Inaugural Meeting of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance (ILEA) - June 25, 2025
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Inaugural Meeting of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance (ILEA) - June 25, 2025
The Indianapolis Local Education Alliance (ILEA) held its inaugural meeting on June 25, 2025, at 6 p.m. in the City-County Building, Public Assembly Room. The meeting was called to order by Mayor Joe Hogsett, who chairs the alliance. The ILEA was established by House Enrolled Act 1515 (2025) to conduct a facilities assessment and develop an implementation plan for school facilities and transportation within the IPS boundary, with a final report due December 31, 2025. The meeting included introductions of the nine alliance members, an overview of the historical and current educational landscape, data collection plans, and public testimony.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Martha Cortez (Chief Partnerships Officer, KIPP Indy Public Schools) expressed support for strengthening partnerships between IPS and charter schools, highlighting the KIPP-IPS collaboration in the Martindale Brightwood neighborhood as a model. She urged equitable funding and resource sharing for all public school students.
- Swantella Nelson (public school parent) voiced support for smart collaboration and accountability, suggesting the alliance learn from schools that are closing achievement gaps.
- Dantea Dyson (father and community activist) emphasized the need to tackle transportation challenges, use data to guide school choices, and ensure access to great buildings and teachers for all children. He noted personal experience with transportation barriers.
- Ariane Clanton (educator with a decade of experience) urged the alliance to make decisions that keep kids and families at the center, remain unbiased, and create lasting, systemic solutions. She applauded IPS for transparency and collaboration in prior community conversations.
- Bonnie Georges (IPS teacher) shared a story of a student facing transportation barriers and asked the alliance to consider the achievement gap when creating solutions. She called for learning from schools that are closing gaps.
- Ada Limas (parent of a student at Edison School of the Arts) spoke bilingually about her family's reliance on school transportation. She expressed concern that losing transportation would force her child to transfer, and urged IPS and charter schools to work together to improve transportation access.
- Brianna Deans (Brookside neighbor, activist) questioned the legitimacy of the alliance given it was created by state legislation and a mayor she criticized. She called for independent charter feasibility studies, transparency, and rejected efforts aligned with far-right agendas.
- Blake Vennell opposed charter schools and voucher schemes, arguing they are billionaire-funded, undermine democratic accountability, and siphon money from public schools. He urged investment in public education and criticized the impact on Black and Hispanic students.
- Dr. Gail Cosby (IPS Board of School Commissioners member, speaking as an individual) emphasized the weight of the alliance's decisions and urged the body to work in a spirit of healing, equity, and equitable resource distribution, noting the history of segregation and disinvestment.
- Leslie Schulte (engineer) argued against giving public school facilities to unaccountable nonprofits, asserting that charter schools are not subject to public bidding rules and that taxpayers deserve accountability for their dollars.
- Kelly Macesso (IPS parent) criticized the current and former mayors for fostering competition between IPS and charters, and called for true collaboration where everyone benefits. She demanded that charter schools pay their fair share for services and physical assets, and advocated for a moratorium on new charter schools.
Discussion Items
- Member Introductions: Each of the nine alliance members (Mayor Joe Hogsett, Dr. Alysia Johnson, Tina, Barato Britt, Maggie Lewis, Toby McClamrock, Andrew Neal, Mayor Bart Peterson, Angela Smith Jones) introduced themselves, sharing their backgrounds and perspectives on education. Dr. Johnson (IPS Superintendent) noted her 23-year career and desire to move beyond an "us versus them" approach. Toby McClamrock stressed the importance of IPS's success. Andrew Neal emphasized elevating voices of underserved families.
- Overview of ILEA and Mandate: Mayor Hogsett explained that HEA 1515 requires the alliance to conduct a school facilities assessment of all public schools within IPS boundaries and develop an implementation plan for facilities and transportation, with recommendations due December 31, 2025. The plan may address governance, consolidation, and program expansion.
- Historical Context: Andrew Strope (Deputy Superintendent, IPS) presented a timeline showing how Unigov (1970) intentionally excluded IPS from county consolidation, leading to federal desegregation orders (1981) and a steep enrollment decline (64,000 students lost between 1973-1998). He noted that IPS has been restructuring for decades. Shayna Cavasos (Director, Mayor's Office of Education Innovation) added that charter laws (2001), state takeovers (2011), and innovation network schools (2015) shaped the current complex ecosystem.
- Current Landscape: Shayna Cavasos detailed the four governance structures: 42 IPS direct-run schools (~18,000 students), 5 IPS in-LEA innovation schools (~2,000 students), 25 innovation charter schools (~11,000 students), and 30 independent public charter schools (~11,000 students). Total 42,000 public school students in the IPS boundary. Facilities include 67 IPS-operated and 29 charter-owned/leased buildings.
