Well, good evening.

Good evening, everyone.

I'd like to welcome all of you to the September meeting of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance.

And I'd like to also officially call this meeting to order and thank you all for being here.

I want to begin by noting that Angela Smith Jones informed us in advance that she is unable to attend tonight's meeting due to a family commitment.

Otherwise, all other members of the alliance are present and accounted for.

So we'll uh we'll make sure Angela finds out what she missed in tonight's presentation.

We're going to be taking a deep dive into transportation this evening.

You'll hear from multiple different perspectives.

And I want to thank in advance each of the presenters for being here this evening with us.

They each have a unique viewpoint with regards to transportation, and I think it will be very useful for us as we consider our legislative mandate given to us by the Indiana General Assembly in the area of transportation.

After the panel presentation, Mike O'Connor, the ILEA project manager will make some announcements regarding future work structures for our team.

And then, as in prior meetings, we will take public comment.

We ask that all comments stay focused on the topic of transportation.

I would like to thank Dr.

Johnson and the IBS team for hosting us here at Broad Ripple Middle School tonight.

Here to tell us a little more about the school and the various educational efforts taking place here.

Are Lucas Zartman, principal of Purdue Polytechnic High School Broad Ripple, and Jeremy Ball, principal of Broad Ripple Middle School.

I would like to ask Lucas to start and then hand the mic over to Jeremy.

Good evening, everyone.

I want to thank you for welcoming me here tonight.

My name is Lucas Zartman, and I have the privilege of serving as principal of Purdue Polytechnic High School here at Broad Ripple.

We opened our doors in 2019 with a bold mission to rethink what high school could be for young people here in Indianapolis.

Since 2022, we've been proud to call the historic Broad Ripple High School building our home.

This building is more than just a space, it's a landmark of education in this city.

In partnership with Principal Jeremy Ball and the Broad Ripple Middle School, we have been honored to help bring this space back to life as a place of opportunity and innovation.

We serve grades 9 through 12, and because we are intentionally small, we get to know our students deeply, not just as learners, but as individuals with unique stories, strengths, and goals.

When you walk our halls, you feel the energy of a close-knit community where students are supported, challenged, and celebrated for who they are.

At PPHS Broad Ripple, we are committed to breaking barriers for our students, helping them achieve beyond what they think is possible.

This is the culture we strive to instill in everything we do.

We do it by building strong relationships, setting high expectations for every single student, and then making sure we provide the support and guidance they need to rise to those expectations.

So when we talk about who we are, it's not just about a building or a set of facts.

We are a family, a launch pad, and a community where students don't just come to earn a diploma.

They come to discover who they are and to realize that they are capable of far more than they imagined.

Our student body is as diverse and dynamic as the city we serve.

At PPHS Broad Ripple, you'll find students from a wide range of racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds.

Some are the first in their families to pursue college.

Many are learning English as a new language.

Others receive specialized supports to help them thrive academically and personally.

This makes them experiences is one of our greatest strengths.

It means our classrooms reflect the real world.

Students learn alongside peers who bring different perspectives, talents, and life stories.

And it means we're preparing them not only for college and careers, but for the diverse, interconnected communities that they will one day lead.

At PPHS Broad Ripple, every student belongs, every student has a voice, and every student deserves the opportunity to succeed, and most importantly, the support to make that possible.

Families choose us because they see something different in our culture.

They see a school that believes every student is capable of greatness, even if that student doesn't yet believe it themselves.

They see a place where learning is hands-on and relevant, where students connect what they're learning in the classroom to the real world outside of their outside of it, and families know their children will be encouraged to stretch beyond their comfort zones, take on challenges, and grow in ways they never imagined.

They also see a school where students are known not just by their grades but by their passions, their goals, and most importantly, their potential.

It's the relationships we build, the high expectations we set, and the unwavering support we provide that makes families trust us with their children's future.

In short, families choose us because they know we will help their children achieve beyond what they think is possible.

At our core, we exist to grow problem solvers.

We want our students to leave us with the creativity to imagine solutions, the skills to build them, and the resilience to keep going when challenges arise.

This guiding purpose shapes every pathway and every opportunity we provide.

It's what makes our learning experience hands-on, real world, and future focused.

We aren't just preparing students for tests, we're preparing them for life.

Through our career pathways, students don't just study, they experience.

In engineering, they design solutions to real world problems.

In business, they create, innovate, and pitch ideas.

In agriculture, they tackle sustainability in the food systems.

These immersive opportunities empower students to step into fields where they once might have thought that's not for me, and then they discover, yes, I can do this.

We believe learning should be both rigorous and memorable.

Our students engage in experiences that'll carry they'll carry with them long after high school, such as projects, internships, and partnerships that connect them to the real world.

For example, during race week at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, our students have the chance to explore the world of racing engineering and technology, an opportunity few high schoolers ever experience.

Others give back by mentoring and teaching elementary students, learning the power of leadership and service in the process, and many volunteer at local nonprofits, building empathy and seeing firsthand how their time and talents can strengthen the community around them.

These experiences go beyond academics.

They shape our students into the leaders who understand that success is not just personal, it's collective.

They learn that true leadership means giving back, giving back, lifting others up, and using their gifts to make an impact.

One of the most distinctive parts of PPHS is our passion projects.

These let students dive deep into what excites them: aviation, journalism, ceramics, digital art, finance, motorsports, music, volunteering, and much more.

This year we've taken that a step further.

Students are leading their own courses in robotics and ceramics.

They're not just participants, they're teachers, mentors, and leaders sharing their knowledge and inspiring their peers.

Moments like these build confidence.

A student who once thought of themselves as not a leader suddenly discovers their voice in front of a classroom.

Another realizes that their passion can inspire others to dream big too.

Passion projects remind students that they are capable of achieving more than they believe.

But none of this matters without strong support.

That's why we've built comprehensive student success systems designed to ensure that every Lynx has what they need to thrive.

These systems are more than just academic help.

They include daily mentoring and check-ins, tutoring, after-school supports, and access to resources that meet students where they are.

Whether a student needs extra help in math, guidance in applying to college, or someone simply to listen and encourage them, we have structures in place to provide them.

In this way, our success systems reinforce our culture, strong relationships, high standards, and unwavering support.

Together, they ensure that no student slips through unnoticed, and every student has a clear, achievable pathway to success.

Athletics is another arena where our students shine with more than a dozen IHSA sanctioned teams.

Our students learn teamwork, discipline, and leadership.

And they're excel.

Just recently, Hayden Holder, class of 2027 was named to the IHSBCA All State First Team for Baseball.

One of only 40 athletes in Indiana to earn that honor, and the only student from a public school in Indianapolis.

Achievements like this remind us that our students can compete and succeed at the highest levels.

We like to say we're a small school with big results.

Our students are proving every day that when high expectations are paired with the right support, they can reach levels of success beyond what they imagined.

One of the clearest examples of this is the SAT.

A far greater share of our students meet the college readiness benchmarks than students across the state.

That means they're not just testing, well, they're showing they're ready for what comes next.

Whether that's college, careers, or both.

But our results go beyond a single measure.

In classrooms, you see students leading projects, presenting ideas, and solving problems with confidence.

In our hallways, you hear conversations about future goals that once felt out of reach.

These results come from our culture, knowing our students deeply, believing in their potential, and walking alongside of them as they rise to challenges.

At PPHS Broad Ripple, being small does not limit us.

In fact, it's our biggest strength.

Because it allows us to ensure that every student has the chance to achieve more than they thought possible.

Finally, our connection to Purdue University makes us unique.

Our students take real Purdue classes with tuition fully covered.

They work a lot alongside Purdue faculty and staff, and they even attend summer programs with tuition, room, and board all paid for.

For many of our students, this is their first experience on a college campus, and it can change everything.

They stop asking, can I do this?

And they start saying, I belong here.

At PPHS Broad Ripple, we are breaking barriers every day.

We are instilling a culture of high expectations, strong relationships, and unwavering support so that our students achieve beyond what they think is possible.

We are small but mighty.

We are innovative but grounded in care.

And most importantly, we are committed to every student who walks through our doors.

Thank you for your time today, and thank you for your partnership in shaping a brighter future for the education in Indianapolis.

Together, we can ensure that every student not only succeeds but thrives.

Hello.

Maybe not.

I think we lost your power.

We're back.

Maybe.

Yes?

No?

Anybody?

Yes, a little?

Not so much.

That's great.

Great.

Welcome, good evening.

My name is Jeremy Baugh.

I'm the very proud principal here at Broad Riverville Middle School.

Welcome to Vater Balls.

I have to ask do we have any rockets in the house?

Are there any alums?

Hey, welcome home, Rapids.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

We just celebrated an incredible homecoming this past weekend where we had a parade through town.

The school was back to life.

And one of the things I'm most proud about with our school, especially this year, is the really true sense of community.

It's seen here in the space.

It's open to the community.

It's open to all of us, and it's so great to see so many people that care and are passionate about education.

So thank you for being here tonight and welcome to Broad Ripple.

I'm really excited to tell you a couple of neat things about us.

First, we are six through eight this year.

As a part of Rebuilding Stronger, we're one of the very proud international baccalaureate middle schools.

Yes, thank you.

Appreciate it.

You surely could not have missed the beautiful peace flags that you saw on the staircase when you came in.

They're gorgeous with the sunlight coming in the windows.

We celebrated International Peace Day this past week, and we decorated the sidewalks in the front.

As a part of being an international community member, we want to really recognize the space that we're a part of and what our place is in that community.

So our kids went out and wrote messages.

They had signage all along the front before the rains came, it was beautiful.

People were honking and stopping along the way, and you could really feel the sense of our community behind our school.

We are very excited to be able to offer as a former music teacher, band and orchestra and choir.

It's great!

We have some incredible programs in design and STEM classes with a beautiful STEM lab upstairs.

We love sharing our space, it's an incredible opportunity for our kids.

But we have some beautiful things happening on the horizon here at Broaderville, and we're glad that you're uh here to be a part of that and see the change in the transformation of our school because this year really has been an incredible start.

We are so proud of our diversity in our school community.

We're so proud of the community we serve, and we're really thankful that we get to set the bar high for education here in our building.

So we're really thankful that you are here, and we appreciate you all uh choosing our space tonight.

Thank you.

And welcome.

Well, I thank you both for your presentations.

