Good evening to all.

I'd like to call the October meeting of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance to order.

I first want to thank all of the Alliance members for their presence here tonight.

It's always good to have all nine alliance members present for these meetings.

As a just as a reminder, this is a meeting of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance taking place in this public setting.

As we prepare tonight to listen to our two presenters, I want to remind everyone that our guests are here to provide information to the nine members of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance.

The nine members of the alliance will be the only people who will ask questions of the presenters after they make their presentations.

But after those presentations and the question and answer period with the members of the ILEA is over, we will then move to the public comment section of our meeting.

Just as a reminder of where we've been as a group, this is our fourth or fifth meeting.

In June, we met and did a review of the statute that created the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, and we also reviewed much of the work that has taken place in our community's education environment.

Thereafter, in July, we met and had a thorough review of finances for Indianapolis public schools, much of the finances of the system of innovation network schools, other public charter schools, and how changes in the next few years will impact those finances on a go forward basis.

In August, we welcomed in a group of speakers across the educational spectrum to address how facilities are handled within IPS, within the innovation network charter schools, and within independent charter schools.

Last month in September, we took a deep dive into transportation options and models across the education spectrum from the variety of operators and schools here in our community.

Again, the breadth of the options and the critical need for safe and accessible transportation for all students in Indianapolis public schools were highlighted.

Tonight, we are pleased to welcome presenters from two different communities to detail the model of education delivery that happens in their communities.

Both Washington, D.C.

and Denver, Colorado share the presence of a strong and vibrant traditional public schools model with an equally vibrant and strong public charter schools system.

If there are weaknesses in either one, you are welcome to comment about those as well.

The models for running those two systems differ in many ways.

Not to say that we should emulate here in Indianapolis one or the other, but to help the members of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance understand in even a greater way that there are multiple options, and each have their strengths as well as their own shortcomings.

As we consider what our recommendations to the Indiana General Assembly will be at the end of this year.

Our guests tonight are Alyssa Whitehead Bust.

Alyssa is a partner at Attuned Education Partners.

Earlier in Alyssa's career, she held roles in Denver, Colorado as the Chief Chief Academic Office, and then the Chief of Innovation and Reform.

In those positions, she led the system's academic strategy, oversaw its school portfolio, and launched one of the nation's first district-run innovation labs for personalized and blended learning.

She was also the founding principal of Highline Academy Charter Schools and facilitated Colorado's State Council for Educator Effectiveness.

Alyssa holds a BA from Wesleyan University and a master's in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Paul Ken.

Paul serves as the District of Columbia's deputy mayor for education, overseeing the vibrant system of K through 12 education in both public charter schools as well as traditional public schools, along with the district's workforce training programs.

Paul previously served as the deputy superintendent for the School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a job which included oversight of Philadelphia's innovation schools and their charter authorizing efforts.

Paul also, and perhaps most importantly, has 10 years of experience as a classroom teacher.

I will ask Alyssa to present first, allowing time for questions and answers from members of the ILEA, and then have Paul make his presentation.

I will also guess that as one presenter builds on information from the other, that in the end the ILEA members will have additional questions.

So I will ask Alyssa to remain with us through the entirety of Paul's presentation.

We will then move to a short report about the two task forces who have been working on behalf of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, and then move into the public comment section of our meeting.

With those introductory remarks, uh Alyssa, please feel free to start.

Thank you, Mayor, to you and the other members of the Alliance for the gracious invitation to come speak to you tonight about a topic that is very near and dear to my heart.

As you already framed in your introduction, my name is Alyssa Whitehead Bust.

I'm a career educator.

I currently run Attuned, which is an organization that seeks to help school systems across the country deliver breakthrough outcomes for students.

I am also perhaps most near and dear to my heart, the mother of four, three biological daughters, and a foster son, all of whom have been educated by the Denver Public Schools, and we've experienced charter innovation and direct run schools in our home.

In Attun's first decade, we've served over 300 school systems across the country.

Most of our work focusing on district and charter management organizations, which I'm sharing by way of background only because I'm going to focus my remarks tonight on my experience in Denver Public Schools, but I've also learned a lot since leaving Denver Public Schools about really important and inspirational work happening all over the country.

And with hindsight always being 2020, if I knew now what I, if I knew then what I know now, I think Denver's results would have likely been even stronger, more enduring, and more impactful.

I also share because I've been gone from DPS for a decade.

And so I am going to share my experience.

I led during the period when we architected many policies and systems that have endured, but I'll be less able to speak to the work that's happening today.

Prior to launching attuned, I spent a dozen years in Denver, both leading schools and helping to architect, as I said, Denver's family of great schools, we call it, versus a portfolio model.

But I also served as our chief academic officer, and I think the tensions that I experienced as being in charge as the chief academic officer of continuously improving student learning for all of our schools, which often prompts one to want to hold tight to a consistent set of processes and systems while also trying to scale innovation and autonomy, gives me a unique perspective on some of the issues with which you all are grappling right now.

I am going to divide my remarks into a couple of chapters.

And then I want to walk you through a handful of enabling policies and practices that illuminate that purpose and the approach that Denver took.

You have more slides in your printed handouts than I will speak to.

Some of those are there for your reference so you could see some level of detail about the decisions and trade-offs that we were making.

So I want to just start by grounding in some enrollment data.

I'm giving about a decade of perspective here, and I want to note a few things.

Like Indianapolis and many school systems across the country, DPS's enrollment has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, and given declining birth rates and accelerating housing costs, it will not likely return to pre-pandemic enrollment levels.

And that's really important context because the policies and systems I'm going to talk about tonight were created during a period of rapid enrollment growth.

I think many of them are still highly applicable conceptually, and most of them are actually still in use to some degree today.

But I think it's really important to understand that the fiscal realities given declining enrollment are very different today than they were when these systems were first architected.

And obviously, as a resource pie shrinks, tensions and controversies can increase.

Denver's embraced a family of schools approach for a very, very long time.

This was not a new idea.

It well preceded me and my team being in the district.

The charter sector has been growing steadily in Denver, both as new schools have opened and as they have built out additional grade levels for which they were originally authorized.

In recent years, growth has slowed as enrollment has slowed, and because the oversight of innovation schools and their zones has shifted with the current administration.

But charter and innovation schools for the last handful of years have generally made up about 30% of the district's market share.

Really importantly, Denver has enjoyed a very long tenure of continuous strategy and aligned leadership.

Running from about 2005 to about 2020, the district operated under the same strategic plan that was annually refreshed and that got new flavors as new superintendents came to be in office.

