we have not raised our fee since it was implemented in 2017.

For 2026, we project a revenue of about 1.3 million.

Um, I do want to note on your um revenue report.

Um, there were a couple payments that were not captured in the date range uh that was included in this report initially.

So when you look at our projected budget for 25, um it should be a little higher.

It's listed here at 1.075, and it should be 1.2.

So that was just there were a couple things that were left out from some late payments.

Um, we'll get a corrected report sent over, but I did want to just mention that tonight.

Um, our second funding stream, which you'll kind of be able to see a little bit more reflected in our budget breakdown, is this the general fund, which consists of those city operational dollars.

The general fund now includes Circle City Readers for the very first time with 400,000 allocated to support the next semester of the program.

The general fund also includes $2 million for India Chiefs, which you'll hear about in just a little bit, which supports post-secondary readiness and persistence initiatives for students.

Overall, we really do not have many variances from last year, but I will get at those in a little bit more detail when we get to character three.

Um so overall, our budget follows the character structure that all city buddy budgets follow.

Um, character one is our people, and this includes salaries and benefits for our nine full-time employees, and it remains essentially flat year over year with only some minor adjustments based on benefits in health care.

Character two is consumables, it's consumables and supplies, and this is historically pretty low for us, and it remains flat from the prior year.

And then character three, this is the contractual and professional services.

So, with our revenue from the charter school fund that I mentioned, that includes IT services, rent, professional association dues, um, other required compliance costs.

Uh, we attend one authorizing conference a year.

Um, and then also that the majority of that goes to our support for enroll Indy, and for 2026, that is 200,000.

So the approximately over just over 300,000 is allocated for these purposes.

And um, you know, the figure here represents just a modest increase based on the enrollment shifts that we're anticipating, as well as the increases to state funding.

Um, we budget very conservatively to account for any potential shifts that we might see.

Um, but this is what we're modeling right now.

Um, and then kind of in our general fund, that's where we see the support for the first time for circle city readers with the 400,000 dollar investment as well as the operational support for India Chiefs at 2 million.

Um, this is also where we were able to meet the required 4% reserve.

Um, we were able to do this through a right sizing of India Chiefs budget.

This shift corresponds to some changes in spending based in changes to in state law to how 21st Century Scholars is administered.

Um so we were able to continue all of these critical investments while putting aside reserves and without cuts to any of our programs or services.

Um we do not have character four, so you will not see it in this presentation.

But we do have character five, which is our internal chargebacks for um kind of shared services at the city, such as corporation council, other supports that are determined by usage.

Uh this is relatively small and fairly stable, just reflecting some minor changes in service hours.

Um overall, our budget remains responsible and efficient.

We implemented the city's 4% reserve requirement while keeping our operations stable.

We continue to operate with a flat budget, and we are incorporating Circle City readers into our operational funds for the first time.

We are proud to do this while also maintaining strong oversight of schools, providing transparency to the public, and ensuring that as many dollars as possible remain in classrooms serving students.

With that, um I would be happy to take any questions you might have now, but um in a moment I will invite Ken uh Clark from India Chiefs to speak more about that program in detail.

Thank you for your presentation.

Um I will open it up to my colleagues for questions.

Counselor Barth.

Um thank you for this presentation.

Um a lot of really good information and good work being done.

Um a couple of things I'm trying to get my head around lately with um our portfolio.

Remind me of via the mayor's chartering process, how many students we have versus other townships slash IPS districts in the city?

So I I I will be estimating these numbers.

I'm happy to get you more final ones, but roughly speaking, um, our schools educate about 19,000 students across the county, um, the most of them located within Indianapolis public school boundary.

Um other authorizers have a couple thousand to roughly, I think the state has schools serving about this it's it's it's less.

Um I don't want to say how much less because I might be excluding some schools, but to give you what just a comparison, um in IPS direct managed schools, there are about 20,000 students.