Uh, as we have indicated, uh, our plan is to continue rotating our meetings to different campuses across the city so that the members of this alliance and the community can better understand the diversity and the breadth of our schools here in Indianapolis.

Uh, to members of the alliance, uh, you do have um the slides uh in your meeting materials this evening that will shortly will be presented uh by our uh present presentation panel.

So uh now we begin our transportation uh uh panel with us tonight to discuss the impact and implications of transportation are the following.

Andrew Strobe, a now very familiar face to the members of the Alliance.

Andrew will discuss the current model of transportation that is used both by the IPS traditional schools as well as the IPS innovation network school.

Alisia Hervey, Alicia is a school leader for the PA school, an IPS innovation network school, serving grades K through A.

Alisia will be providing the perspective of both herself and the broader innovation network schools.

Tommy Reddicks.

Tommy is the school leader for Paramount Schools in Indianapolis.

Tommy will present from the perspective of an independent charter network that uses a mixed services model that Paramount Schools utilize.

And finally, Ryan Gall.

Ryan is the school leader for Victory College Preparatory Schools, and he will speak from the perspective of an independent charter network that has developed its own vibrant transportation system for its students.

So we'll begin with a presentation by Andrew Stroke.

Andrew Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Andrew, just a second.

Yes, we have some seats up front here.

Can you hold your hand up if there's a seat?

Uh unoccupied next to you, so that those who are standing up at the back might be able to take advantage of one of these seats.

Andrew.

Alright, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Good evening Alliance.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm Andrew Strofe, the proud deputy superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools.

Uh I came with a committee here.

Um is that better?

Okay.

So I've just leaved out.

Um, I'll have a few members of my team introduce themselves as well, and then we'll get rolling.

Hello, I'm Beachra Taylor.

I'm the director of transportation for Indianapolis Public School, and I'm happy to be here to support tonight.

Zach Maha, and Executive Director of Operation Strategies for IPS.

You can be here if you want to.

So I uh as we get rolling here, I do just want to name we've got a lot of you know, t-shirts tonight, a lot of people in the crowd.

Um, I think it it elevates the importance of the conversation around transportation.

I was uh talking to a school leader and their team on the the west side of Indianapolis last week.

You know, we were just talking about enrollment, recruitment, and a few other things.

Uh, the school has about 400 students, K-5, so it's it's uh you know the healthy scale.

And they were articulating to me that that almost any time a parent calls or comes in asking questions about the school, um, the first thing they ask about is transportation.

Uh, and so uh really excited to be here tonight to talk about that.

Also, uh Dietra and Zach.

I think it's really important that you hear from the experts.

Uh Dietra has been in particular director of transportation, I know it's been with IPS for for a number of years, and I don't know if anybody else in this city knows the day to day of transportation better than Dietra.

Uh and so I'll hit a couple high points on the on the slides, but really hope that you all and everyone else can hear her perspective uh on how transportation runs because uh we are very very grateful to have her leadership uh in IPS.

So uh I'll talk about current overview, some special populations, innovation partnerships.

Very very excited to get to hear from Ms.

Hervey uh the past school because that is is I think really one of the really unique things about what we've been able to collaborate on here in the city, and then some key takeaways.

There we go.

So from just a couple of slides for overview from a transportation perspective.

This is a cost allocation or cost distribution uh for 24 25 school years.

This just gives you a sense of uh expenditures and where we spend our money in transportation.

So you can see there the biggest piece of the circle, about 81% is yellow bus service.

So that's we contract that out with first student.

First student is a tremendous partner.

We've been using them for a number of years now.

Uh they are uh they do this across the country.

Um, and um I'll talk a little bit on another slide about route route optimization.

I'm sure Zach and Dietra can answer questions about this as well.

When we first started working with first student, we had about 400 routes that were run daily.

So if you just think about the scale, that's a lot of routes, and just through optimization, uh, we've gotten that down to about 280, and that fluctuates kind of week over week, year over year, but uh really speaks to I think um you know a lot of the good work that has been going on.

7.5% athletics or field trips.

Again, first student really supports us with that as well, some alternative transportation providers, uh, and then 3%, some athletic vendors, and then about uh a little less than one percent indigo student passes.

Uh so I'll talk a little bit more too about how we try to leverage in particular for high school students a partnership with with Indigo.

So this this gives you kind of some additional cost breakdown.

Our yellow bus service is projected to increase by about 4% in 25 26 of this current school year.

That's an escalator that we have in a contract with first student.

I'm sure that everyone in here has felt the impact of inflation.

Obviously, uh that gets passed on, right?

To uh you know, to uh to us in many ways.

So the cost of labor, uh just finding you know uh bus drivers, quite frankly, has been a challenge for school districts across the country, and so we've been able to manage costs, but but those will continue to go up under our current contract.

So you see, cost per student about 2300, and then we spin a third row where it says yellow bus 2425, about 40 million dollars year over year is the total cost for a yellow bus service.

So just to put that in context, that's a little bit higher than some of the like-sized districts uh across the country.

We've been measuring that you know over the years.

A really big reason for that, and you'll see a map here in a little bit.

We've really embraced choice, and so um I think transportation is really aligned with equity, and so uh we want to be able to provide more transportation for students, it's gonna cost more.

So we've really been kind of on that track for a number of years now.

We've been trying to optimize as much as possible, but again, about 40 million dollars a year is uh is what we spend on on yellow bus service.

So, in terms of how transportation works, again, these are just snapshots.

I'm sure Dietra can go deeper with questions, but eligibility is tied to a student's home address, and then they're assigned an enrollment zone.

I'll show that on the next slide.

We have WAP zones, so that's the distance to a school that determines the student's eligibility for bus service, and that varies by grade level.

So, for example, if you're a second grade student, uh, if you live within a mile or less of the school that you attend, then you will not get yellow bus service, you walk.

And you can see it's a little bit more for middle school and a little bit more uh for high school, and again, those are those are we'll talk about some of the trade-offs.

You know, that's that's some of the trade-offs there.

Obviously, I think uh, you know, having those walk zones a little bit less would be nice.

We used to have that, but as we've been trying to manage costs, that's been increasing a little bit.

I actually spoke to another uh family last week who uh they live within a mile of the school that they'd like to go to, but it's on the west side, traffic is is pretty tough, and so they made a decision to go to another school farther away just so they could get transportation.

Uh and so again, those are that's just the complexity of transportation in the city, and and again, hope that's what you kind of walk away with here.

Indigo partnership, uh, Zach is uh has been a really big part of navigating that relationship over the years.

So our high school students can utilize public transit if the journey is under 50 minutes, requires no transfer transfers, and so again, um we've got I think about uh a number of high school students that utilize that and so we're grateful for the indigo for that partnership, and then we've got a specialized transportation where we provide students by IPs and 504 plans, um specific transportation as designated by law.

So, what does this look like from a numbers perspective?

So you can see on the table there, uh 2425, that's where we were last year, and that uh so you update a little bit.

So we had about 1,550 students on yellow bus.

Again, you'll hear from this Hervey.

Innovation students on yellow buses is about 4,500.

Students on Indigo, about 900 because those are high school students, and then students in walk zones, a little over 2,000.

So that just gives you a breakdown of kind of what this looks like.

We are about a week away from uh ADM or count day, which is when schools across the state will lock in enrollment for the fall semester.

So these are our projected numbers for this school year in 25-26.

Those are still fluctuating a little bit, but again, you can kind of get a sense of of what this uh what this is looking like this year.

And I know this is tough to see, but this is this is our this is our district boundary, and so one of the the big things that we transitioned to about two years ago through rebuilding stronger was enrollment zones.

So where you are sitting right now, Broad Ripple Middle School is up in zone two, which is the pink up top.

And so uh what this does from a transportation perspective is if you are uh living like so, for example, I live in zone two, and so I'm the second grader and a pre-K student, they would get access to transportation in any school in zone two.

Uh and so that way, if we moved a couple blocks away, uh we don't get bounced out of an enrollment zone, we can still go to that school.

So we've been able to cut down on some student mobility uh over the past year.

Um, we've also been able to cut down on on transportation costs.

So that was a really another big piece of enrollment zone.

So we've gone from where I think choice in years past had been if you got into a specific program, whether it be CFI, Montessori, STEM, uh the a lot of times we were busing students all across this boundary.

You may have been going from the south side down in the blue, the light blue, all the way up to the pink in zone two.

And so uh what we are already seeing, and again, Zach and Dietrich will probably talk in a little bit more detail, but we're seeing uh last year, I think we had about $8 million reduction uh in expense, and so you know, again, as as we're managing increased labor costs and inflation, doing our very best to manage uh expenditures as well.

So I think enrollment zones have been helpful uh in that regard.

Uh but again, this just gives you a good visual of what the district looks like there.

So special populations, um, one of the things I know a number of alliance members have asked some great questions about special education, and I think um you know, if I were to make a request, I think as we as we have additional conversations in the coming months, I think diving deeper into special education would be really really important, and uh ESL.

Uh, I don't know if we can have a conversation about transportation or facilities without rounding it in uh in how we serve all students.

And so this is just a snapshot of special education again.

Hopefully, we can go deeper in the future.

But as you can see there on the first bullet point, nearly one in six IPS students is about 4,400, receive special education service.

The bottom bullet point, while most of the the special education budget is used in the classroom, comes out of our education fund.

Transportation services also incur pretty significant costs from a special education perspective, so that can include additional bus monitors again as required via IEPs, specialized uh equipment, harnesses, wheelchair lifts, etc.

And accommodations for routing and bus stops.

So if uh we have many students who will receive door-to-door service as allocated in their IEP, and so again, those are services we are very proud to offer uh at IPS, and um our percentage of special education uh student is increasing as percentage of our total enrollment in IPS.

So, again, as we just manage services and want to provide the best service possible, but also manage costs, that is a really important part of the conversation.

Another really important piece here is McKinney Vento.

Uh so this is uh the homeless assistant act.

So we're legally required to provide transportation for students who are experienced in homelessness, um, which we call McKinney Vento under the Homeless Assistance Act.

So for the 24-25 school year, we serve uh almost 900 students under this provision, ensuring they have access to education regardless of their living situation.

And and again, a big shout out to Dieter who manages that day in a day out.

A lot of complexity there, but again, we're very proud to be able to do that.

Innovation partnership.

So I think in Lions conversations past, we've talked quite a bit about innovation.