But the general direction of the district was consistent for 15 years.

In 2006, then Superintendent Michael Bennett launched our first Denver plan.

He then became U.S.

Senator, and Tom Bosberg moved from his chief operating officer role to the superintendent and built on that plan in what's called the Denver 2020 plan.

Many of the tenants were the same.

And DPS's family of schools approach or our portfolio approach has been a consistent driver in the work all along, with the most important aspiration of the plan being to ensure that 80% of students are served in high performing schools, which we measure on a common performance framework in Denver.

And you see this family of schools approach is codified as a big strategic priority.

It's also codified as a core belief that all families deserve choice and access for their kids.

So having both a site-based lens and a system-based lens, regardless of governance type.

And I think this balance was extraordinarily difficult and provoked a whole number of trade-offs and decisions that we had to make.

I'm going to share a couple of specific examples as we get further into the slides.

But I want to also share that, I don't know, I think any of us who have been educators are never satisfied with improvement or results in the systems that we've helped lead.

That's certainly true for me.

But in this moment in time, Denver did pop as one of the fastest improving urban systems in the nation.

We've had many studies done about the work that we did, some of which audaciously claim that it's amongst the most effective strategies in U.S.

history in raising educational outcomes for kids.

And in my mind, the decisions we had to make to close poor performing schools and open new ones, both charter and innovation and direct run schools all contributed to the results that ultimately the system generated.

And even today, if you're to look at who are the top performers in our system, you'll see that there are a whole number of charter and innovation schools.

They're circled here with the magenta, many of which were actually opened during the period that we're gonna discuss this evening.

So the why was very simple, improve outcomes for all kids.

The what was a little less simple in practice, but fairly simple in theory, which was create a balance of flexibility at the site level with system level coherence across the district.

I'm gonna dive into a couple of specifics.

So we tried to put in place systems that were mutually reinforcing.

I want to go through some illustrative examples.

I'm gonna pause on a couple a little bit with greater detail than others, and then I'm happy when we get to QA to speak to anything that is in your packet.

I think really important is while we're gonna walk through a number of policies and structures that might feel very technical, the work was highly adaptive and relational.

And so I want to start with what we in Denver uh referenced as the three equities, and then talk to you a little bit about what we named the collaborative council because a lot of the relational and adaptive work happened there.

So I'm gonna pause on the three equities because this is the heart and soul of everything else that I'm gonna walk you through this evening, so I want to make sure to explain this in some level of detail.

All schools in Denver agreed in 2010 to sign on to a charter district compact, and in so doing, committed to three really important equities.

Didn't matter what kind of school you were in Denver, all the schools signed up for equity of opportunity to satiate this desire that was largely driven from our charter sector, but later from our innovation sector as well, to have equitable access to money, buildings, and supports.

In that era, money and facilities were probably most sought after.

That was one pillar of our three equities.

Also important to the work that we were doing at that moment was signing on to equity of responsibility and access.

And really, what this meant was that the charter schools signed on to take a proportionate share of system level responsibilities.

Even if that meant that they had to modestly change their programming, develop a whole new set of competencies, or dramatically revise some of their school-based processes, which I think really gets to this balancing act and trade-offs that I referenced a couple slides ago.

I'm just gonna give you one really concrete example.

So our charter schools in Denver have to serve a proportional share of the hardest to serve students in the community, including those who qualify for services in what we call center-based programs.

So think about students who need to be in a very specialized environment because they're medically fragile or they are artistic.

And the charter sector, in exchange for getting equal access to all dollars, federal, state, and local dollars, also took on a share of service of students who are often most difficult and most expensive to serve at the system level.

Another example is mid-year transfers.

In many school systems, charter schools say our doors are closed on funding count day, which in Denver happens to be October 1st.

In this balance of equities, our charter schools had to keep their doors open to new arrivals, mid year transfers, whatever it may be, all throughout the year, just as district run schools had to sign on for.

Equity of accountability is probably the most streamlined in its wording, and it really had to do with having a shared understanding of how good is good enough for schools in the system.

And I'll give you a few examples of what our school performance framework looked like when we get there.

When it formed, I co-chaired it with one of our CMO charter management organization CEOs, and the collaborative council had equal number district representatives and charter leaders.

And the task of this charter council was to translate vision into action, to negotiate the details, and ultimately to help manage change across the entirety of the system.

I don't know if the graphic on the left is familiar to anybody in the room, but it comes from the public education leadership program at Harvard.

It's called the PELP Coherence Framework.

And it has been very important and remains very important in Denver's evolution.

And I'm sharing it here because the aspiration of all of the work we did in Denver through that collaborative council and other mechanisms was really to ensure that all of the policies, which in this model are referenced as part of the environment, the outer ring of those concentric circles, were coherent with one another, but most importantly, we're aligned to what's most important to driving student outcomes, which is the instructional core or our students' learning experiences in their classrooms.

And so we were seeking to enact a suite of policies that were mutually reinforcing, both with one another and with what we cared most about, which was creating great schools that could get great outcomes for children.

So very quickly, I've referenced the school performance framework.

This is a way of enacting our equity of accountability.

Not going to spend a ton of time here, a couple of headlines.

All schools in Denver were then and are still today measured on a common definition of performance.

In that era, Denver had its own definition of performance, our school performance framework.

It now defers to the states, but they're used in the exact same way, which is to set quality bars for new schools, to help tier supports for schools, to inform charter renewals or closures, and also to inform action against any school, regardless of governance type.

The school performance framework, again, then and now was produced with lots of different grain sizes.

School leaders had a very detailed report, drove continuous improvement at the site level.

Network or regional leaders got a view of their amalgamation of schools, drove their continuous improvement, and then the district and its board rigorously analyzed to make big strategic decisions.

The aspiration was to get as many schools as possible to green and blue.

Those are the two highest performance bans on the school performance framework.

And we put in place a whole bunch of support structures to enable that to happen.

One of which was the concept of empowering building leaders.

And so you'll have in your packet a description of some of the autonomies we chose to release to our district run school building principals who also very much wanted to have programmatic autonomy, much like their charter peers had.

So these equities moved in both directions.

Another support comes in the form of resources.

We have a student-based budgeting formula that took into consideration, still takes into consideration number of students in each school times a base funding level, plus additional dollars for students who meet certain equity needs.

Maybe they're multilingual learners, perhaps they are students living in poverty.

All of our funds were distributed, including Mill Levy funds, to schools based on the exact same formula.