Um we are certainly serving a considerable number of kids at schools kind of all over the county.

Uh I I hate to, I don't like to get things wrong, so I could be happy to provide more, but we are the largest authorizer in the county.

A general theme is what I was trying to get to, and I was also trying to get to as compared to IPS.

And so there's a couple of reasons I want to go down this road.

One, so on the in my first term, all the results of the um authorization process and the ongoing monitoring process came to the council, right?

So we had um uh direct involvement and a lot of clarity about what was happening with every school.

Um subsequent to that, there is change in state law, and now that all happens at the um charter school board.

So can you just describe, and I'm not asking for details, just to refresh everybody's memory at the charter school board.

Do you routinely bring on some kind of a cadence school X is at this point in their process and their performances on par?

Or do I is that kind of detail being shared?

So I would say the majority of that information is shared kind of routinely throughout the year on our website.

Um the charter school board is responsible for kind of considering vetting, reviewing new applications, um, and staff is responsible for renewal.

I don't know you you've been here longer than I have, so I'm not totally sure how it got to be that way, but that is how the historical split is.

Now, of course, we have board members who do reach out regularly asking for updates on school performance or if there's something they're hearing about that they would like clarity on, and we provide that.

Um but I would say as far as where our schools at in their term, what does their performance look like?

That is living, breathing information that is available all the time on our website based on the results of our annual reviews of school performance.

And uh and I'm and the reason why I'm going in this direction is because um and uh it this might be a little esoteric for this committee meeting, and maybe it's a discussion you and I have at a later date, but I've been thinking a lot in terms of um uh the General Assemblies paying attention to Indianapolis and the creation of the committee that's meeting now.

Um what does that mean for the city in the long term?

And seeing that the city in you is the biggest authorizer in Marion County and probably in the in the in the state.

What is there a way?

I'm thinking about the metrics you use by school, and then is there a way of looking at that?

Does that mean from a citywide perspective, we can start since we have scale now?

Can we start saying our goal for all schools is XYZ, regardless of you're in uh mayor charter school, another chartered school, IPS, Warren, whatever it is, is there an opportunity now to sort of get everyone in the same in the county from pulling in the same end of the rope when it comes to educational outcomes.

And they bring it up because I once did an evaluation of a health care program that King County and Washington State had where that's what they were doing on diabetes.

They're getting every employer to use the same metrics, every employer to have the same interventions, every and there's reasons to do that and reasons not to do that.

But it I'm my thinking has been now that we have this scale, we have the opportunity to pull the levers and influence other districts around outcomes that we want to see.

And is that something that you've that you've thought about?

Um I I mean I agree that it is a little esoteric, but also is a great question.

Um I think it's both esoteric and yeah, it's both.

Um I mean that's something we're thinking about, I I think all the time.

It is certainly um coming up in in some of the um ILEA meetings, it is kind of part of the charge, something they may consider is common accountability.

Um I would say for us where where that tends to show up and you know, kind of outside of that specific project.

Uh you know, we we try to make sure that we are not asking schools to pay attention to things that are wildly different from anyone else.

I mean, I think generally we agree on some of the common metrics that demonstrate that students are learning, you know, it's about the only metrics, certainly there are many of them.

Um but you know, as long as I've been at OEI, we have been in pretty regular communication with IPS, um, with other authorizers around are there things that you know one of us is looking at that the others could benefit from.

Um I know on some of our site visits that I mentioned, we do share those um the those standards with IPS, and so some of the visits that they do for innovation charter schools, we will use the same um that that evaluation will serve that purpose for them as well.

So there has been, I think, a lot we've been able to agree on.

Um it's not always easy to work through some of those kind of big thorny questions, but I mean I'm very proud of our accountability system.

I think it um it isn't perfect, but it certainly takes into account a lot of things that schools are working on.

We try every year to make it better and more relevant, and so I am very open to any conversation about what it could look like to have that be helpful in in aligning things across school systems.