It's what makes us additionally complex, collaborative, innovative.

But since 2015, we've expanded the innovation network school to about 30.

17 of them we offer, and they they choose some sort of transportation services.

So you can see the list here, again, you'll hear from Ms.

Herbie here in a few minutes.

So that accounts for about 23% of our total transportation budget.

And again, you know, when we think about kind of over the years as innovation has evolved, I think that's been you know, kind of collaboration and access to resources.

As our charter partners did not have traditionally access property taxes, property taxes is essentially how you pay for things like transportation and facilities.

That is a way where we were able to collaborate.

And in many cases, a lot of our innovation partners, they're serving kiddos in the neighborhood, right?

And so we very much believe in the high quality of service.

And so our team manages that day in and day out, and we get very proud to do that.

The last bullet point there, uh last meeting we were at Adelante, which is an innovation school on the south side.

And I think just as a highlight of how our teams collaborate kind of on a daily basis, uh, we were able to kind of provide additional access and manage some some uh early access to zones for Adelante, and they saw a 33% increase in enrollment year over year.

So again, uh I think a lot of the conversations are about collaboration, are about how to do things uh you know, kind of in innovative ways, and I think uh many people in this audience and on the team, you know, I think we're we're trying to prove we're already doing a lot of that.

And so you know, hopefully uh you can learn more about that as well.

If you had a chance, I know a number of members of the alliance, uh, I think our board members did this a couple months ago.

Uh our COO, Dr.

Bill Murphy, does uh what we call buses with Bill.

Uh but it but it's just we did this last week, where we as adults, I do this as well.

We essentially uh we go uh on a bus ride as if we're students, and Dr.

Murphy walks through kind of we go through multiple different stops, and I think it provides a really good opportunity to talk about what you see on the screen here, which are kind of the levers or the factors that are in play when we're talking about transportation.

I think about transportation a lot, kind of as a big puzzle.

It is incredibly complex.

You make one move here, and there's a whole host of additional implications that come along with that.

Uh, and so we're trying to sum this up in terms of you pull one lever, what happens to the other.

And so we wanted to highlight these because again, as we're thinking through recommendations or you know what this could look like in the future.

Safety, obviously, ensuring students are safe.

That's the primary objective of our transportation team and providers, compliance, adhering to regulations and legal requirements, in particular for special education students, optimization, so maximizing efficiency by adjusting the number of tiers, pairing routes, managing route distances and ridership.

So, for example, you know, I think there's we would definitely, I think, like to offer transportation to as many students as we can, but if you want to continue to optimize routes, there's a trade-off there.

You might have students that might be on the bus longer, right?

You want to take you want your kid on a on a you know on a on the bus for an hour or two in the morning, which we've seen before.

So though those are the trade-offs in transportation that we talk about often as a team.

Logistics overcoming the real world challenges like staffing shortages, shortages, geographical barriers, families moving frequently.

Uh, I think Dietra and her team manage about 900 to a thousand change requests per week.

So that's when a family may move, um, you know, have some other you know circumstance where they're reaching out to our transportation team asking for a change request, their address change.

So, I mean that's that's that's a lot of traffic, right?

And a lot to to manage.

Uh and then efficiency.

So, again, talked about a little bit about this in terms of we are always trying to reduce route ride times and ensure we have timely pickup and drop offs.

Another shout out for Dietra, this, you know, at least since my time in IPS, year over year, it's getting better and better.

I believe last year we were about 85% of our buses, we're on time in the morning, uh, especially when there's a lot of construction going on across the city, that's a really big deal.

I think right now, start of school we're at about 75-80%, and I think uh and then the most that's not or within a 10-minute window of when they're supposed to arrive.

So, again, not perfect, always getting better, but we make sure we track that to ensure that we can continue to offer good customer service for families.

So there's a uh there's feedback.

There's there's an app that first student uses.

I don't know if anybody in here uses that.

Uh we've really been pushing on them to make that better and better, uh, which I've heard it has gotten better, right?

But in terms of responsiveness, that provides an opportunity so you can tell from an app, all right.

The bus is almost here, now I can go out to the bus stop, right?

We've got uh we've got a system internally where if you have an issue with transportation, you just send us, we call let's talk, send us a let's talk ticket, and the team gets right on that.

So again, that that's a lot to manage day in and day out.

Um, but again, transportation is uh obviously one of our priorities and very important to us.

So key take takeaways, as I mentioned, um, and I think you'll hear from probably everybody this evening.

Transportation is a major equity level.

So providing access to the various models and opportunities that we have in the city.

Transportation is a foundation for that.

Uh, we provide significant in-time contributions and support to innovation schools, and again, that's been something we've been proud to do for a number of years now.

Uh, and then future costs are likely to increase.

Uh, and so you know, the first students here uh talking again, they're managing labor, right?

They're a business, they need to hit a bottom line, and so not like you know, many other industries that we see right now, transportation is is only getting more expensive.

So I think as we as we kind of navigate those trade-offs, that is a really important piece of the puzzle.

Um so that that is it for me.

They're here for questions, we'll be the ones that'll dive in it, but there are any questions that anyone would like to ask me about transportation.

Um the complexity of this this puzzle, I think Andrew called it, which I think is a good word, is pretty apparent, and it's uh you know only gonna get more complex, I would guess.

And while we may be one of the more uh choice oriented cities in the country, we're certainly not the only one.

This whole puzzle seems almost tailor-made for some Silicon Valley company to come up with a product.

Uh what's going on in that in that world, the world of technology, the use of technology to manage the complexity of transportation.

Well, one thing I would like to say is we use several different pieces of technology.

Um is power school, and what we do is take that information that is internal students or register, and that feeds into our edge lock system that does our routing for us.

I'm sorry.

Um, so that feeds into our routing system.

So it's important that whenever we um at school think about technology that we make sure that it's one up here with whatever type of routing system we're gonna use, and it's very important because if it doesn't work and it doesn't mesh together, you're not gonna have a good outcome when you're creating your route.

Did that answer your question?

I'll just add a point on on that.

Is and we have over the past four to five years engaged with different vendors, some universities, some other folks that have helped us look at just from a routing optimization, because it really is sort of you're you're at this sort of traveling sales and the algorithm to figure out where the kids are going, where they're starting, the buses, and so we've done some different modeling of different systems, and I think by and large, those those don't differ too much than what we get through our current optimization that we're doing through edge-log.

So there is some sort of technology on the background that that really helps us do some of that routing efficiency and so forth.

But there's also just a lot of brute force manual labor required to validate the data, and when that system encounters the real world, it's just limited by the fact that you know time, space, and and and uh the limitations of uh of time in terms of navigating that.

So we have looked at some technology solutions that have helped us do some modeling and saw some benefit from that, but I think you know the reality actually is that is the hardest thing to navigate.

So there's no there's no silver pull it uh in this space, is what you're saying.

That's right.

That's right.

Unless we get some flying buses, other than that, you're you're just constrained by the fact that this bus, this amount of students going here and then time and geography.

Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

Um, in the interest of time, let's move along to uh the presentation by Alicia.

Alicia, good evening.

My name is Alicia Herbie.

I'm the founder and executive director of the PAC school.

We are a K through eight school on the far west side of Indianapolis.

We serve approximately 680 young people, and we open during the COVID year with about 500 young people.

We ground ourselves in experiences and exposure, and so our partnership with IPS around transportation is extremely important for the work that we work to do every day.

I'm gonna jump right in, and this should be really quick.

So these are our Denver demographics.

We serve about 30% of our scholars are African American, uh, 59% of our young people are Hispanic, 7% white, and 3% are multiracial to get us to about uh 680 young people.

Our diverse learners, 363 of that, 59% of uh multilingual learners, uh 363 of them.

English is their second language or third, and then uh about 12% of our young people are uh exceptional learners or special education scholars, and then from a transportation perspective, this is we so how we serve young people.

So about 50% of our young people are on IPS buses every day.

132 are car riders walkers, uh, and then 23 of them.

You heard them mention McKinney Vento.

23 of our young people receive McKinney Vento transportation, and that too is through Indianapolis public schools, and then 75 of our young people are in our after school program, so they aren't you know using transportation at all.

And let's get to the cost.

And so we again we opened in the COVID year and IPS transportation.

You can see for our first five years, we paid zero dollars in transportation.

This year we'll pay approximately 250,000.

Right now, we're paying about uh 22,000 a month that will increase because we're budgeted for 600 young people, but we actually are serving about 680 young people, so that 22,000 dollars will definitely increase once the uh once count day happens.

Uh for so that's for this year, but as you can see, we've not paid for those costs previously for summer learning in our first two years united way was managing the summer learning project, and so we had no cost associated with uh transportation that came to us.

You'll see in the three years since then, 22, 23, 23, 24, and 2425, you can see those costs associated, and our team we were trying to figure out why 2324 was so low, but you can see we're spending we in those other years, we're spending about 40,000 on transportation for summer learning.

We have uh about 200 young people who come to our summer school program in the summer, and so that's accounted for about 91,000 over the last five years.

Uh, and then alternative vendors.

So, as I said, we ground ourselves in experiences and exposures, so we are often on field trips.

Uh so this week alone, our kindergartners went to Total Farm to the Apple Arch Orchard, our first graders went today, our eighth graders went to JA Jobs Spark this week, and all of that is through IPS transportation, and so we don't take that for granted, but our alternative vendors, we often are spending if we're going on longer uh excursions, then we're we're using alternative transportation, or uh our seventh graders go to Purdue every year because it's uh because of the time zone and trying to get back in time for the end of the school day.

We often use alternative transportation when we have those kinds of situations.

There we have it.

That's what I've got.

And so I want you to know, I want to, I really want to say that from an innovation partner perspective.

Uh the the partnership we have with IPS around transportation is absolutely second to none.

Uh, we are truly grateful because we recognize the cost of transportation.

We don't take it for granted.

We know we have eight buses that come to the PAS school every day.

So if you just think about eight buses with eight drivers at 40,000 a year, and you saw what our costs were for this year, we recognize and are grateful for this partnership.

So thank you.

Questions uh the uh alliance members for each question?

Any questions?

Quick question, yeah.

Clarifying questions.

Do students who attend innovation schools have to fall within the zones that all traditional school students have to, and the the mile radius and all the path.

If that yes, so we are though we're a separate charter, right?