And today you can see that the majority of funds still are controlled at the building level, just as they were in that day.

Because I know you all are talking about the expenses of facilities and transportation.

I wanted to give you some level of detail.

There's maybe half a dozen slides or so in your packets with some both historical and current day details.

I'll just give you a headline so you know what you're looking at.

You have a innovation school menu overview that is about a decade old.

It is meant to just show you that there was a continuum of dollars that building leaders got to control.

Innovation school leaders getting control a little bit more than their direct run building leaders.

Charter schools got to control the most amount of their resources, but they also had to contribute back, still do into the systems functioning.

So in Colorado, charter schools pay a 5% administrative fee to support authorization functions, the overhead that goes into being a system of schools, a district in our case.

So we just had one authorizer, that being us at the district level.

Charters also had to pay into special education, and if they wanted to, they had the ability to buy off of a menu facility services and other services that the district procured centrally and then distributed to schools.

So you have multiple examples of those menus for your further perusal.

And this framework was gold in Denver because we pre-decided trigger points for what would happen when and if schools, regardless of governance type, were or were not meeting a set of criteria.

So those decisions were not made in the political context of we have to close five schools or we have to open ten schools.

They were all based on a common framework and a set of business rules that had been agreed to over time.

The way those supports played out was slightly different depending on the governance type.

So in uh in the case of charter schools, most supports were optional until we got to an intensive phase, which meant they weren't performing well for multiple years in a row, and there wasn't a lot of evidence that their practices were going to have them start performing well moving forward.

And most of those interventions came in the form of contract stipulations, and I'll give you a couple examples.

For district-run schools, none of the supports were optional.

District-run schools have instructional superintendent supervisors, and the level of oversight got more intense when and if performance at the school level was lower.

You have a couple examples of what that looked like at the district level.

So if a charter school did not meet their performance threshold, they upon the moment of charter signing had agreed that they would give up and relinquish their charter because the whole system was oriented around getting 80% of kids into those high performing schools.

As we are making decisions in Denver, the strategic regional analysis was and still is today the cornerstone document that synthesizes both performance and enrollment and indicated to the system when and if we needed to open a new school.

There's not enough high quality seats in that region, or there are more students coming into that region.

We therefore need one, two, three, or zero, whatever the number might be, new schools, at which point, using that exact same framework, new school operators, charter, innovation, or district one leaders who wanted their hand at opening a school, would put forward a robust proposal that aligned to those criteria and were then evaluated by a collaborative group.

For schools that were directly meeting the needs, articulated in the strategic regional analysis, they then became eligible to be placed in a district run facility.

If you were a charter school and you applied to open a new charter that did not satiate a need that we had articulated in that strategic regional analysis, you were not eligible to be in a district facility.

State statute said you could open as a charter school if you could prove that you had enough kids to be viable, but the district did not have an obligation for your supporting that launch because we were trying to control for oversupply on the belief that that would help accelerate outcomes for all kids.

80% of our charter schools are now placed in district run uh facilities, district owned facilities, which represents about 90% of our charter school students, so it's a pretty high percentage.

And uh to get kids to and from those buildings, there is a shared transportation system.

Charter schools that are located in district run facilities are part of that.

We also have some enrollment zones, we call them, where a student might have access to five neighborhood schools, one or more of which might be a charter school.

Uh, and in that case, the charter schools are also included in our transportation system.

Uh, but charters that are independent and not satiating a need articulated in that strategic regional analysis could buy into our yellow bus service, but the yellow bus service is expensive enough that charter schools don't tend to opt to do that.

Let me just highlight a couple of points and uh then open up for questions.

In our case, and I would encourage for your consideration, creating quality schools was our North Star, regardless of government type.

And I think that's actually what parents and students care most about is quality, not density across governance model.

We saw it through that strategic regional analysis to look around the corner to understand future portfolio needs based on an evolving landscape, both related to viability and school quality, particularly important right now in declining enrollment environments across the country.

We transparently used a common and commonly agreed upon set of data to drive all of our policy decisions, really trying hard, not always successfully, but trying really hard, not to have the conversations focus on ideology.

Our journey is really long.

You see, our results are still not where anybody wants them to be.

Ultimately to the progress we were able to make.

Related to pacing the change, I think less is more.

I think focusing on equity and consistency is really important, and then differentiating for governance type when that is an absolute necessity or inherent to the essence of the given government.

Governance model.

You heard me talk a lot about sharing and benefits and responsibilities.

Flexibility and autonomy at the site level has to be balanced by a collective responsibility to the system.

I think we didn't do as well as we could have and would have wanted to with hindsight, engagement work, really engaging broadly and deeply to set a vision and a set of values and frameworks, which then can really clarify for everybody where we're headed collectively before you say who's responsible for getting to make which kinds of decisions at the charter level, the district level, the system level.

And then we sought to build for coherence, and that in my mind is a really perplexing challenge to do well, but something we tried to center in all of the work that we did.

And with that, we are officially two minutes over.

My apologies, Mike, I ran long.

And I think, am I right, Mayor, that we're gonna take a handful of questions?

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Any uh questions for Alyssa from the uh members of the alliance based on her presentation?

Yeah, Tina.

Oh my gosh, I have so many questions, but I will not take all the time.

But I would love like if we could get contact information, if we had follow-up questions, that would be fantastic as well because we could spend all day here with me asking you questions.

Um you said that you ensure that schools share the same percentage of students with high needs.

How do you how do you enforce that?

How do you with choice?

How do you ensure that that happens?

I guess is my first question.

I think maybe not dissimilar to enroll Indy.

In Denver, there's a common enrollment system, and while we did not architect for uh each individual student uh where he or she had to go based on demographics, by opening up choice and proactively making sure that our charter schools have to serve within a special education category or within a multilingual learning category, those students who are hardest to serve in center-based programs or newcomer centers in the case of new arrivals in Denver, that helped ensure that those percentages remain pretty relative to one another.

Um I think this other question, I know you can't see the pages on here, but there's a chart, and I just want to make sure I understood what the percentages were.

It's on page 23, but it's about the um the three equities, and you said it says little variants existed in the demographics of students served in the district run in charter schools.

Um that is that the percentage of students who are in uh the high achieving schools.

So it's it says like all students, 88%.

And you're asking, is this just in uh the percentage of students who are served by one of the higher achieving schools?

Um I'm trying to figure out what those percentages are.

Are you looking at the one that's green for the first two columns and blue?

No, that's the entire district writ large.