Um I think it's a bigger conversation than today, but I would love to talk more with you about that because I do think it's incredibly important.

Yeah, well it thank you um for indulging my esoteric question, but the and with such with with a lot of detail.

The in um I'll I'll wrap it up after this.

But the reason why I'm thinking a lot about this is because of the um uh help me with the name, the Indianapolis education um local education alliance like what translation it has been charged by the General Assembly to some controversy uh to look at tra transportation mostly, right?

But other issues.

And the fact that that's is happening, it made me think, well, if we're starting to think globally, then what can we do globally to really focus on quality more than operations, and that's where my interest is, and so um if we can start thinking about quality and influencing um positively um schools around the county, then that might be a discussion worth having.

But again, that's that's for another day.

But thank you.

Absolutely, thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Boots, thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks for the presentation this evening.

Just a couple of clarification questions on slide 19 on the charter authorization fee and the revenue, looking up at the first uh row of school funding.

The numbers you show the 6681, 6967.

Is that the money that comes from the state to the school?

Yes, that's correct.

And that's a per pupil payment under the statewide charter system, if you will.

Yes, that's right.

I I didn't start at the very beginning, but that is where it originates from the state funding formula, yes.

And that money goes to the school directly.

Correct.

They receive that that's the per pupil amount, they get um additional funds layered on, kind of depending upon their student population and things like honors diplomas, so on and so forth.

We then um our fee is based on kind of one percent of that, but it goes through the school.

We're not uh sure it's just kind of directly sent to the school through um like purchasing and those agencies that handle that.

Um and we're doing that kind of in alignment with each count day to stay true to what the enrollment looks like.

And the one percent uh OE I fee, you said it's fixed since 2017?

That's right.

That's right in the state cap by ma at maximum is three percent, correct?

Three percent of essentially a kind of bigger pot of money, but yes.

Okay.

How does our one percent fee rate with other authorizing bodies?

Um so it does differ.

So I believe, and um I will double check this, but to the best of my knowledge today, the state charges a 0.75% fee.

Um I do not know exactly what funds they include though.

So it is possible that it includes the tuition support, it is possible that it's only foundation.

I will find that out.

Um, and then I believe the other authorizers in Marion County charge three percent.

Three, yes.

It has there been an initiative internally to re-evaluate that since it hasn't, it's almost 10 years and has not moved.

No, we um you know, we believe that you know, like I said, as much money should remain in schools as as possible.

We fee based on what we believe we need to support the operations of our office, and um, you know, there are shifts over time, of course, as state funding changes and enrollment changes, but we have not had a need to seriously consider that.

Um, and I don't think it's something we're considering at this time at all.

All right, and then back to slide 12, if you will, just an idea of of some of the metrics.

Um you mentioned that the circle um circle circle city readers has 450 students?

Yeah, it it changes throughout the year as students kind of shift, so that's about what was served last year.

Okay, and and what was the budget cost for tutoring 450 students?

Um so cost um for the programming for a year is about $2,000 a student.

Okay.

And do you have uh similar stats?

And maybe they're in here and I'm just not recognizing them on uh special ed students or uh ELL students.

Um for this group of students, we do not.

Can you get those to us?

Um I can probably from participation standpoint.

Yes, from participation standpoint, I can.

The problem is the end size for the um assessment is too small, but I can get participation for sure.

Okay.

And then do you have also for those groups of proficiency rates for those subgroups?

On I read or on a different exam?

Uh I learn and I read as well.

Do you want to speak?

So we do not authorize all of the schools that participate our access to the student level data for other exams that we have a data sharing agreement with schools that is related to iRead and data pertaining to literacy.

Um the different exams we do not are not currently covered by our data sharing agreement, is that right?

And also and also we service K3 students, so this it's a very small group of students who are taking iLearn.

Yeah, okay.