We're our own LEA, yes, they do, unless their families drive them to school.

Unless their families drive them to school.

So we have about 137 families who drive our scholars to school.

And so they don't, they can come from anywhere in the state, of course.

But if they are in uh if that yes, other than those young people's parents drive them, if they are on transportation, they must be in the zone.

Yes, absolutely.

Any other questions?

Just a quick question.

Sure.

Oh the 250,000.

That's so that'll be new in 2526, correct?

Are those payments is that the 22,000 per month that they remember?

Yes.

And that is from the operations levy, right?

So that money comes through there that that is the money that we use toward that transportation, and we are charged monthly.

So in our partnerships, we also use other services that we pay for, so they're not free to us.

Uh a part of that is uh technology, we partner for technology, all of that comes through our monthly uh transfer funds.

And those checks get written to IPS for the checks written to.

We it it comes off the top, right?

So the money passes through IPS and then comes to up, but it comes off the top.

So we don't have to actually write a check.

Comes through the pass.

Great question.

Quick clarification.

So what you're saying is that that number is a new number of brand new numbers.

That you previously were not.

Yes, and so as you can see in those previous years, we were paying nothing for transportation.

Now we are paying for that transportation.

Because of the property tax levy.

Because of the property tax levy, absolutely.

That's good.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Any other questions by alliance member?

Thank you, Alicia.

Thank you.

It's an honor to be able to speak in front of you and everyone else here in the room.

Uh I'll try to keep this succinct because I know there's a lot to accomplish tonight.

I just want to really pat you on the back for the work you're doing.

This is serious work, this is hard work, this is equity work.

Um, I think what we heard Andrew say in the beginning really ties us together nicely and the challenges that we face, and we're all in this together.

So wanted to give you a view of what's going on through our lens at Paramount Schools of Excellence and a bit of a hybrid model.

So I'm gonna go through and just give you a quick overview of who we are and how we're leveraging transportation.

So we're currently 2,150 students, K through eight in six Indianapolis campuses.

We also have campuses in Lafayette and South Bend.

Our enrollment numbers are on the left of the screen.

Um so we have some schools that are very mature, some schools that are just coming online.

Uh one of our schools, our online academy is in partnership as an innovation school with IBS.

Currently, we have busing offered for two of our Indianapolis campuses.

That's our Andrew J.

Brown Academy, serving right now 479 students, and our girls and STEM Academy serving 82 students.

Before I get into costs, let me say that this transportation issue is very new for us.

Up until last year, we did not have the ability to afford or provide transportation at any of our campuses.

Uh as we worked our partnership with Andrew Jane and Andrew J.

Brown Academy, they were busing nearly their entire student population on the Far East Side.

So when we became our educational service provider, we wanted to continue that same service.

And that really jumped us into the busing game to make sure that we could provide the same little service that the families were accustomed to.

At the same time, our girls from STEM Academy was a little farther away from our downtown east side core that we'd grown accustomed to.

It was more on the Northwest side in Washington Township.

And we wanted to make sure that we were still providing access from those in our wheelhouse in the downtown area to that campus.

So we have started busing there.

So currently those two campuses busing, no other campuses busing.

I think what's really important to see is the cost per bus per day per year, and how it impacts our organization and our drive to allow any parent from any area to have equity and equal access to our education.

It's a challenge.

Looking at our Indianapolis prices, currently we're being charged per student, $582.79 per day at Andrew J.

Brown Academy for six buses, $636,000 a year.

That represents roughly 12% of all of the income that that school receives in an annual year.

And so that's it's a very big piece of the pie just going for busing when you consider that staffing costs are usually between 60 and 70%.

Your facility costs between five and 10%.

You start running out of percents.

And so it's it's it's a large obstacle for us to deal with, especially when we're talking about their facility, a 240,000 square foot facility in need of a lot of help.

Looking at our South Bend campuses, we get a little cheaper prices up north.

I think the game is a little less competitive there.

$475 a day, $260,000 a year running three buses.

They use one bus and they also share a bus with Andrew Jake Brown Academy, so we give them a.5.

So we don't utilize busing at the campuses listed on this screen.

And as I mentioned before, the busing game is fairly new to us.

It doesn't mean that we don't want busing, but it does mean that there are some hardships we face to try to get from here to there.

We're gonna cover just a few of those.

That campus is in partnership with Purdue Polytechnic High School at the PR Mallory campus.

We could utilize busing at Paramount Brookside, our flagship campus serving 837 students, but it would take a very large-scale infrastructure change on the property to allow for buses to enter and exit the property cleanly.

Right now, if a city bus comes through in our property, it jams up our drive line and makes it fairly impossible to navigate.

So more work would need to be done there.

That would come at a hefty cost, but it certainly is out there as one of the goals for our organization to allow more people to access that facility.

Additional challenges, uh, we heard Andrew mentioned them in the beginning.

Uh location logistics.

Um that's certainly a big one for us when we're embedded tied into communities.

It can really be a challenge.

The all are known conundrum.

Um I applaud IPS for the zone change that they've made.

I think it's it's a real good move to come up with that one mile, 1.5 mile, those limitations in those zone areas because what we find in the charter sector is that uh independent operator is once you offer bus service to one family, every family then wants it, and so you can't slow grow your busing population.

You can grab one bus, but you're only serving 50 people, and then 350 more say, where's my bus?

And that's a practical thought for a school family that might not understand that it's challenging to do it all at once.

The cost and the annual rates and the staffing rates, the rise in costs, it's not just the cost of the buses, we've heard it's special needs, it's athletics, it's McKinney Vento.

And then it's bus staff, and whether or not you have to have bus riders, man, those buses coming off your own staff's payroll.

Um, those costs go up every single year, and those are real challenges for us that we face.

And then the dependability and safety.

Um, there are some yellow bus providers out there that are more dependable than others, and some that are cheaper than others.

Um, and it's it's it's paramount to us part of the pun that we we choose somebody who has a high level of dependability, so our routes are run on time, and our students are for the most part getting school on time, that they're getting there safely.

Uh that's that's everything for us to make sure that we're providing the right service and the right way to protect our families.

Any questions?

Questions for the alliance for Mr.

Rex.

I do, Tommy.

Think about historically the number of transfers, mobility, other things.

How have parents that if you survey the decided lack of access to reportation as something that was an impetus for them choosing to leave Germany?

If you didn't hear the question, it was how parents informed us on their need to have transportation, whether it's through their mobility and leaving the school or their in-body to become, and I'd say it's top of the list.

Um, we would always like to say, hey, our schools are the best, so you should want to be here.

And everybody could shake their head and say, sure, how?

And we get that a lot.

I think it's a very common theme.

Other questions from the audience?

Uh thank you, Tommy.

I have a question.

Um I live in Brooks Island, right?

I live in Brookside right across the way from that flagship location.

Can you tell me why you would open a school meant to serve a community like Brookside and not open it with transportation services to begin with?

Why would you do that if you're trying to be equitable on the start?

Yeah.

Hope everybody heard the question.

The question was it is it even equitable to open a school without a transportation plan?

Is that correct?

Right.

Because lots of, yeah.

And until recently, workside drive, it was really unsafe for kids to be walking.

My neighbor kids, Jimena and Edwin, you know, were walking that.

Um, and they they also actually got pushed out of Paramount.

Um, they now go to Brookside uh 54 because they have to serve all students.

Okay, and so the reason you see it a lot in charter schools is the finances just aren't there.

The financial equity between charters and the property tax dollars issue is.

What about your 380,000 salary?

What about the billionaire backers?

That funds a mind trust and rising.

Um we appreciate everyone's participation.

We do have time set aside for public comment later on in the presentation.

So we're gonna move on to the next presenter.

Brian.

Hi everybody.

Uh so the good news about going last is I don't think I have a lot of new or different things to say.

Uh the bang's not gonna last a lot of new or different things to say.

Um I started my career in Detroit at Detroit public schools, and when I moved to Indianapolis and started working with our charter school, um, I'd explain my mom what charter school is, and we said charter means choice.

But I think if you're gonna really say that you're giving families a choice, you have to get them there.

And that's been how we've looked at how we want to run our school in the end in the 20 years that we've been open.

Um, and I also acknowledge transportation's really hard.

Um I think a lot of what Andrew said, I'm gonna say some of those same things, but on a much smaller scale.

Um, just so you know we are.

We're a K-12 network located on the southeast side of Indianapolis with a uh mission app kids thrive in college and careers.

We support our kids two years after graduation.

We're at 21st year, we're an independent charter school, so we're not formally affiliated with IPS in any way.

We run three schools across two campuses on Southeast Indianapolis.

So we're tough right down just uh North Beach Grove, just south of Howe.

We've got 1300 students, 90% of our students are um economically disadvantaged, 90% of our students are um students of color, and then we're a public school for Indianapolis families.

So before I'll say it again, we believe transportation is the number one barrier for parents to have choice to where they want to send their kids.

We commit 1.7 million dollars annually, significantly smaller than IPS, but it's a little over 10% of our budget comes right off the top to provide transportation for our kids, and that's just base transportation, that's not um special needs transportation, that's not athletics transportation, that's not field trip transportation.

All of our services are provided by an outside busing company.

We use Miller transportation for our contracted services.

We've got a thousand students annually with 24 routes and over 400 different stops.

So, what's it look like?

You look at the map, this is where our schools are located in the city.

We try to target our enrollment around the Southeast Quadrant of Indianapolis.

80% of our bus routes come in that Southeast Quadrant with about 20% of our routes coming through outliers, and some of those are from Kenny Benso families, some of those are special needs families.

There's a little bit outside of the target area.

When you look at it from the way our parents look at it, these are all of our different bus stops uh in this part of the city.

We run satellite stops, our race is we try to get about a half a mile from every family or less.

The target's really half mile, curve to curve for students with special needs.

Um, and then we've tried to make our stops static over time so that as we recruit families now from jump, here's where we're able to provide you busing.

Um we don't have zones like IPS does, but we do have fixed routes, and in a lot of ways we function very similar to IPS in terms of this is where we have a stop.

We try to be up front with families about that in the enrollment process as early as we can so that we're not blindsiding anyone when they say they want to come here, and then we can't figure out how to get them here.

So those stops move a little bit over time based on family needs and family demand.

Um we try to make it as static as possible.

And then I've already said some of these other things.

We run an internship program for our kids, so every Friday we bust our kids all over the city.