So you can see as an example that you know, if you go to those last two rows of that chart, you'll see uh relative parity.

Uh, I think actually, charter school serving a tiny percentage higher of both students who qualify for special education and students who qualify for multilingual learning service.

I guess I'm just not understanding what the percentages are because you know, so there's like 87% black students, but then you know, 86% Hispanic students.

So, what 86% of within the sector, what percentage of students qualify?

Great question.

Uh qualify or are designated by the uh descriptors on that far left-hand column.

Okay.

I'll I'll follow up if I still because I'm still not quite okay.

They're all in the high 80s, and I'm not really, but it's okay.

Uh I will follow up with you.

Okay, I just want to understand what it looks like.

Somebody else can ask the question.

Yeah, Maggie.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

A couple questions.

I I do believe it's the school performance framework, is what you called it, where we're trying to ensure that there's fairness and transparency across all the schools.

Here in our community, we often debate do we have the same academic standards for charters, the public schools, what have you.

How did that process really work?

And how did you get the buy-in that everyone signed off on that framework?

Yeah, such a great question.

The school performance framework was a core element of the work very early on, championed first by Superintendent Bennett, then brought to life by Superintendent Bosberg.

And the collaborative council played a pretty strong role in affirming the measures and weights within that school performance framework.

Uh, so annually, the measures and weights would be re-looked at to just make sure they still made sense for the community.

They weren't changed dramatically, uh, but an example that occurred to me related to our post-secondary schools or high schools.

At one point in our school performance framework, we gave weighting to high schools who offered an enrolled students in advanced placement classes, AP classes.

Our charter schools had their students take AP exams, but in some cases felt like the rigor of their core academics did not necessitate them offering the AP designated curriculum.

And so they felt like they were being penalized in essence for the way the performance framework was set up.

That's the kind of conversation that would happen and be housed at this collaborative council.

We would do our best to come to some consensus-based recommendation for the superintendent, and then the superintendent would make his decision.

I don't remember a time in Denver where folks out and out rejected the idea of being held to a common set of standards.

I certainly have lots of memories of tense conversations about the details.

What's actually in the measure?

How are we weighing these measures?

One against the next, how is this data used?

But I don't remember a moment where the idea writ large was rejected.

Other questions, superintendent.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Lisa.

I have a couple questions as well.

So it sounds like, and I believe my understanding is everything was driven by one body by Denver Public Schools who sort of held it all together.

So not to put you on the spot, but obviously we we don't have that system set up now.

IPS has to counselor Lewis's point a structure, the mayor's office of education innovation, you have other other charters who also are authorizing here.

So what would you advise given that right now we actually don't have decision making resting in one place to then create the coherence that it sounds very much like you were able to achieve in DPS?

Yeah.

Well, you're gonna put me way out over my skis on this answer because it's your system, not my system.

But what occurs to me is the opportunity to form whether or not it's a more ongoing role for folks like you all on this alliance or some other kind of structure to generate a common North Star for the city, if I'm understanding correctly of three authorizing bodies plus the district that are ultimately responsible for the quality of schools, and I would suspect those three authorizing bodies and the district coming to alignment on what do our students and families in this community deserve and expect from us as a bar of excellence.

How would they know when they saw it?

What are we actually measuring and holding schools accountable for?

And then what might we consider to be a reasonable set of business rules that we can all agree with, so to speak?

Uh we will close or consolidate schools if these measures are uh consistently off track.

We will open schools only when there are the this kind of evidence of demand or excellence or you know, improved outcomes for kids.

I would imagine much more cumbersome in an ecosystem where authorization is not housed in one entity, let alone not housed at the district.

Um, but I think still very possible uh through collaborative conversation and structures.

Thank you.

My second question, you said at the beginning, you said a couple of times the importance of relationship and how relational the work was.

Can you talk about in your experience what that was, both at the system sort of district level as well as at the school and building level?

Was there a difference in terms of relationship at the school level versus relationships built across you know, systems at the district level?

And then to what extent do you recall you know the external pressure perhaps on the work you all were doing playing a role, and how did you navigate that?

I think the relationships mattered a ton, and I think the mechanisms to create relationship were numerous.

I think the fact that I came out of the charter sector probably helped because I walked into my central office role with relationships already with other building leaders, but that collaborative council was intentionally the superintendent and a school board member.

So our charter leaders felt very empowered to be building these relationships and have audience with the ultimate decision makers and influencers in the system.

I think that mattered a lot.

And then on the converse in that era, uh, in essence, while my title was sort of wonky, I was one of two deputy superintendents.

So the superintendent and the two deputies, we would spend at least a day a week in schools really building relationships with faculty and principals.

I'm sure that's a practice here as well.

And we would do that regardless of governance type.

We just rotated through the schools on a schedule as a way of forming relationships.

The collaborative council's charter representation, the charter leaders voted for three of their four seats.

So they felt represented because they democratically weighed in on three of the four seats, and then the fourth was appointed by those three.

So it was they were very clearly not the puppets of the superintendent, they were the representatives of the charter sector.

I think that mattered a lot.

Yeah, you did.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And then on your second question, I mean, I think the umriing the conversation around quality, uh, I think really helped Denver, it didn't eliminate the noise of external pressures by any stretch of the imagination.

But the conversation in Denver did not get to a point that I see happens in many of the systems we work with nationally, where we're talking about who has what percent share of market, which sector wants to scale and that kind of thing.

It was like we're gonna scale what works.

We don't really care what sector you come out of, we are focused on quality.

Uh and so if the charter sector is thriving, you know, you saw on that slide where we circled a bunch of schools, there's a gajillion DSST schools.

They happen to be the best in the city and the best in the state, and so they just kept growing and growing and growing.

Charter network did exceptional work.

Uh, on the other hand, we opened and shut many charter schools because they weren't as good as the neighborhood school option that was run by the district, and so keeping the conversation really focused on outcomes for kids, I think is part of what helped.

Uh, but that is not to say by any stretch of the imagination that it eradicated politics or complexity uh or pressures.

Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Alyssa.

That was a terrific presentation.

Like Tina, I have about a hundred questions, but I'm gonna uh limit it to one or two.

Your goal number one was great success, great schools in every neighborhood.

And I think you got to this when you were talking about regions, but but you there was a lot of information, I'm not sure I really got it.

So how did how do you how did you handle the geographic distribution of high quality schools?

I mean, if if if you've got an area of the city and turns out that this the primary school serving that area is a poorly performing school and gets closed, what do you do?