So and just to clear it up, um, so the the N size reference that's due to state reporting requirements.

So if there's too small a number of kids at any given population, we are not legally able to report out something like proficiency for a certain group, and when you kind of cut, you know, if you think of K through three, it's a smaller group of kids, and if we're kind of um dividing it up further, that could be fairly small numbers of students, so it kind of it's a it's a very good question, but sometimes it just ends up being that any particular school, we can't actually get access to that information.

But we can provide you what we know based on participation, and then if there's any additional test-related data, we can send that over as well.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, madam chair.

Any other questions from Counselor Cahill?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh couple comments and a and a question.

Uh one, uh appreciate the uh shout out to uh for Daymar Charter Academy.

Uh for those that do not know, that is where my son goes.

Uh and they were very excited to receive the uh the 15-year extension.

Uh the while they do not uh take advantage of this today, you never know what the the future holds, but the the general assembly made that available uh so that because when a charter school gets a uh traditional seven-year uh term, it has it's been challenging for them to bond out and do things like that.

So having the 15-year uh extension is of tremendous value to those already established schools that have already proven uh once or in their case twice uh that they've operated successfully under their uh seven-year term.

Uh so that's that's a tremendous value uh for that for those well established uh and performing charter schools.

The uh Circle City readers, so uh you you mentioned it, but I I just want to be I I want everyone to be clear that this one and a half million is only through the spring semester, and we operationalized the current semester with an earlier fiscal this year.

So while we're doing this kind of under the calendar 26 budget, there's gonna have to either be a decision one way or another.

Either we will have a an additional fiscal or uh you know potentially we would not have one, right?

And so uh I I think we we should keep that in mind uh because each year going forward, uh, and I say that because the school year and our budget year do not align, right?

So the the reason I bring that up is that the school overlay that you have where you service is in uh primarily IPS and a little bit of uh Warren Township, and that is a very strong correlation to where we do a lot of uh tax abatements, uh TIFFs, pilots, et cetera.

And I think that's something this body should take a look at as to if we're doing a TIFF that is in IPS.

One of the one of the side effects that happens in those tax abatements is that property tax much about 50% of your property tax dollars go to your local school district, and so when we do some of these deals, uh the city might get paid or reimbursed or something like that, but it's not uncommon for us to, whether it's inadvertent or not, take money out of that local school district, and so I can appreciate that we are taking operational dollars that in some cases the city has taken in to give back to contribute back to that local school in a way, but I think there might be a way for us to look at formalizing that uh in some of those because I mean every dollar is gonna continue to count when we start looking going forward.

I mean, we're already having you guys are sort of exempt from it because you're uh because of the charter school uh model that the your funding is different than the way we do the rest of the city, uh, but this Circle City Reader portion is not going to be uh exempt from us looking at places we need to cut going forward.

So the if there's a way we could lock in non, I guess, uh general fund tax dollars, that's probably something we should evaluate.

Uh and then this is my uh final this is my actual question.

On the tutors, uh are you able to share what the wages average wage anything?

You have your your demographics here, but what is what is uh tutor make?

Uh yeah, so tutors start at 22 hours an hour.

Okay, and work about um 16 to 20 hours a week.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Counselor Graves.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks for the presentation.

Um can you talk a little bit about the um City Connect's dashboard?

Yes, so that project came out of the one of the ARPA investments that was supported by by this console and and the mayor.

Um and what that dashboard did essentially is it took the results from the first three or from the three years of that City Connect's implementation, which we funded for schools on the east side, but um includes schools from all over Indianapolis, and it shows how the program is essentially generating positive results based on the wraparound supports that those students are receiving.

So the program um is a partnership between some places have some long names, the Mary Walsh Center for Thriving Children and the Marion University Center for Vibrant Schools.

Um they are working together to implement this here in Indiana.

The program comes out of Boston, it's more than 20 years old, it has an evident evidence-based history on showing how if we support the needs of a kid outside of the classroom, can we also see academic results?