- Funding Overview: Andrew Strope explained state (education fund, distributed per pupil) and local (property tax operations fund) funding streams. Slides showed funding breakdowns for IPS and a demographically similar charter school. Shayna Cavasos noted that starting June 2025, some charter schools began receiving a portion of local property tax revenue, with full implementation by 2030. Federal pandemic relief (ESSER) has ended.
- Data Collection and Technical Support: Mayor Hoggett announced that IPS and OEI have initiated data requests to all public charter schools for facility specs, enrollment, building utilization, and transportation routes, due July 18, 2025. The alliance will issue a request for qualifications for external technical support to assist with data aggregation and analysis. Alliance members requested additional data, including a map of facilities, total budget across all 102 schools, innovation school partnership details, and potential impacts of federal funding changes. Dr. Johnson urged the alliance to consider the historical burden on IPS and the community, and to ground decisions in core values.
Key Outcomes
- The alliance will gather comprehensive data from all public schools within IPS boundaries by July 18, 2025.
- An external technical support contract will be procured via an RFQ or existing contracts; details to be presented at the next meeting.
- The next ILEA meeting is scheduled for a future date (notice to be posted on the ILEA website).
- The final implementation plan and recommendations are due December 31, 2025, to the legislative council, Indiana Secretary of Education, IPS Board, and the mayor's office.
- The meeting adjourned after approximately 2 hours.
Meeting Transcript
Okay, good evening, everyone. As uh mayor of Indianapolis and as the chair of this new body, I'd like to officially call to order the inaugural meeting of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, or ILEA. We are here tonight to begin a new chapter of collaboration for the future of education in the city of Indianapolis. This alliance was created with a specific and an urgent purpose to address longstanding challenges in how we manage and share our educational resources, namely our school buildings and our transportation systems. The goal is to foster a vital partnership between the city, the Indianapolis public schools, and the public charter schools to better serve every student, every family in our community. I am optimistic of what we can accomplish together. This work would not be possible without the dedicated members of the alliance, committee members who are here. They have volunteered their time and their expertise. And I'd like to ask the rest of my fellow alliance members to briefly introduce themselves, sharing name, connection to this important work, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather start with than Dr. Alysia Johnson. Alisa, if you'd like to start, and then we'll continue alphabetically. Thank you. Mayor, is this it? Okay. Good evening, fellow committee members, and good evening community. Thank you for being here. My name is Alicia Johnson, and I proudly serve as the superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools. I am also a proud IPS parent. And in fact, this month will mark the completion of my tenth year as a member of Team IPS and my sixth year as superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, and my 23rd year in education. And I'm very proud over the course of my career to have served as a teacher, a teacher coach, an assistant principal, a principal, and a member of the district leadership team in both public traditional public school districts and uh charter schools during my career. And so I'm very excited that in this time where our educational community in many ways has been incentivized to take an us versus them or winners and losers approach to education. It's my hope that we can together rise above that mindset and come away with recommendations that will serve all of our students well. So thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Mayor. I'm I'm quite glad to be here. We'll just do it alphabetically. Tina, we'll start with you. Okay, good evening. Currently, I teach middle school math and the dual language and high ability programs at HL Harshman Middle School. I'm a member of the ITS Finance and Codic Committee, and I also negotiated the last decade of IPS teacher contracts as the Victory Chair for the Indianapolis Education Association. And this is going to be the perspective and the strengths and challenges of our public school district. And I see firsthand the different needs of our various school environments as well as the persistent inequities of our current unsustainable public education landscape. So every child in Indianapolis deserves authentic access to and support from a high quality and well resourced public school. Great. Next, Barato Britt. Can everybody hear me now? It's the first time. And uh where this alliance is concerned, I am a proud appointee of the IPS uh school board president as well as a proud member of uh the entire coalition. Um I am thankful uh to have been uh recommended and selected to serve in this opportunity, and I believe that I was uh selected because not just a long history of understanding the education landscape and the environment, but a very firm, uh very consistent, very committed focus for first and foremost on the students and families that we serve. Uh, my philosophy has always been regardless of station, regardless of access to resources, families should be trusted to uh and affirm to have access to the highest quality educational options available. Um I've I've worried less about the type and more so about what is being offered to our students. That does not necessarily that does not at all negate the importance of partnership and collaboration with our strongest district as well as the environment as it has uh evolved. I hope to bring again that perspective, that understanding, that historical context, but first and foremost, again, a very centered focus on our students, and I I believe that a pragmatic, a holistic and an equitable approach can be found in employing that approach. So very thankful to be a part and look forward to this work together with you all. Thank you, Barotto. And now City County Council Majority Leader, Maggie Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, everyone. Again, my name is Maggie Lewis.
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