Um how how how did you handle that even distribution, which seems to me a real challenge?

Such a great question.

I don't think great schools are still today evenly distributed in the city.

I know they're not evenly distributed across uh Denver.

That and they follow pretty traditional lines, as would be true in many urban environments based on housing prices.

Uh that said, the strategic regional analysis, and there's a couple of uh screen grabs in there that I fast-forwarded beyond, and there's also some links in that last slide.

You could go poke around, they're all publicly available documents.

Uh the strategic regional analysis breaks the city into six regions, and for each region, the data team at the district gives information on current enrollment, current utilization rates of facilities, projections related to birth rates, housing prices, etc.

of what's going to happen in that specific region over time, and all of that is overlaid by performance.

So, what percentage of those schools are blue, green, yellow, orange, or red, which was the ascending order of excellence in that era.

Still a stoplight, just slightly different today, but you'd see that information even in today's strategic regional analysis.

When the city was growing from an enrollment perspective, uh, there was more opportunity for new schools to be opened without political controversy.

Uh so the call for new quality schools that my team would release every year would literally be tied to that strategic regional analysis.

We need a new school in Northeast Denver because it's growing.

It would also then say only 40% of students in Northeast Denver are served in a high quality school, so we're also open to considering better options.

Uh, and so that might be when a DSST with a very strong track record might raise their hand and say, I'm willing to go open a school up in Northeast Denver.

And that's when we would start that facility and community matching process.

The district is not currently opening schools through the lens of quality.

And because we haven't been more declining enrollment system from a trend line perspective.

We've had some blips with immigration patterns, but from a trend line perspective.

And so the quality control is a little bit different right now.

It might feel more familiar to other systems where schools are being consolidated and closed for performance.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Maggie.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

So academic performance and enrollment trends give you access to a facility.

Is that correct?

Am I linking that correctly?

If you hit one of the needs we identified in our call for new quality schools, I think there's a couple links to the whole document.

And that call for new quality schools was generated based on that strategic regional analysis, which did looked at a whole bunch of things, but it did predominantly boil down to trying to elevate data about enrollment.

How many kids are there?

And then how are those kids being served?

Are they being well or not so well served?

Thank you so much.

Thank you again for the uh presentation.

Very helpful.

I think I'm gonna try to consolidate mine to a two-parter.

I want just to be clear were there any, are there any public schools within the geographic boundary that are not a part of this compact?

And secondarily, if not, what type of can you elaborate on some additional levers or resources assets that do ensure the level of collective accountability and fidelity to the compact as all?

I can't answer your first question just because I'm not that deep in the know.

Um, so I'm not positive.

Certainly when I was in the district, that compact applied to 100% of our schools.

I think the levers though are predominantly still in place, and um are evidenced by student-based budgeting, which is something the district is deeply committed to.

So all schools get a pro rata share of revenue streams, federal, state, and local dollars, which we call mill levies.

They also pay in pro rata.

So you got these dollars, you want to use a bus, you're gonna pay for the bus.

You got these dollars, you want to be in our facility, you're gonna actually help us hire the janitors and maintain the buildings and you know fix the broken things, etc.

Those things are still very much in place.

And the district um decided to defer to the state performance framework because there was some confusion in the ecosystem.

We had our own, it was slightly had slightly higher bars, uh, but you might be green on the state performance framework and yellow on ours.

It's a little confusing and it created some unnecessary chatter.

Um, but the entirety of the state of Colorado has a shared school performance framework, and I think that creates a fair amount of consistency as a pretty important lever.

Andrew.

Well, thank you for the presentation.

And I think even as you've shared more, I have a ton of questions that are that are coming out as well.

But I want to center it around two.

So one, uh Denver's growth pattern as a city is is interesting.

Um I wonder if prior to the implementation of the system were you seen enrollment losses to surrounding school districts like Littleton or Howlands Ranch or whatnot, and then has that been remedied because of this?

Um, and again, I know like the growth pattern in Denver is is completely different, but I wonder if you saw any trends in that direction.

Such a good question.

Uh, during that period of rapid enrollment growth, we were seeing increase in birth rates based in certain sections of the city where there was an entirely new community being developed, uh, as well as capturing students who had left us either to private schools or neighboring districts.

Colorado is an open access, open choice state.

I think maybe similar to you all, you can cross district boundaries to attend any school so long as there is a seat available, and we both got better and therefore retained more of our own kids, and people were having more kids in the system at that moment.

And then the second question Denver has uh a different public transportation system.

What role does public transportation uh, if any, play in the transportation of students?

Yes, that's a great question.

I know that's something you all are grappling deeply with.

Uh, there are four mechanisms in Denver by which students get to school, three of which are publicly funded.

So all students, all kids under 19 get free access on the public transportation system that the city runs.

It's called the RTD.

Most appropriate in many families for middle and high school age students, um, but that is an offering for any student in the system.

The district runs two forms of transportation.

One is your traditional yellow bus, and students in elementary school who live over a mile from a boundary school have access to that yellow bus.

Charter schools are often the boundary school because they're housed in district facilities.

Uh, and so that transportation service implicates any school that is the designated boundary school for a family.

The third mechanism is through what we called success success express.

It's like a continuous shuttle system because we have multiple enrollment zones.

Uh, so my students, my kids, my personal kids in my home, uh did not have one assigned middle school.

There was not a boundary middle school.

They had five assigned middle schools, and we got to stack rank which of the five we most wanted to go to to least wanted to go to.

And then there was a shuttle that ran between those five schools, one of which was always within walking distance of your house, even if that wasn't the one you wanted to go to, and you just hop on the shuttle.

So, in my case, my youngest daughter uh didn't go to the middle school closest to my house, she just walked up the street, got on the shuttle, and was you know driven 20 minutes away to the middle school she wanted to go to.

So that's uh access point number three, and then probably similar to here, uh, there's an obligation to, as part of IEPs to transport students who qualify for transportation services.

That was true, regardless of governance type, the district uh would transport any student for whom there was an IEP obligation, Mayor.

Yeah, Alyssa, um I I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here because I know things have have changed uh since since you were there and since the Denver plan was was uh in its heyday, but um the way you made it sound was that everybody got along.

Um I was particularly struck when you said I was particularly struck when you said that you know when we needed to open a new school, we didn't worry about what kind of school it was, we just wanted to focus on quality.

Um what what were two or three of the pinch points?

I mean, there had to have been some challenges in keeping these folks who came in some cases with different worldviews together to run schools.