And they've been able to demonstrate this in in reports.

Um so that that context um is important because they've never been able to or really had an opportunity to share what those results look like publicly.

And so here in Indiana, with this investment made by um the city, we were able to implement that program for schools here, and then also put together a public-facing dashboard of then how students are doing.

And um, what's so interesting is it to me at least is that it's not only some of the things that we tend to see a lot, like test scores and attendance, but it also includes things that are assets to a school's community.

What are kids interested in?

What do they you know like participating in?

What do they think are the strengths of their of their school?

And then where are their areas where they need more support?

Um and so what that does is not only show some of the um you know impact that the program is having, but also a way for the community to continue to interact with those schools and those communities.

So for the work that you all do, you obviously focus on uh particular geographic areas.

You could go to this dashboard and see is there a school served by City Connects in my district.

What are their strengths?

How can that you know uh tie in with some of the work that I'm doing or the conversations that I'm having?

If I am working in um philanthropy and we have um resources we would like to invest, what do where do we start?

I think often there are conversations had where adults are trying to just come up with what kids want, but this is a way for us to show what schools have identified and what kids have identified that they need.

So that's just some of what you'll find there.

It is connect indie.org.

And I would encourage you to visit.

Yep.

Thank you, and thanks, madam chair.

Thank you.

Um thank you again for your presentation.

Um appreciate the work that you do.

Thank you to the tutors that are here.

Um not only does it mean a lot to us, but what we know that you impact you make in the community is truly appreciated.

Um, so I think you want to hand it over to yes.

Ken, if you want to come up.

And I'll get you to the beginning of yours.

All right, good evening, madam chair, counselors, good to see you all.

My name's Ken Clark.

I'm an executive vice president at Employee Indy over programmatic operations.

Marie Macintosh, our president and CEO sends her regards.

She had an event with her daughter tonight and could make it.

I happily came back in front of the council tonight to uh present uh India Chiefs portion of the budget.

A little background to start for those of you who aren't as familiar with the program.

Um, Employee is the workforce intermediary here in Indianapolis and Marion County.

Uh, we are the workforce board for uh the city and county, one of the few that is just or what the only one in the city or in the state, I believe, that is just for a single county, so we're lucky to have that.

Um, but our work is really across all workforce development, from youth trying to figure out what their opportunities are and where they want to end up in the workforce at a very young age all the way through people later in career trying to retool or reskill to find a better job uh later in life and everything in between.

We really do all things workforce development for the county.

India Chieve specifically launched in 2018 was Mayor Hogsett's initiative to try to get more Indianapolis residents to achieve some kind of a work ready credential.

Post-secondary specifically institutions being our focus, Ivy Tech and uh IUPUI at the time.

Uh now IU Indianapolis were our original focus areas back when we started in 2018.

And I'll go a little bit into the three parts of the program.

So one is our post-secondary transitions.

We focus on students who are getting ready to graduate high school from a number of different high schools and trying to help make sure that they do everything they need to gain and obtain that 21st century scholarship.

21st century scholars, for those who don't know, provides in-state tuition completely free for certain students who are achieving academically but are also in a specific uh income level within their family.

And so the FAFSA's a really important part of that.

So we we play a role in making sure that these students understand how important the FAFSA is and getting that accurately filled out so that they are eligible for that.

These are focused, of course, on only Marion County high schools and Marion County High School graduate students.

Um we also have programming related to trying to get students to completion.

We'll talk a little bit about that later.

Um, and then um recruiting stop-outs from IU Indianapolis is also a part of the programming that we do.

We also do a number of um events, college panels, um, we do industry visits with the students, uh, take them to different companies um within Marion County so they can understand what kind of jobs and opportunities may be available to them.

But to the meat of the work, completion grants and promise scholarships are the two pieces of the program.

Completion grants, I'll start with there's two different types.