100% of our juniors and seniors participate in our internship program at no cost to the family, no cost of the transportation.

We bust them to over 40 different internship sites every other Friday throughout the entire junior and senior year.

We do 30 field trips a year, we do 10 college visits a year, and then we provide transportation for all of our athletics.

We run after school programming two nights a week where we run some reduced bus routes.

We just can't simply afford to run all of our same stops for after school programming.

But the goal is that 300 of our 1300 students are able to participate in after school through busing, again, at no cost to the family, so that we just feel it's the right thing to do for them.

And so that's to put together strengths and challenges we experience.

I think these are going to be very similar to what you've heard today.

We don't run door-to-door stops for families.

Satellite stops, they create maximum weaves that allow us to meet more families to recruit more kids at a wider radius.

However, it is inconvenient for families.

We process about the same probably percentage of transfers every single week that IPS does.

We do 100 transfers a week.

We sort of a highly mobile family, a highly transient student population, and our goal is that we can reroute them to one of those new stops within three days of the transportation request.

We also partner heavily with daycares, the boys and girls club, the after school and community centers, and we make sure that every single one of those has a stop at their center to maximize convenience for the families so they don't have to pick up their child from the bus stop and their child care stop in addition to that.

And then because we run a K-12 program, this is going to be a strength and a challenge.

We're going to put all of our students on the same buses.

So we don't have to stack our bus routes or have parents show up with the bus at different times.

We're able to have your whole family go to one stop, get on the bus, go to our campus, and then transfer to our second campus, and then we ride it in reverse on the way home.

And then again, strength and challenge.

There's staffing associated with running transportation.

We can't just partner with Miller Transportation and say do the routing and then hope it'll work out for all of our families.

We have a full-time staff member dedicated to doing the route changes to processing.

We have all of our academic staff process any bus discipline that comes off of the buses.

And then we have community engagement coordinators that work with our families to make sure they are reaching out to them on a weekly basis about attendance and any busing challenges.

We're working with an outside vendor, and there's not a lot of competition in the market.

I think there's really two shops you can go to.

You can go to the first student, you can go to Miller.

We had another bus vendor a while ago that was, as you've heard other folks say, I mean, it was a borderline criminal violation of what was happening with not showing up, drivers calling off the morning off, our students having to stay to school an hour and a half late.

So I think finding a reliable vendor that shows up, consistently runs the routes, runs the routes with fidelity, is a real challenge as you get into this.

And then I think continuing to provide behavior supports, knowing that we're not hiring funding the drivers, we're not screening them for our same school values, and figuring out how do we provide driver education and support to what's probably the hardest part of a student day as you get them to and from school in an environment that is now K-12 instead of their isolated school, and is with kids they might not see throughout the course of the day.

So continue to build community, do driver education, make sure those bus routes are safe and run well, is a challenge.

And then I think vendor capacity, finding drivers, finding drivers that stick around, they're willing to learn your kids' names, they provide safe and consistent routes.

It's a challenge for our bus vendor, I'm sure it's a challenge for your bus vendor.

It's just a challenge in general.

Um as we talk about increasing labor costs, bus drivers still aren't, they're not making a ton of money driving buses, and so finding folks that want to stay because they love the kids and want to do good work with the kids is a real challenge.

Um, and then again, I already talked about this the staffing we have along with it, and just the amount of funding.

We take 10% off the top to figure out how to run this system, and we'll do it every year.

Busing is never something that's on the table, even if we have to go through budget cuts.

We'll find other places because we believe that it's essential for our families and it's essential for our organization.

Uh and that's all I have.

Alliance questions to our lines.

Uh question, but uh feel free, and we have the panelists to answer it, and then I'll I'll give a comment to contextualize why I'm asking the specific question.

Um so we've looked at uh some some good data on the sped side and understand some of the transportation costs that go with that.

How confident are we in the data around other special populations like McKinney Pento?

Everyone else wants to answer as well.

What do you mean by competent?

Uh the numbers that are reported.

How confident are we that they're an accurate representation of the true population?

I think they are deflated numbers.

Okay.

I'll just say that outright.

Um I think that when you're talking about a homeless population, they're gonna have to disclose that to the school.

And I think if you're already struggling, being able to consistently disclose that to the school to get the support that you need, and then to have the school or the network or the school corporation respond to that.

And if you guys feel free to tell me a comment on this, um, I don't know if you want to answer if you can answer that better than me, but um if any if any of the other presenters want to respond to the question, please do so.

And you'll probably do it with much more eloquence.

So one of the things that we have so one of the things we have in place here at IPS is we have a bikini V and Vental liaison that supports us with this, and we track that data anytime a student is enrolled in IPS and needs that type of support, and we have a whole portal that we use to track that data.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you.

So why I'm keying in on a special population that seems small, is because uh as I think everyone has stated here, transportation is more than just logistics.

It is one of the largest equity levers that we have to ability to control.

So just just to put it in context, you know, as we discuss transportation options, I think it's imperative for us to think about one, these special populations that may be small are drastically under identified.

Um we saw 879, I think is a figure for IPS.

Um, some would say that's still in under identification.

Uh charter schools is significantly less than that.

Uh but as we think about these smaller populations, when we design systems or opportunities, when we solve for those who have the highest barriers, we solve for everyone else.

Um, and so like that's just a perspective to bring into this.

Um, whether it's the spent population or the McKinney Bento population, when we contextualize transportation, if we can solve it for them, we can solve it for everyone else.

Other questions from alliance members.

Yeah, Ada.

Sorry, this angle is extremely awkward.

Um I noticed that uh for Victory College Prep, a lot of your satellite bus stops are far outside of the IPS boundaries.

So were this uh ILEA to recommend um some sort of authority that would unify busing, and that like how do you feel that that might impact your ability to draw from outside of our boundaries?

Uh I mean I it's it we're gonna lose those families.

I think that's the short answer to that question.

Um and then we would have to figure out what supplemental what supplemental transportation we were able to budget and afford, and then I think we would just have to re-examine how we operate.

Um so potentially putting busing under our like under some other group's control could negatively impact what you're providing to your students at this time.

Yes.

I think there's there's gonna be trade-offs in anything we do.

I think when you go to a one-mile walk radius or a half mile walk radius, you're always examining those trade-offs, and then you have to figure out what those trade-offs are.

You know, if the benefit is better negotiation, I think hearing just hearing all four presenters talk today, what we're paying per bus per day is drastically different.

What Tommy is saying is drastically different than my bus contract, and from talking to other charter leaders, my bus contract came at my ability to negotiate it.

Um, and so I think if you have someone who is a good negotiator, you're gonna get a better rate.

If you have someone who is able to fill buses and do more bus routes, you're gonna get a better rate.

And I think that's another trade-off.

So is there is there bargaining power in the larger collective, and does that create the savings that still still allows us to provide that transportation solution for some of our fringe students that are more on the outskirts?

I think it's not as simple as it's not binary, right?

Nothing nothing's one or zero.

It's it's I'm just gonna repeat things with everybody else said it's a puzzle with 8,000 pieces that I think we all have to be a part of thinking through together if we're gonna find we we've operated for so long looking out for self-interest instead of thinking like what's good for the kids in Indianapolis, that if we're able to figure that out together, we'll find some signals that are asked for other questions from all ISO.

So I'm just curious prior to all of the legislative changes as it relates to uh funding.

What were some of the trade-offs at a high level that you that you all purposely chose to either cut or defer in order to provide transportation services?

Is that for me or for everybody?

So one of the things we had to look at as a district is like the high school transportation and the partnership with Indigo.

That was one of the trade-offs because a lot of parents aren't comfortable with putting their families on public transportation.

But you have to look at other districts around the country and see what's working for them, and so that's some of the trade-offs.

But one of the things I want parents to know when we did partner with IndieGo is we thought about safety and thought about what video would look like and different things of that sort.

So we didn't just put children on IndyF.

We I meet with Indigo every month to discuss things that might come up or different things like that.

We also have access to video, different things of that sort.

So you have to think of what's going to work in the H.

So of course we wouldn't want to put an elementary child or someone of that age group, but high school students, we're giving them more independent.

The IndieGo passes, they're able to use them year round, they're able to go to job.

So it helps support them.

Any other perspectives from uh the presenters?

I would just add a note on indigo is they also have capacity constraints.

And so the idea that we could just say, well, let's just put all the high schoolers and do it that way, also is not a realistic solution because they are experiencing the same capacity constraints, the same labor concerns that we are all trying to navigate as well.

And so I just wanted to name while we are using it, you see it's 0.1%.

Back in 2018, we had an organization recommend to us that we could do it for everyone.

It was not a realistic recommendation because it's actually not possible.

We don't have the content to be flight teacher.

And if you're not in a central downtown area running high school, like kids were to come to my school on an indigo bus, they'd do four transfers at minimum.

Um it's just not realistic.

And I think that's a great point on the indigo.

Sometimes you have folks who are thinking about transportation, school transportation, and they might have a suggestion like that.

What if you put all of your students on Indigo?

And what they don't think about is you take a school, for example, like Crispus Attics, where you might be drawing students from a large geographic zone who are getting on multiple indie go buses to get to addicts, but in the afternoon, we might have 1,200 high school students waiting on one stop for one bus and think about how many buses need to come to service all 1,200 students, and you can just imagine the challenges that might come with a group of a thousand high school students together for a couple hours waiting for buses to run.

So when you think about the the transportation networks and compatibility with that, you run into these constraints like peak demand and just network capacity.

Other questions from all that's a quick question.

Yep.

Andrew, I want to ask a quick question about the numbers in your presentation.

I assume this is based on overhead, but you're showing 2300 $300 per student going up to 2500.

And uh, but I assume that includes some overhead factors.

Like victory prep their numbers and paramount their numbers for transportation per student.

I assume it's based on some type of overhead factors.

I know it's apples apples, just explain the difference.

Yeah, I think some of that's overhead.

And if if uh others in here the question, the 2200 per student at the very top row there.

Some of that is overhead.

I think some of that is also the number of schools we have in a boundary that is that is really funky looking, right?

And so, you know, again, we really I think jumped in probably about 10 years ago choice environment.

Right now, we still have all of our high schools or all choice.

So if you live on you know the east side and you want to go to George Washington High School, uh, this is a decision we made back in 2018, largely based on the equity conversation.