What were some two or three of the of the challenges in holding all that together that you faced and in the time that you were there?

Such a good question.

I am an eternal optimist, so it is not surprising that I emphasize the things that went better over the things that were very hard.

There are many things that were very, very hard.

Um I would say that community engagement never hit the level of depth and authenticity that the system wanted it to.

There were certainly public meetings and uh ways of families and communities weighing in on school options.

As an example, if we needed to open a middle school in Southeast Denver, we would bring to Southeast Denver the two or three middle school applicants and families would weigh in and tell us what they liked and didn't like about each of those options.

What didn't happen was a deep co-design model where families really had a seat at the table from go in shaping what schools were gonna uh ultimately be brought forward as options, and I think there are some really tremendous models happening across the nation uh in some of the systems gets to partner with where families are actually part of the design of the schools.

I think that's a stickier and more equitable way of thinking about school design.

So that's one.

I think another is uh the way we thought about the call for quality schools and our high bar probably dissuaded some really strong entrepreneurial ideas from coming forward.

So I'm DSST, I get exceptional results for kids.

It's easier for me to jump over the hurdle of the call for new quality schools and open my 14th campus than it is for somebody who has no track record, has never written the charter application or the innovation school application to jump over that hurdle.

We tried pretty hard to mitigate that, but I don't think we ever succeeded.

And the third, I would say um I think there is really strong literature on the power of having common curriculum, common assessments, and therefore organized adult learning, uh, where a system can try to drive improvement in the science of reading or whatever it may be in an aligned way.

That falls at sort of cross odds with this idea of empowering building leaders to make their own decisions.

And we really grappled with that tension point.

Uh and the way we threaded the needle, if you look at that flexibility handbook that is linked in your deck, we did a lot of coaching and conversations with school leaders such that they opted in to the district adopted curriculum assessment package and therefore professional learning.

So while they had decision-making authority, 90%, it might have been 93% of them opted into the materials that we had adopted centrally.

Uh but there was tension point in in those conversations.

In the interest of uh time and uh with the alliance's permission, um thank you again for your presentation, Alyssa.

Um, and as long as we don't overstay our welcome, uh, if you remain open to inquiries from uh the alliance questions that come up that we may not have discussed tonight or had the time.

Uh I can't thank you enough for being here, and we'd like to call on you if we have additional questions.

My pleasure.

Uh Paul, tell us about Washington, DC.

Good evening.

Uh thanks, Alyssa.

That was a wonderful presentation.

You just got the Rolls Royce of presentations, and now we'll shift to the Toyota Carola version.

So we'll see how this goes.

My name is Paul Kine.

I'm the deputy mayor for education uh for Washington DC.

It is really an honor to be here with you as you grapple with these extraordinarily difficult questions.

I've been greetings from Mayor Bowser and from Chancellor Lewis Faraby, who is known to uh folks in this room, I'm sure.

And we've spent a lot of time thinking about system coherence versus autonomy, which is of course what Alyssa was referring to.

So I will share some facts about Washington, DC to sort of ground us and then uh just a few reflections as Alyssa did.

You can't see this chart on the screen, but I'm gonna spend a few moments here, so hopefully you have it in front of you.

This is the structure of Washington, D.C.'s public school system.

Starting on the left-hand side, we have a single charter authorizer.

It's the DC Public Charter School Board.

That board is made up of members, all of whom are appointed by the mayor.

They hire the executive director of the charter school agency that then does all of the authorizing of charter schools in DC.

They choose when to open schools on their own, they do the monitoring, they have chosen when to close schools.

To give you a sense of this, they've been around for 30 years.

In that time, they started 115 local education authority authorities.

Uh, and over that time they also closed 80 schools.

So lots of opening and closing within the sector.

All of that was managed by the public charter school board, again, appointed members by the mayor.

The next block over is the executive.

And DC is very unique in its highly uh and uniquely centralized system.

The mayor effectively runs the traditional school district, DC public schools.

There is no intermediating board.

There's nobody else appointed to help manage it.

The mayor hires and fires the chancellor of the school system.

The mayor oversees in many ways daily operations.

I'm with the chancellor and the mayor once a week.

We're reviewing the data from uh DCPS, uh, and the mayor is helping to approve decisions made.

The mayor directly oversees that school system.

Importantly, that school system continues to run a very robust set of by right neighborhood schools.

So the way to think about DC is we've got a backbone of by right neighborhood schools that every kid has a right to attend, elementary, middle, and high, and that is complemented by this extraordinary system of choice, both within DCPS and also within the charter sector.

But DCPS runs those those by bright schools.

In addition, the mayor oversees our state education agency.

So you know technically DC is not a state, but of course, we need to have that entity to pass through federal funds and take on other functions.

So we do have a state agency that also reports directly to the mayor.

And there it's interesting to note that they, like other states, have a school report card that applies to every single school in Washington, D.C.

So you've got this system of accountability that allows an apples to apples comparison across all schools run by the state entity.

Moving on to the right, you will see something called our State Board of Education.

Very important to understand it is elected, but it has extremely limited authority and has nothing to do with the running of schools.

Nothing.

What the state board does in Washington, D.C., is it a body that approves standards, that approves the graduation requirements, that approves what the report card looks like.

So it votes up or down on recommendations coming from the state agency on matters related to standards.

It's a very, very important vehicle in the system because it is comprised of elected members.

So if you think about some of the challenges with these centralized systems or with mayoral control of council oversight, often you're thinking about centralization versus let's call it democracy.

Where do parents have a voice in the system?

Where do they feel empowered?

And in our system, that happens in a few places, one of them is the state board, which is elected.

Then, of course, on the far right, I included the DC City Council, because they are the oversight body across all city agencies.

There is no education committee currently, so the committee of the whole actually monitors the performance of the education system.

And so I spend a lot of my time in rooms a lot like this in front of City Council in our performance oversight hearings as they monitor our progress.

And they are quite active.

There are many laws they pass related to school, uh the school system in DC, but they are an important part of the overall system.

So I hope that paints a picture of what we have.

And I'll flip forward to share some facts about what this looks like in practice.

So we have 100,000 students in Washington, D.C., in 100 neighborhood schools, and 150 citywide schools, mostly charters.

And this chart shows you in the top lines the enrollment, the student enrollment.

The blue is DCPS, our traditional system, and the orange is our charter system.

And what you'll note over time, from 2013 to this year, is gradually increasing lines in both sectors.

So we have been going through a period of enrollment growth.

We've drawn about 15,000 students over the past decade.