We do reaching completion grants, these are current students who are close to completing their degree, um, but their financial aid is running out.

They are struggling to complete and that they need a little bit of help to be able to get that post-secondary credential.

These are always Marion County high school graduates that we're focused on, so we make sure that the universities know that's where our focus is, um, especially because these are taxpayer dollars coming out of Marion County specifically.

Um, and then with that, they gain wrap around support and coaching.

We believe that our coaching model is the differentiator here.

We took that coaching model from Georgia State.

They had done this and found that they were able to get a lot of people, a lot of lower income students across completion by wrapping around other resources around them they needed.

And we're able to utilize funds that we get separately from the city, not from the city's allocation that you see here.

That's for scholarships completely.

But our wraparound services were able to provide.

The universities provide us service fees.

The fact that we keep these students in, they then provide us funding that lets us wrap around services, financial literacy, helping them figure out how to manage debt, figure out how to get things completed so they can actually complete their degree is our focus.

And then there's reconnect completion.

This is focused on students who are close who were close to completion of a degree, but they stopped out.

They left.

They may have a Bersar bill that we can pay off for them and get them back enrolled.

They may have just a couple of classes to finish that we can provide them a scholarship and get them through to completion.

We actually have city-county employees who have taken advantage of this program, I'm very proud to say.

And so this is a really great program that we're really trying to continue to ramp up and utilize even more of.

There's two different programs that provide tuition assistance to students.

21st century scholars, I believe, complete completely pays for the tuition.

Franco Bannon has a certain portion of the tuition, so we can cover the additional amount.

We are the last resort, so we make sure in our agreements with our universities that we are the last ones to pay.

So all other student aid first, including the university student aid, is taken out, and then whatever is left we can actually complete for them so that that Mary Ann County student can complete their degree.

And then again, we wrap around supports with them.

They end up getting a student success coach.

You'll see a picture of them at the very end of our presentation that can meet with them on a regular basis.

I actually went to orientation a couple weeks ago with all the new um India Chieved students at uh IU Indianapolis' campus.

And a lot of excitement in the room.

A lot of students are first generation.

You find that we get a lot of first generation students in our program.

And so really fun to get to talk to them and engage and talk about how excited they are to finally be at a university.

This is a little sampling of some of the events that we do.

We're focused on them managing stress.

We're focused on them on managing their money.

Those are two big parts of what we spend a lot of our time and effort on in our programming.

Again, this programming is paid for with fees from the universities, our partners, our post-secondary partners, not from the dollars that are associated with the scholarships you provide us.

The scholarships, scholarship money you're providing that two million dollars we're asking for as a part of this budget, is really focused on only giving those to pay for their education.

That's the only thing that it pays for.

See a little highlight here, Ivy Tech.

Um we just closed out our agreement with Ivy Tech in the spring, our most recent one.

We don't have our all of our data yet from Ivy Tech on the completion for those students, but had two coaches who were located at Ivy Tech all the way through the spring through graduation.

Really an important partner of ours in many avenues and had been with India Chiefs as well.

They have not renewed at this point with us, but we are working on finding other institutions to join us.

Uh, had have had recent meetings with a number of universities here locally, trying to add uh to our India Chiefs post-secondary partners.

I uh Indiana University in Indianapolis are our major partner at this point.

We have our coaches located on campus there to meet with students on a regular basis.

Um, a little bit here about some of our success with these students, but we usually are carrying around 200 students who are in our coaching pool at any given time and actively managed.

We invite them to all these events, we send them resources as they come up.

Our um coaches are treated as if they're a part of the coaching and coaching staff there at IU Indianapolis.

I can't say enough about how well IU Indianapolis has fully integrated to this model and how much they believe in the coaching model works.

That these students are successful because they have a coach who they can call when they need help.

If they're struggling, though they know that they can reach out to them and actually get help.

That's been a huge part of the program and why we've been successful with it.

