Education Committee Budget Hearing for Office of Education and Innovation - September 16, 2025
Education Committee Budget Hearing for Office of Education and Innovation - September 16, 2025\n\nThe Education Committee of the Indianapolis City-County Council met on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at 5:32 PM in the Public Assembly Room to hear the 2026 budget presentation for the Office of Education and Innovation (OEI) and its associated programs. Presentations were delivered by OEI Director Shana Cavasos, Deputy Director Holly Morgan, and Ken Clark, Executive Vice President at EmployIndy for the Indy Achieves program. No public comments were received. The committee discussed the budget, program outcomes, and took no formal votes, but the presentations provided detailed updates on OEI’s oversight, Circle City Readers, and Indy Achieves.\n\n### Discussion Items\n- OEI Overview and Staffing: Director Shana Cavasos explained that OEI is the mayor's charter school authorizer, overseeing 48 schools serving about 19,000 students, including K-12, alternative, and adult high schools. OEI has nine full-time employees, is fully staffed with no turnover, and reorganized in 2024-25 to create advancement opportunities. The team is diverse (44% POC, 55% White; 33% male, 66% female) with backgrounds in education, government, military, and nonprofits.\n- Performance Framework: OEI evaluates schools annually in four areas: academics, finance, governance, and site visits (conducted with independent evaluators). Academic metrics include proficiency, growth, attendance, and subgroup performance. Financial review uses required independent audits. Governance evaluates board leadership and compliance. Site visits involve observations, desk audits, and focus groups with students, parents, and teachers. Reports are publicly available on the OEI website.\n- Programmatic Successes (FY 2025): OEI introduced an English-language proficiency indicator, launched a public City Connects dashboard (showing impact of wraparound services), created an interactive GIS map of all Marion County public schools, renewed Damar Charter Academy for 15 years (serving students with mild to severe developmental cognitive disabilities), brought all data analysis in-house for cost savings, and improved the Salesforce document submission platform. Staff completed professional development in Power BI, cybersecurity, project management, and data analytics.\n- Circle City Readers (CCR): Holly Morgan, Deputy Director, presented on CCR, a high-dosage literacy tutoring program entering its third year. In 2024-25, over 450 students across 10 schools were served. Key results: 76% of CCR third graders passed the 2025 IREAD-3 exam, outperforming IPS and on par with Marion County. On DIBELS, 40.8% of students starting at the lowest proficiency level moved up at least one level. CCR students had a 91% attendance rate, outpacing peers. For 2025-26, the program has 37 tutors across 10 schools, with tutors starting at $22/hour working 16-20 hours/week. The program is free to schools, and CCR is now included in OEI’s operational budget for the first time with $400,000 allocated for the spring semester (not a full year).\n- Indy Achieves: Ken Clark presented Indy Achieves, a post-secondary completion program launched in 2018. It focuses on three areas: post-secondary transitions (helping high school students obtain 21st Century Scholar and Frank O'Bannon scholarships), completion grants for current and stop-out students at IU Indianapolis (and formerly Ivy Tech), and promise scholarships to cover remaining tuition gaps. The program has a 90% completion success rate at IU Indianapolis and 70-75% at Ivy Tech. For 2026, the budget request is $2,000,000, down from $2,500,000 due to auto-enrollment of 21st Century Scholars and Ivy Tech choosing not to renew. The total Indy Achieves budget is approximately $5 million, including fees from university partners.\n- Council Questions and Commentary:\n - Councilor Barth asked about OEI’s role as the largest authorizer in Marion County compared to IPS (about 20,000 students) and explored the possibility of aligning educational metrics across all districts in the county. Director Cavasos noted ongoing communication with IPS and other authorizers and expressed openness to broader alignment discussions.\n - Councilor Boots asked for clarification on the charter authorizer fee: OEI charges 1% of the state foundation amount (currently $6,967 per pupil for 2025-26), unchanged since 2017, while state law allows up to 3%. The fee is not assessed during a school’s first three years. OEI’s fee is lower than other Marion County authorizers (which charge 3%).\n - Councilor Cahill commended the 15-year renewal for Damar Charter Academy, noting the value for established schools for bonding purposes. He also raised the misalignment between the school year and budget year for Circle City Readers and suggested exploring non-general fund sources for CCR funding. He asked about tutor wages: $22/hour and 16-20 hours/week.\n - Councilor Grays asked about the City Connects dashboard, which shows the impact of wraparound supports for students and includes community assets and student needs. He encouraged council members to visit connectindy.org.\n - Councilor Bain asked Ken Clark about the Indy Achieves budget and metrics. The total program budget is about $5 million, with $2 million from the city. The university partner (IU Indianapolis) pays a 40% fee on tuition for students who complete, incentivizing student success.\n - Multiple councilors expressed support for the wraparound services and completion grant model, with Councilor Grays noting personal experience with a bursar bill barrier.\n\n### Key Outcomes\n- No formal votes were taken; the committee heard the presentations and discussed the budget. The meeting was adjourned without additional business.\n- OEI’s 2026 budget remains flat overall at $3,743,600 (down from $3,830,893 in 2025), with the charter school fund supported by the 1% authorizer fee and general fund allocations for Circle City Readers ($400,000) and Indy Achieves ($2,000,000).\n- The committee acknowledged the success of Circle City Readers and Indy Achieves and noted the need to address the budget year/school year misalignment for CCR.\n- OEI will provide corrected revenue reports and additional data on subgroup participation and proficiency for Circle City Readers upon request.\n- Councilor Cahill suggested future consideration of dedicating non-general fund tax dollars (e.g., from tax abatements in IPS areas) to sustain Circle City Readers.
Meeting Transcript
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.
openpublica.com