We said great, you can get transportation, and so you know, there are you know still ways to optimize it, uh, but I think still also challenges within our boundary that are represented in that 2200 per student.

Thank you.

And to just be more concise teacher, you have to five people on your team, so it's not you know a huge transportation team at IFS five team members who are then supporting and working alongside first students, yeah.

And just to add some color in that one, in terms of like the overhead or cost structure, like most of that is already built into our contract with first students, so we we contract the first student who owns the buses, owns and operates their bus base, and so most of that overhead is built into the rate structure that we have with first student.

So that that uh overhead is reflected in terms of personnel, their staff, routing services, um, technology, real estate is built into the route breaks that we pay directly to per student based on the number of data routes that they brought.

Thank you.

How often is that contract negotiated?

Um we uh the initial contract with first student was beginning in the 2021 school year.

I think that and then we extended that, and I think that goes through two more years.

What more years?

We have two more years, so that I think that expires in the 27-28 school years, so we have two more years after the current school year.

And we did previously have uh contract with Durham, a different transportation provider.

So we went through a uh formal process of switching vendors, which is a as you can imagine, just a heavy lift in terms of the operational capacity to do that.

And as others have noted, for a city of the size of Indianapolis, there are actually relatively few transportation services providers in serving the city of Indianapolis.

Um you can compare it to a city like Cincinnati or Minneapolis, similar you know, demographics and sizes have many more transportation service providers.

So, in fact, when we went out to bid in 2021, we only had two bids submitted uh for that that contract.

So it's a relatively uh small vendor market locally.

The other thing that I would like to add to that piece is when we went into this negotiation with first student, um, it was in the middle of COVID.

And what we experienced was a high amount of drivers that did not want to come back to work.

They went off and did other things.

So we had to think about how we were going to put drivers into the seat.

So, what we did as a district is we negotiated with our students and then we increase our um rate of pay for our drivers in our business to make sure that we can support me to make sure that they were supported as far as their income and making sure they were good.

But over the years, we've also had to experience a 4% increase every year with that contract.

Any other questions from alliance members?

Yeah.

Oh, okay, just I guess I want to make sure I understand the numbers as a mapping person, particularly with the IPS contract, and then we discussed different prices per student.

The 2300 dollars per student that's increasing uh to 2500, does that purely the like first student contract divided by the number of students, or does that include the additional costs that we mentioned before, say like you know, in one of our slides that talks about the additional costs for our students with high high needs, our students with Kenny Vinto, is that included in that 23, 2500 per student?

Like those additional costs?

Yeah, so that the per student or rate that you see there is just sort of an all-in transportation.

So if your numerator is uh uh number of students and then denominator is the participant costs.

Yeah, and that includes all those additional special services that we do.

So I guess then I'm also thinking to do any of the other providers like who pay for their own transportation.

I'm just curious, let's look do you have any sort of high like high needs, special transportation options for your family?

So, like, you know, we don't we have lifts and we have um you know additional bus aids and things are those things that what I have to do for what we pay for is very limited compared to what IBS does.

I think I think that's just honest.

I'm just trying to understand all those different differences in prices.

Other questions well, thank you to all four of our presenters this evening.

It is a very complicated issue, but uh you have been thoughtful and uh and helpful to the other of the alliance as we grapple with these same issues before getting to our uh time for public uh comment, uh I do want to take a moment to then refer uh to Michael O'Connor, who is uh serving as our the alliance's uh consultant uh consultant uh and Michael uh is prepared to discuss the task force structure and the next steps uh that the alliance will engage regarding task force work product and recommendations back to the ILEA for its consideration.

So uh Michael, there you are.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh this week I had the chance to speak with each member of the ILAEA about our move to task forces.

The mayor and the superintendent have asked each of you to join one of two task forces a facilities task force or a transportation task force.

I've heard confirmation from all of you about your individual task force.

Tomorrow we'll begin the process of scheduling task force meetings throughout the month of October for each group.

The work product of each task force will be to produce a series or set of options for the broader ILEA, all of you, to consider as you work through both maximization of education facilities and to develop the best transportation options for the entire education spectrum in our city.

The individual work meetings of the task forces will not be public meetings.

The outcomes or the options developed by the task forces will be presented in a joint meeting of both facilities and transportation task forces in what we aim to be an early November meeting.

That meeting will be a public meeting.

Final decisions or recommendations will then be considered by the entire ILEA throughout the remainder of the fall in public meetings prior to our final report adoption and statually required by December 31st.

Any of the YS members have questions of Mike.

Yeah, mayor.

Mike, how will the task forces be staffed?

We will staff both with assistance from the mayor's office and IPS on subject matter experts regarding issues, and we'll bring in other experts as necessary as we develop those models.

So we'll have somebody in charge, the note takers that will be full of staff.

Other questions?

Okay.

Now is the time to open the floor for public comment.

As a reminder, we do ask that comments focus on the topic of transportation.

And I would now uh turn it over to uh Shana Cavazos to facilitate Sharina.

All right, goodie.

Good evening, everyone.

Um, as in prior meetings, this is a little tall.

We are following the public comment procedure shared on our website.

Based on the sign-ups for this evening, I think it's about 36.

Each speaker will have one minute to speak.

When your name is called and the timer begins, proceed until the timer sounds.

We'll be speaking at this microphone over here.

Uh please be respectful of the time limit and finish comments promptly at time to allow as many people as possible to speak.

Please keep your comments centered on the work before the ILEA and know that alliance members will not answer questions or otherwise respond to comments.

Comments should address the alliance as a whole, not individual members or staff.

Disruptive or offensive comments or similar behavior may result in a five-minute recess, and if it continues adjournment of the meeting, though we don't expect that that will happen.

Comments submitted online prior to tonight's meeting and emails directed to the alliance were shared with alliance members and will be posted online in the days to come.

We thank everyone so far who has shared their thoughts with us.

First tonight we will hear from Kate Scott and then Angela.

Shall I start?

Maybe the timer is ready to go.

Alright, we begin it'll begin.

Okay.

This used to be my chemistry classroom.

I had I had comments prepared.

Excuse me, I'm sorry.

Could you please double check that the mic is on?

You might have to be a little closer than you think.

Yeah, no, I think this is good.

So I had comments prepared about how neighborhood schools uh, if they have to share their student allotment and transportation with charters, charters should have to share their private funds with neighborhood schools, but I'm not gonna we all want the same thing, and that is for our kids to get to school safely and on time.

Um considering that I have one ask for your recommendations to the legislature, and that is that whatever happens, I want her in charge of classes and him and him and her and the school board, who should all be in charge of the posting and have full control of and access to the funds provided.

We don't need more legislature appointed boards or committees or privatizations that don't have the knowledge and the accountability to put something so intricate and efficient into place.

Thank you.

We're here from Solania Williams.

Hi, my name is Angela Lee.

I'm a mother of two IPS students at Theodore Potter School 74 who use the bus.

I'm happy with how the transportation served my students and getting them to and from school safely and on time at a bus stop close to our home and with the ability to track their bus on the app.

The IPS School Board with its democratically elected and publicly accountable board has already demonstrated that they have the tools in place to make improvements to our transportation system.

During the year-long process by which they developed the rebuilding stronger plan, they were able to evaluate the needs of the entire IPS Gallery community with lots of time for community input.

They had to make some hard decisions, but they did so with the entire community in mind, not just in regards to the welfare and opinion of individual schools, as would happen if charters manage their own transportation.

The elective IPS board already saved transfer dollars by switching to an opt-in transportation system and by creating enrollment zones.

We do not need a new board with members who are unelected and not accountable to the public.

Electric board to ensure that our transportation governance remains transparent, accountable, democratic, and locally controlled.

My name is Salonio.

I am a grandmother of three grandchildren in In N Out.

There's two of our children attend Circle City Prep.

My biggest concern is that they don't have reliable way to and from school.

I believe your decision should be guided by safety, fairness, and access.

Every child deserves to get to school safely without the family struggling every single day to make it happen.

Families like mine should not have to worry whether the kids make it to school.

Our focus should be on their learning and future.

Uh worry, their resources are not always shared in a way to put the children first.

Some schools have reliable buses and others don't.

Families end up carrying the burden when transportation is left out.

If transportation isn't available, it creates gaps that hurt kids, attendance and learning.

Some quality isn't just about school quality isn't just about test scores, it's about whether the children can get there safely every day and have a support they need.

If the student is missing school because it's no way, the school can't truly be called high quality.

Quality means removing the barriers so kids can focus on learning.

I believe that IEL desires to put quality first in the schools that what you all were brought here for.

Okay, we're gonna move on then to Lina Soche and then Rushka Castro.

Sorry for my.

Yeah, thank you for listening to parents and thinking about ways to make school transportation better for our funding.

Good afternoon.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Ruchka Castro.

I'm a mom of three children currently at Global Club Academy.

Right now, my kids do have transportation.

But I believe some children have need a safe and reliable way to get to school, and not all parents should be worrying about their kids and how they would get to school every day.

Even though we do have transportation, there are uh I don't want to say not after school buses for activities like saying for soccer, music, or for saying like math support in classes for after school.

Some people, same as me, pay up to $800 just to help to get that extra help for your kids, and then it adds up when you can have multiple children, multiple classes.

And they're not all on the same days.

So the transportation would be extremely helpful in that part.

So they would get to their meeting if they need extra math or science.

Because everybody wants everybody to do good in school.

And the teachers, of course, they want that, but they can only help out so much and they have the transportation that would help them out too.

We're giving the kids their scores and then would go on.

So I just would be real helpful.

You all helped out in that part with getting them transportations because everybody needs it.

Hi, Catherine Harpa, parent of two children attending IPS schools.

After seven years with the district, this is our first year opting to use the yellow bus system.

This has been an incredible support for our working family.

My girls have gained independence and they've made friends with other children who live nearby.

My youngest attends a dual language school in our zone and has a free 15 minute ride to school.

My oldest continued the dual language program right next door, where the high ability program is open district wide.

So to think about her trip home is over an hour.

I want us to remember that IPS is a district with a long history of challenges, including very long bus rides and bus and children out of our community.

As this district continues its rebuilding stronger initiative, it's crucial that we utilize the district's expertise to prioritize prioritize transportation efficiency.

No other organization has done the intensive, extensive work or has the community knowledge to manage the complexities of our vast district like IPS does.