Jumping into the budget.

Um, budget for 2026 is two million dollars.

Back in a little bit of background, back in 2023 budget, this increase from two million to 2.5 million a year.

We did that for a number of years, trying to actually increase the number of students who we could serve, trying to increase that number as much as we could.

With the changes in 21st century scholars, for those of you who don't know, it's auto enrollment now.

The legislator took care of that, which is an amazing change that they've made where 21st century scholars are automatically enrolled, but they still have to fill out the FAFSA and do certain things.

Now they don't have to ask to be a 21st century scholar any longer.

That was an originally part of our programming that we no longer do.

Also with Ivy Tech stepping back from the program for this next year, we were able to come to a lower number.

We did this in conjunction with the mayor's office and the controller, uh, and a lot of discussion to come up with this final determination of the two million.

We feel really comfortable with two million dollars and feel like we can effectively still serve all the students at IU Indianapolis.

We hope we continue to grow.

I want to add more institutions, and if we do, we'll be back to ask for more money.

But for now, this is the right size number, and we we agree with it.

With that, I'll stop on a picture of our coaches and our leader, Esther, um, who is who leads our India Chiefs program.

She's our senior director, Esther Woodson.

Um she would have been here tonight, she's getting an award elsewhere, but uh I'm happy to answer questions or provide any additional information if you need it.

Thank you, Ken.

Good to have you back in front of us.

Yeah.

Um great questions for my colleagues, Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and it's great to see you.

Uh former controller Clark.

Uh you're certainly missed in the building.

Um what percentage of the Indy Achieves budget so is the entire India Chiefs budget two million dollars, or is two million just the scholarship portion.

Where do you get additional funding?

Yeah, so the agreements with the university.

So right now we have one only with IU Indianapolis, as I mentioned, the Ivy Tech one has expired, um, and they chose not to renew that because they believe they're gonna take our same coaching model and do it themselves, which is great.

We're happy and we want to see that be successful.

If it's not, we will be the first ones in line to come back um to Ivy Tech.

We're glad to support as much as we can, but we're hopeful that they're gonna coach these students into completion as well.

Um the way that the model works is that we sign an agreement with the university and they give us a portion of the funding that they get, they end up getting for the year.

So they look at those and they look at their their tuition number and they give us a 40% dollar amount back of what their total tuition amount.

They get keep 60, we keep 40.

So there's a at the end of the semester if those students complete at the end of the year, if they complete, we get that money back as they graduate.

So we're betting on them, to be clear.

We bet on these students and we coach them because we know we can be successful in it, and then those universities pay us back for the success of getting them across the finish line.

Okay.

Yeah, I love the built-in incentive structure there.

Um so if two if you get two million from the city, what's your total India Chiefs budget?

Yeah, the total India Chiefs budget is closer to five million, but I will say we've gone through reductions over the last two years at employee Indy.

Reductions from various various ways, philanthropic funding that's dried up.

So we would add additional funding, right?

So we had Lumina funding for a period of time.

Salesforce has given us grants to work with India Chief students.

So it's Ebbed and flowed.

Um in the current fiscal year we're in right now, it's right around five million.

It's mostly staff time.

Um, but that is kind of to be determined.

Ivy Tech came out pretty last minute as we were putting our budget together, and so we're making final determinations on how much we think we're able to actually manage for the next year and trying to determine if we need to reduce some of our services in order to be able to stay within line.

We've had trouble estimating how much we'll get in any given semester uh based on the number of students who graduate.

And so I'm working on that, as you can imagine.

I've been there about two years, and I've just gotten into this programmatic role over the last couple of months, so it's top of my priority list to make sure that I've got it locked down.

Okay, yeah, appreciate that.

And then there's just last question do you have a um a metric of success?

Like is it 80% of the students that you coach graduate or yeah, we've been targeting 90%, and we've been pretty successful with that.

It was different.

That's for IUI.