That is pausing now, per Alyssa's earlier point.

The blue bars, interestingly, are the number of schools in Washington, D.C.

So there again you'll see the number of students going up, but the number of schools also increased from 2013 to today, where we have about 250.

Looking a little more granularly at where kids go, this chart on the right shows you the schools that students choose to attend.

So the first four bars are all the schools managed by DCPS, our traditional system.

You'll see in the blue bar on the left, about a quarter of students in Washington, D.C.

attend their byright neighborhood school.

So 25% of kids go to their assigned school.

19% go to a different assigned school because you don't have to go to yours, you can try to go to a different one in the city.

So about 90% do that.

We've got a few application high schools and some alternative schools, and then you'll see almost half of students in DC now attend DC public charter schools.

And that number has been stable for the past three or four years.

None of this could operate as you heard in a related way from Denver without a very strong infrastructure.

And I wanted to mention four aspects of that infrastructure, which I've laid out here.

On the left-hand side, and probably most importantly, is the funding infrastructure.

Like Denver, Washington has got a school-based funding formula.

And the way it works is each student is assigned money based on how we perceive their needs, and that money then follows the student to whatever school they go to.

So you've got a foundation weight.

There are then multipliers on that for things like economic disadvantage.

If you're a multilingual, if you're an English language learner, if you are a special education student within the context of four different tiers of severity of disability, and so on, the money is assigned to you, and then whatever school you go to receives that funding.

To give you a sense of scale this year, it's about $28,000 per student.

So we also do fund the schools well.

In addition to funding another part of the infrastructure that's core is our centralized admissions process, again, similar to Denver, I think similar to what you have here.

We have My School DC.

And this is a place where, as a family, you go to first of all learn about all of the school options based on criteria that you put in, including your address, how far the schools are away, what are some of your programmatic interests, and you then rank order up to 12 schools, and then thanks to the genius of some long forgotten MIT mathematician.

We have an algorithm that gives the greatest number of choice to the greatest number of families.

And what's important about this system is as a charter operator, you don't have a choice about what students apply, and you certainly don't have a choice about what students attend.

In other words, it's universal, open to all, and families apply if you get in, that's the school that you're going to.

So there are no gates in either direction.

On the transportation front, we are in Washington, D.C.

Blessed or cursed to have a metro transit system that is our public school transportation system.

So every student receives a so-called kids' ride free card, and that gives them access to metro rail and metro buses, and that's how they have to get to school.

We do not have any yellow bus service.

With the single exception that if in your IEP for special education you are required to be given transportation, we run special ed transportation, which oddly lives within the state education agency.

So they do all of their normal functions, plus they run the buses for students with special needs that need them.

That's a quirk of our system.

Lastly, on the facilities front, the way we have managed facilities for charter schools is twofold.

Firstly, as we saw the outmigration of students from the traditional system into charter schools, we had a process of delivering the now vacant traditional district school buildings to the charter sector.

It was called a request for offer process.

We'd have the building, we knew we didn't need it anymore.

We put it up for offer, charters had by law the right of first refusal.

You get applications, and according to whatever the criteria were the best applicant would get the building.

We now no longer have any buildings, and so what we do is we have something called a charter facilities allotment, which is money that's attached to our student-based funding formula for every student that goes to only to charter schools to help defray the costs of their facilities.

So they can use that for rent, or they can use that to renovate a space that they're in, or to help with the financing arrangements they make with banks.

So that's how we currently manage our facilities.

So I thought I would just share them with you.

This is a picture of our statewide assessment results from 2015 to 2025.

The important point here is just to note that all of the lines are going up.

We saw both in English and math the kind of drop in our statewide performance that everyone saw.

We're very proud of the fact now that at least in reading, we are above where we were pre-pandemic.

Moving forward to the nation's report card, we are literally the fastest improving urban school system in the nation.

Many claim that, as Alyssa did.

I say somewhat competitively, but we actually have the chart to prove it.

So you'll see on the far right-hand side.

You're on the scatter plot from that era.

You're there, just a little bit south of Denver.

You'll see on the far right-hand side, DCPS, and this is the growth in NAPE fourth grade reading scores from 2011 to 2024.

And that's us compared to the other systems that take this tutor test.

I've included in red the citywide NAPE result for fourth grade reading to show you that even across our district and public charter schools, we are exceeding performance elsewhere.

Secondly, just on NAPE again, these are the so-called statewide results, so this is citywide for DC compared to all the other states.

You will note that DC saw improvements from 2011 to 2014 essentially in all of the four subject areas, apart from eighth grade math where there was no change, while the rest of the country unfortunately saw the kinds of declines that have consumed so much newsprint and agitat recently.

Briefly, graduation rates have been going up.

They've gone up 15 points in the past decade.

Importantly, we have an incredibly strong early childhood education system in Washington, D.C.

95% you'll see on the orange line of four-year-olds are in free full day pre-K.

82% in the blue line, you'll see of three-year-olds are in full free pre-kindergarten programs.

That helps build the foundation for the system.

And just lastly on results, I thought I would share a bit about parent satisfaction, which of course is one thing that we care in many ways most about.

This was a recent survey of states, and it turned out that 86% of families in DC thought they had enough choice, which strikes me as remarkably high.

And overall, 87% of parents were either very or somewhat satisfied with their school, which also I think is high.

And certainly these are numbers we wouldn't have seen a decade ago in Washington.

I would be remiss if I didn't share some facts about the most important element of our system, and that's our teachers.

None of this matters if you don't have wonderful teachers.

We care a lot about teacher retention as you do and same school retention.

The chart on the right is our same school retention numbers.

The blue on the bottom is for the city as a whole across all our schools.

You can see now we're at 76%.

Again, the important thing to note is also that the line is going in the right direction.

Orange is DCPS, so that's the traditional system, now at 82%, so it outperforms the city average.

And one thing we care a lot about in DC and DCPS is the fact that our teachers who are rated effective or highly effective stay in their schools at 87%.

So we're keeping what we consider to be our really good teachers in their schools, and we value that a lot.

On the left, you've got some of the reasons why, but of course, not the only reason why.

We just renegotiated our contract.

DCPS is unionized, of course, the charter sector is not, but in the unionized environment in DCPS, we just renegotiated our contract, and we managed to increase salaries, which we were trying to do.

Starting salaries are now $63,000 a year, which according to some rankings is the highest in the country.

Your average salary in DCPS today is 110,000 for teacher, and that's before the bonuses that we've incorporated as well.