We must leverage the research and investments that have already been made to ensure our children aren't spending two hours on a bus each day.

They deserve to have more time learning with their family and land in the communities.

Is Santiago here?

Good evening, IDA members.

My name is Bonnie George.

I'm a Haitian immigrant, a father and a teacher in IPS.

And I am today guys and five little two boys that match book 63.

We are here tonight just as parents as partners in the movement.

In August, we help deliver together with our vision, a share of roadmap for student success created by families, educators, students across IPS.

Tonight we're delivering something else, 2,000 signatures for both the help and gather through the parents' communities and the members who live in IPS and believe that division had 2,000 voices right here.

When I trusted them doing a police, I didn't know how to navigate the school system.

And I remember sitting in meetings about children education, trying to stand acronyms and policies that felt like a foreign language.

I could support my own kids because I'm a teacher.

But I saw so many of the immigrant families struggling feeling invisible.

I felt that invisibility too.

And as a dad of two autistic boys, I had to fight for services for understanding and dignity.

The schools have done so much to support them, and I am grateful.

Our stories are on common.

They are happening in every neighborhood, of course, every school type, and that's why we give them together.

Parents, youth, teachers, child school, IPS, and everywhere in between to white disvision.

And what we want is better transportation with accountability, and we want IBS and child school to come together.

Thanks.

Next we'll hear from Adriana Coward and then Christina Smith.

And after Christina, we'll hear from Brianna Deans and Mike Saradakis.

You want to line up that'd be helpful, thank you.

Hi.

My name is Adrian McCloud.

I'm an IPS parent and I'm also the music teacher at school 96.

The topic of transportation is undoubtedly complex because it encompasses so much more than simply getting students to school and home in the afternoons.

My husband is the band and orchestra director in Arlington Middle School.

His students, along with others across the district, have the exciting opportunity to perform at Bands of America Grid Nationals next month.

However, due to busing constraints, the students have to secure other transportation if they wish to remain at the competition to experience the performances from the best marching bands across the country.

It doesn't stop there.

Our students face barriers participating in events such as jazz band, concert band orchestra and choir contests, and other performance and adjudication opportunities through the Indiana State School Music Association.

This is a list of the over 300 schools across the state of Indiana who are able to participate in these events with very little barriers because they have adequate transportation and they do not have to thin out their resources for independent schools that are not part of their districts.

Without them, our students will lose the ability to grow into the human beings they're meant to be, thinning out the already scarce resources and IPS will greatly harm the education of our students.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name's Christina Smith.

Oh hi, my name is Christina Smith.

We continue to hear charter operators complain about their lack of sufficient facilities and transportation funding.

They share stories and bring people in to plead for the publicly elected school board to capitulate to right-wing legislators and provide companies and private companies to give away our minimal resources, all because of their choice to open when they shouldn't have.

You see, for years, charter schools have chosen to open and shut like revolving doors.

There's no accountability to the communities who have funded each venture and scam, losing billions in public education dollars.

There's been no accountability to the students who have lost vital years of education and subpark facilities.

Irresponsible and negligent charter operators and authorizers like Mayor Hogsett's office need to be held accountable.

Most of the schools of Hogsett's office have authorized do not provide transportation.

Sports facilities are sufficient and equitable facilities.

He has authorized charters for multiple schools with no location at all.

He's never conducted a district-wide needs assessment to ensure that new schools are needed, wanted, or fiscally responsible to create.

Under him, one in three charters have closed, and he is responsible for overseeing an insufficient and inequitable, unstable schools for children.

Good evening.

Parents, students, ask yourselves why organizations like the Mind Trust and Brides NB, who are backed by billionaires in New York and Silicon Valley, back uh, you know, who their transportation is luxury cars, gaps and private jets.

Why would they back opening schools promising the world without basic bus services?

Why did some schools refuse transportation when offered it in partnership by IPS?

Why do these organizations claiming to serve the most in need?

Uh open schools where choice means like others have described, you have to have a car, gas money, time around your jobs for pickup and drop off.

These works chose to open without transportation, and they chose to start serving inequitably.

As we saw with uh Fairmount.

Why is it at a loss of resources for other students in need to solve the problem that these CEOs created?

Why, why do they who claim to be fighting for you from gated communities on 96th Street transporting their kids to exclusive private schools, have more credibility to you than your fellow community members and other parents who benefit in no way from lucrative contracts?

Join us in the fight for fully funded, fully public, fully democratic schools.

Thanks.

They do two things usually.

One, not enough buses, even in IPS already.

And uh two, safety.

Uh, we heard plenty about uh the universal lack.

I will not belabor it.

I want to talk about safety.

Safety is serious, which is why I find it absurd that the Hawks had appointed I wea majority, which is increasingly in lockstep with them, should be trusted with the safety of our children.

Should we seriously believe that the Hogside Administration has the best interest of children in mind?

The same administration, which is a which had a special law written so that this board's deliberations were not subject to Indiana's open door laws like every other government body.

Who let the same administration that let Thomas Cook run wild on the women of City Hall, whose appointee to this board, Maggie Lewis threw out duly elected counselors Krista Carlino and Jesse Brown from the Democratic Caucus for daring to talk about the corruption and abuse within the party, undermining the rights of tens of thousands of their constituents.

What we see is a lack of accountability.

We need democratic school boards, not the Republicans telling us how our school should run.

And it's because our kids do not have the option to take yellow buses.

You're here to discuss how to divide and spread our publicly funded transportation to charter schools across Indianapolis.

And I took time out of my evening when I should be grading.

Um to ask what surplus transportation are you talking about?

You seem to be laboring under the delusion that we have a surplus of buses to offer you when the reality is that my public school kids, the kids you also serve, are already forced to take the city bus or find alternative means of transportation, leaving them and their families frustrated and confused as to why their school, which they chose, does not have the means to transport them safely to school.

It looks like my student Layla was forced to change schools in her senior year and give up her IU Health Fellowship, an opportunity exclusive to my school because she did not have a safe way to get there.

It looks like our beginner ENL students who have to learn the city bus in a foreign language, an unfamiliar city because we don't have a yellow bus for them.

You demand equity, you demand resources, ask your wealthy benefactors because we are already forced due to the advocacy of people in this room to do more with less and deny our students' basic accommodations.

I'm here for my kids and my colleagues who show up every day and deal with the fallout of scarcity and lack of funding and resources imposed on IPS.

And I wonder, how can you claim to support all kids when my kids' needs are treated as an afterthought?

Thank you.

Hi, I'm a taxpayer and a university educator.

Uh this issue's actually not that complicated.

We don't need flying buses.

We need to eliminate the self-imposed complexity caused by so-called school choice.

We don't need to bust from every part of the district to every other part of the district.

We need to end the Swiss cheese network of credit authorizers, end the revolving door of new charter schools, make the democratically elected school board the sole authorizer and fully fund public schools, and then this issue becomes a lot simpler.

If charter schools are so innovative, let their billionaire donors bail them out rather than use public dollars.

Instead, they come here meeting after meeting to describe their bad decisions, to spend untold dollars creating the illusion of equity and a false grassroots and astro target.

If to the electives in this room, I hope you see that the writing's on the wall and that the people will not stand by if you sell out our students to the highest bidder.

There will be electoral consequences.

I like my school.

I like my school.

I like that my school had a lot of different types of kids.

Some of them my friends speak different languages, some live with their grandparents, some are new to this community.

I feel really lucky to go to a school with such diagnosis.

It makes me feel sad to think that some of my friends would not be at my school if they didn't have transportation.

The buses help kids get to school safely and on time.

I hope more kids can have buses so everyone can get to the best school for them in a safe way.

Is DeAndra here?

Hello.

Unfortunately, Iandra was not able to be here tonight.

Um, but I did want to take her time to thank uh parents, teachers, students, everyone who came out, especially uh all of our volunteers that came out with Rice Indy.

Thank you, ILEA for uh doing all the work that you guys are doing.

Thank you.

And then we'll take your bay.

And behind them will be Gary Ebbers, Sasha Fletcher, and Alma Astrade.

And then behind them will be Alicia Bell, Neleli Garcia Nava, and Ken Graham will just form a line of the walls.

You can just hold it if you want.

Sorry, my anxiety.

Um educator uh of the academy.

Um kids get kids to school to and from.

Um it's not easy, whether it's charter or IPS.

We all face the same hurdles.

Uh to keep buses running, mapping out routes, and making sure we have enough drivers to drive the buses.

That's why I think the pilot program uh deserves to be part of ILEA's recommendation.

It's a real, it's practical example of how schools of all types, charter and IPS can create a system that actually works that's going to be better for families and our students.

Because at the end of the day, uh we want all we all want the same thing, which is safe, reliable transportation for our kids.

The Alliance has a chance to bring schools together around a solution that helps as many students as we can, any student, regardless of charter or IPS.

Uh, education is too important for a bus ride or the lack of one to stand up to stand as a barrier for our student success and their education.

Every child deserves a chance to attend a great school and receive high quality education, no matter where they live or what kind of school they go to.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Good evening, everybody.

This one?

Okay.

Uh, how are you doing?

My name is Multier Bay.

Um, not only a father, but I am uh community leader as well.

I have my own foundation, and I also an education advocate.

Uh and I had this whole speech all doctored up, but I don't think it's necessary, right?

Heard a lot of good things from you guys tonight, especially the guy from uh Victoria College Prep.

Um, if I could be candid, I think he probably was the only one to heard truly speak with conviction from the parents' perspective.

And I like that the model that they have for transportation.

I think if we just adopted that, then we could probably like solve a lot of our problems, right?

We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we need to kind of add to it and find to it.

Um so that being said, I don't think the school type matters.

I heard a lot of those different uh stories or rhetorics.

School type shouldn't matter.

Uh coach shouldn't matter.

Uh I can tell y'all 46218.

Uh my children go to a private school and a charter school.

I've experienced all different types of schools.

I don't think it matters, right?

None of them are perfect, right?

They all have things they have to work through.

So I think the biggest thing is the children's needs, that they're interested in the focus on their control.

Uh that's I digress.

Is Gary Everest here?

Hey, next will be Sasha Fletcher.

Good evening, and thank you for allowing me to speak tonight about the importance of transportation for all students.

As a parent, I have navigated the challenging landscape of transport transporting my child to a charter school.

Each day presents its own hurdles from congested traffic to unpredictable weather and often requires us to leave the house early to ensure a timely arrival.