Ivy Tech's number was lower.

We were closer to 75.

70 to 75 was where we were targeting, and that was our goal was to get 75% of those students across the finish line.

Um IU Indianapolis really has been um humming along, and we've been seeing 90% for the last three semesters.

So that's my target and the line that we hold is that we really want to be successful with 90% of those students.

Yeah, that's impressive.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

Any other comments or questions for my colleagues?

I just want to agree, I want to agree with Counselor Bain.

Uh it's impressive numbers, and I work daily with college students and the wraparound services and the support they get is always crucial and so important for their success.

And sometimes they don't realize it too.

Yeah.

Especially first generation, right?

I mean, first generation is the I'm a first generation myself, and my parents didn't know, right?

So someone had to help me.

Knowing that you have somebody in your corner and to be able to go to, um, I have been that person for students, and I appreciate all the work that they do.

Um, I do have counselor Grace, go ahead and ask your question.

Thanks, madam chair, and thanks for your presentation.

Good to see you.

Good to see you too.

Uh just to clarify, the uh India Chiefs services that they are available to students who even though they don't receive any funds, right?

It or is it just for students who receive some of the scholarships and funding?

Uh the India Chiefs dollars are available in two different ways.

So there's promise scholars, which means you have to either a Frank of Bannon or 21st century scholar, right?

So that's promise scholarships.

The other is if you've stopped out and you were a Marion County, you graduated from Marion County High School, you are eligible still to get a completion grant.

If you're getting close and you have a Bersar bill that's not paid, we can help pay that.

It looks like you guys provide so many different services and events and some of the things that that you do.

So if an individual does not need those funding, are they eligible to the majority of those?

I mean, I would say they're open invitations.

There we do send them directly to all of our India Chief students.

But if somebody ends up in some way wanting to engage, uh especially if they're a Marion County high school resident or or graduate, they would be able to engage with us.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, that looks kind of cool.

Tell me real quickly before we go, Madam Chair, about the regatta.

I like regarders.

Are we talking about a real regatta or yeah, yeah.

This is like the IU Regatta, the the the race that they do um on the canal each year.

Uh I believe it's on the canal.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Uh I have had two winning teams.

Oh, my students in the past.

So I guess I we've well we had a first place team and one of the co-eds, and then one year we got the first ever regatta, we got a third place.

But um, yeah, it's a canoe race, they switch out, they go from the north main end down to the memorial the India Indianapolis US as an Indianapolis Memorial turnaround and go back.

There's maybe videos of me not being in the boat but running along and um of that.

And it's a team building, I mean, like for us, it like these are all so many of these are first generation students, and to get to know each other and know someone on campus is a huge part.

I was part of Starfish Initiative years ago, which is really focused on the fact that a lot of 21st century scholars don't stay because they don't feel comfortable, they haven't had the same experience as the people on campus who've had more of a middle class or upper class upbringing.

And so this really lets them have people they know on campus, they get to know each other as India Chiefs to scholars, and that really is one of those that drives that.

And it's early in the school year, so when they're younger and it's their first semester, it's an immediate connection with folks.

Yeah, go ahead.

Uh I think of all the things that I've seen on this presentation, I really like the completion grant because I personally had a bursar bill.

Yeah that caused me to have a few extra year delay just to get the money up to pay that off.

So it's really good to see that you're helping people with that particular barrier.

Thanks.

All credit to McKenzie Higgins, who is the original person who brought this to us, and you all know a number of you know, yeah, a number of you know Mac well, but she's the one who brought that as like this is a wedge that we could really help people get finished, and it's pretty incredible to get to watch it happen.

Yeah, and that success rate shows it.

So absolutely for my colleagues.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um is there anyone in the public who would like to speak to the budget proposal for the Office of Education Innovation?

Okay, I see none.

I do not see anyone coming up.

Um any other business?

Seeing none, we are adjourned.

Have a good night.