These difficulties are not the result of the hard work and dedication of the transportation professionals who strive to serve our students.

Instead, they eliminate deeper systematic issues that demand our collective attention and action.

An endeavor that hinges on collaboration with over 50 schools currently signed on.

The transportation pilot program stands as a beacon of possibility.

I strongly urge the ILEA to incorporate this pilot into their recommendations and ensure that IPS is an active partner in this transformative initiative.

This program exemplifies how diverse educational instruct institutions can unite to forge a more effective transportation system for every student.

IPS must be a part of this mission.

Every student deserves access to a safe, reliable mode of transportation to and from school.

The ILEA plays a crucial role in developing strategies that encourage collaboration among schools to expand transportation access for as many students as possible.

Thank you.

After Alma will be Alicia Bell and then the Leli Garcia and I.

Good evening, good evening, everyone.

Now is the time for all of us to come together in support of our children.

Every child is unique and to serve access to schools.

The best meets their individual needs.

Transportation should never stand in the way of a student attending the next the right school for them.

Each school offers diverse programming and families must have the freedom to choose what is best, knowing that reliable transportation will be available.

We all want every child to have a safe and reliable way to get to and from school.

The LEA must take a decisive action to unite our schools and ensure these essential services are available.

As many students as possible.

Transportation challenges are not due to the education of those who work tirelessly to manage school transportation.

This complex issue requires collaborative approach to achieve practical solutions.

That's what transportation, that's why the transportation pilot, which has already attracted over 50% participating schools, is promising a promising initiative.

Thank you so much.

Alicia Bell.

And then after Ken Goofy Fire.

We now need to take a look at the children and what comes best for these children.

That to me to come first.

Children come first.

So that's all I have to say as you're making this decision.

Make sure we remember we have families and children that are going to be affected across this city.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

And so the dirty secret that everyone is dancing around is there's not enough money for buses for anyone.

But the problem is if the IPS budget shrinks and the amount of schools who provide services increases, you're not going to get good service.

That's just a matter of simple mathematics.

So my thing that I want people, the whole community to consider is the only solution is that some democratic body that has the authority to raise taxes has to raise taxes to fund the transportation system adequately.

We need to be looking not just to the IPS school board but to the city council because I know the state legislature isn't going to do it.

I'm with the Oaks Academy, and I'd like to make a note that this effort embodies an African proverb.

If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

So thank you to the Salion for your good work.

I've submitted submitted a proposal to this group suggesting that IPS and the Oaks work collaboratively on transportation, specifically to support Oaks field trips during the school days.

We are working with that together at NBC Bert on the same.

I wish to say now for the record that the leadership of IPS, specifically Dr.

Johnson and Dr.

Murphy, have consistently welcomed conversation on this proposal.

They offer they have offered ideas and have agreed to explore how we can work together to serve all of our students in this great city.

As a non-public school leader for 24 years, I look forward to advancing a closer partnership and more collaborative discussions with the outstanding leadership of IPS.

Thank you.

After Melissa, we'll hear from Danielle Cruz, Jack Killen, and Alyssa and Pink.

Good evening, everybody.

Good evening, ILEA members.

My name is Bolsa Lovella.

I'm a parent of two children at an IPS school in zone two.

My oldest is in fourth grade and is likely to attend Broderville Middle School.

Transportation will be a very important uh topic for my family because, like so many others, we are two working parents.

That's why these important, complex and nuanced decisions should follow the recommendation of the democratically elected IPS school board and the IPS staff that they have hired who know our students, our neighborhoods, and our needs.

Um they've already created a thoughtfully cost-saving transportation plan through refunding stronger regarding transportation on a broader scale.

Um, I might recommend that alliance members advocate uh in general for improved and broader reaching public transportation capacity within Indianapolis, which should support many people within our city and possibly more high school students.

Thank you.

Is Danielle here?

Okay.

Okay.

Hi, uh, my name is Jack Killen.

I have no prepared statement.

It turns out that being a social worker at Short Ridge High School takes a little bit of time.

I am honored to be a part of that community, but I also see an unbelievable amount of need.

My kids' parents are being deported.

They are houseless.

They are there are there are kids that are having suicidal ideation every single day.

It's hard out there.

There is unbelievable economic oppression going on right now.

These are the things that I want to do as a social worker.

I want to help ameliorate those problems and lower those barriers.

I do not want to spend half of my time on the fact that my students aren't getting to school.

And this is absurd.

This framing of equity is unbelievably absurd.

When you take from one group that is in need and give it to another group that is in need, that is not the definition of equity.

That is not the definition.

It's so obvious.

And to all of the people in blue shirts out here, I want your kids to go to school.

I want your kids to go to school.

But I also don't want the enormous apparatus with millions of dollars that you benefit from.

Please ask your CEOs how much they make.

Please do it.

Ask them how much they make.

Think about how much money.

Think about all of that money and how much of it could be used for public transportation.

Public transportation.

Everyone needs transportation.

But you guys dividing, dividing a population so that you can rule over that population is disgusting.

After Alyssa, we'll hear from Anwin, Britt Borum, and Kristen Fair.

Good evening.

My name is Alyssa M.

Pink, and I serve as one of seven IPS school board commissioners for the city of Indianapolis.

And I am also an IPS parent of twin kindergartners and a first grader.

This evening I'm speaking tonight in my personal capacity.

Indianapolis is the unique portfolio model that balances direct one supports with innovation freedoms.

And this is supported by IPS's expert operations.

IPS, I believe, is this subject expert in transportation.

And as you've learned this evening, we support innovation schools with operations, transportation included.

Expanding to a citywide charge of transportation with nearly double routes in cost, jumping from about 51 million to more than 80 million.

And that's just not sustainable without changing.

This is where the ILEA has an opportunity to recommend updates to state law so districts like ours can continue to provide safe, equitable and efficient service without taking on unfunded leadmates.

My recommendation is this we should not pull in outside authority.

IPS should remain the provider and authority for student transportation.

But if we are to take on responsibility, state law must be updated to ensure that the district can recover the full cost of delivering this essential service.

Transportation is not just logistics, it's access opportunity that should be afforded to all.

It's one of the most visible ways that IPS shows up for students through families every single day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, IOEA member.

My name is Anwin, and I'm a model of two kids and signer.

Both of my kids sign up is a school managed by IBS.

Both of my kids have both rider, and we have really painful good bus system managed by IBS.

As we look to improve the transportation system by looking at various models and spending and expanding the bus service through small families, I want to emphasize the importance of safety, families, reliability, efficiency, and accountability.

So how do we ensure that the requirement being met?

Well, let's talk about what we should not do.

Number one, a slight tech over the bus system will be a logistical nine for many families like hours.

Number two, an appointed body or partially appointed body to manage a bus system will make it really hard for parents like us to hold people accountable.

Um therefore we need local control, community support, and a fully elected unified school board of oversee academics, facility, and transportation.

As we all can see from the presentation earlier today, this is something that IBS already doing really well to a certain degree.

So in essence, with these ingredients, we can start talking about a bus system that is safe, failed, reliable, efficient, and accountable.

Thank you.

And then also last two speakers, Hilary Brown and Ronak Shaw to also please line up so we can continue with public comments.

Next, Britt.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Megan.

I'm stepping in for Britt tonight.

I want to thank the panel earlier for servicing the complexity of those are kids from my school, Eliza Blaker 55 in the back.

Thank you guys.

So our school, Eliza Blaker55, is right here in zone two, just a few minutes away.

And around uh a hundred of our students ride the bus every day.

That's a third of our community who depend on safe, reliable transportation to access their education.

And we want to give a special shout out.

I was asked to do this to the fantastic bus drivers who make that possible.

We love a bus driver, and please pay them more.

Um I also want to thank uh the district for the new crosswalk on 54th Street, brought to us by IPS and the referendum, which is making it safer for our walking families.

If there's one message that I'm walking away from this uh okay, I'm gonna skip that part.

Um, voters approved the real the rebuilding stronger plan to give IPS resources and stability.

But the district needs time to prove its success.

And after a disastrous legislative session, now is not the time to ask IPS to do even more with less.

Thank you.

Okay, can you guys hear me?

Good evening, and thank you for creating this um space for public comment.

Uh my name is Kristen Fair, and I have three children at IPS, one of which just started at Broaderville this year.

So go rockets.

The IPS Parent Council is a collective of 400 parents, guardians, and public school advocates in our district.

Together, we submitted a written comment outlining our concerns about the future of transportation in IPS.

Tonight I urge you to oppose any plan that would take transportation management out of IPS control.

We safely transport more than 20,000 students every day, including my child, while also supporting unhoused students, those with special needs, and designing safe walk paths for students who walk to school, which we just heard about.

We have already shown uh Dr.

Johnson has already shown strong leadership through the rebuilding stronger plan, reducing waste and improving efficiency while keeping safety a priority.

Instead of breaking what works, let's please expand upon it.

Charter schools can and many already do participate in IPS transportation.

Sharing property taxes means sharing responsibility.

Charter schools should opt in and help fund transportation to keep it accessible to all students in our district with no exceptions.

Our students deserve a transportation system that protects their safety and ensures equitable access, not outsourcing.

And thank you for your thing.

Good evening.

My name is Hilary Brown, and I am the parent of an IPS middle schooler at HAW.

For eight years, I've chosen to drive my child to school even though we are within the busing boundaries.

That is a privilege that I recognize, and because many families don't have that option.

I am here on behalf of those students who rely on safe, consistent, and efficient transportation to access their education.

Transportation is not just about logistics.

It is foundational to students and tests.

Without reliable busing, children lose not only instructional time, but they but also access to stability, meals, and support.

When IPS launched Rebuilding Stronger, the creation of transportation zones help protect vulnerable students, including those facing housing instability from unnecessary school changes.

That stability matters.

Moving into October, as Mike may have mentioned, um our pace of work will become more frequent, and we will be discussing more specific ideas to include in the recommendations that we have been asked by the Indiana General Assembly to provide them.

We will continue gathering data, refining our understanding of the challenges as we consider multiple options and opportunities, and your engagement and insight remain critical to the work that we do.

Our next meeting will be held at 6 p.m.

on Wednesday, October 22nd.

Location and details will be shared on the ILEA website.

We look forward to continuing to work together.

Thank you again, and this meeting is adjured.