So we do our best to pay our teachers what they deserve, and we're getting closer to that.

Charter schools receive the same funding as DCPS with the idea that they will pay the same salaries, but they're not required to do that.

They mostly do.

All right, let me finish with a few um reflections for what they're worth.

This page is very colorful and has many irrelevant photographs on it, but the words I hope will be insightful.

This is about our current trends, and actually, just as Alyssa was describing in Denver on the left, you'll see our era of growth is coming to an end.

And by that I mean we are now seeing a flatlining of our public school population, like the rest of the country, like Denver, we have seen a real decline in our birth rate starting in 2017, and that's now starting to play into our school system.

So this year, our public school enrollment is basically flat versus the growth that we've seen every year for the past couple of decades.

This also means that we're not opening any new schools.

So you heard my numbers earlier about the charter sector opening a bunch of schools, uh, but we have stopped that.

We haven't had any new charter applications organically, I think, for the past two or three years.

So the era of growth is ending, which means we are in a new chapter that we're working to figure out.

I think in part, that's why you'll see in yellow I've written that true cross-sector collaboration has really begun.

It is my ambition and certainly my vision outside of the scope of what we're talking about here, that high schools are going to look very, very different in five or ten years than they look today.

And part of what they'll look like is we are going to stop thinking only in terms of the unit of the school.

It is not the case that every high school has to provide everything that every one of its student needs.

So we, like other places around the country, and you're doing superb work in Indiana on this.

We've opened up advanced technical centers, which are hubs where students from any public high school in the city can go and get career and technical education training, college credit, work-based learning in cybersecurity and health sciences.

So we now have two of these, and they are students arrived there from both charter schools and traditional district schools.

And we have plans afoot to open more of those, including some inside our existing schools.

But that is the kind of collaboration I think our ecosystem requires in order to make sure we are reimagining high school.

Lastly, just an observation that over time our institutional roles have really been sharpening.

And in particular in DC, this is true for our state agency, something not relevant, I don't think for you.

But because we are a city and a county and a state, it's taken a while for our state agency to become a more muscular tool in our public school ecosystem.

Because we had DCPS, the traditional system sitting side by side with it on the org chart, and Aussie, I don't think ever felt empowered to assert itself over the traditional system.

And those days are now passed as well, because we are developing a more strong strong state agency.

On the lessons learned, the couple points I wanted to make on this slide were just that our highly centralized system allows for a lot of coherence, both across government and also across the entire public school ecosystem.

So within government, for example, the fact that the mayor actually runs the school system means that we have Department of Behavioral Health, mental health clinicians in all our schools.

We've got nurses from the Department of Health in all our schools.

We have our Department of General Services that's actually providing facilities maintenance.

So we work in a more seamless way.

And it also means that the mayor can prioritize public education as she has done every year of her so far three terms, uh, can prioritize public education in the city budget.

So we always start with schools as the first tranche of our city funding, and then we do the rest of the of the city budget.

So the governance allows for us to do that because we've got that coherence.

Uh we've got accountability in the public charter sector with a very strong authorizer, which has been wonderful, and we've got accountability at other levels of the system as well.

I wanted to make this point, although it feels pedestrian.

I think Alyssa, I heard you mention it as well.

But consistency through time is incredibly important.

And I think when you look, we've got 30 years of a charter sector, we've got almost 20 years of mayoral control council oversight, and we've seen this sort of steady drumbeat of progress.

In part it's because we haven't changed anything.

In part it's because you've had some of the same people in the same roles.

I am now the longest serving deputy mayor for education, having been in this role for over seven years.

People say, hey, that's great.

And I was like, it's not, it's not a big deal to be in the same job for a long time.

But what it allows for is the kind of trust that is required to do the informal coherence building that is necessary to make all these pieces fit together.

Uh I had a comment here about the quality of teachers making the biggest difference.

So I think uh our performance evaluation system, which in its first instance is designed to be supportive and help teachers grow in their craft and to honor that craft, has been critical for the improvement in the traditional system along with the competition from the charter sector.

And representation matters.

So if you don't have an elected school board, what are the ways in which the public and families can feel engaged and be part of their school?

Local school advisory councils, parent-teacher associations, we have the state board, but we have found that to be very, very important.

Uh I wrote a bunch of things on this slide.

I'm only going to mention one of them because it's the only one that feels relevant, and that is the second.

That, you know, this kind of coordination takes a lot of work.

And forgive me for stating the blindingly obvious, but to get two sectors, as in our city, to think as one ecosystem has taken decades.

It's literally taken decades.

So it's important to put in the time, but it doesn't happen, I don't think, um, by magic.

And it also doesn't happen with the wave of a particular policy wand.

I think you've got to have these constituent elements working together, like the funding and so forth.

So that's what I've got.

I hope that was illuminating in some small way.

And uh like Alyssa, I'm happy to take questions, and maybe Alyssa will answer the questions you ask me more eloquently.

Yeah, thank you, uh Paul.

Umis.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

With their permission, I have a couple questions.

Sure.

I thank you so much for your presentation.

My first question is you mentioned 28,000 per student.

How many students are we talking about?

I missed that number.

It's a hundred thousand.

The overall, it's a 100,000 students, so the overall public education budget is 2.8 billion.

Okay.

So my my second question is about is about the unique governance of education in your community.

So the public sector is under the mayor, right, who was elected, but then also pardon me, you have this uh charter school board who is appointed.

Excuse me, one second.

Excuse me.

This uh uh public charter school board who is appointed, but then they're also appointed by the mayor.

So technically it's one system, right?

Because the mayor, okay.

So speak to me a little bit more about what does the actual council do then?

I I'm not tracking what their role is in this process.

The city council plays the role it plays in all matters of the of the um by the way, you're trying to get me in trouble with that question.

No, no, I'm a member of the city county council, and I'm just trying to understand like what's the role.

I I work for the executive, so you'll understand that I will be sanguine in my response.

So they do what city they do what city councils do all over the all over the country, and um what I mean by that is when you've got a system with such strong mayoral authority, you require city council to do a lot of the oversight function that you might not otherwise get.

So, in other words, they conduct all of the performance oversight and the budget oversight of the entire school system, and in addition, they take particular interest in some topics of interest.

So, for example, uh Chairman Phil Mendelson, our council, is particularly passionate about truancy and chronic absenteeism.

So every year he holds a hearing on truancy and chronic absenteeism.

We just had it a couple of weeks ago, where he will invite some public witnesses who he thinks can cast a good light on what to do to combat chronic absenteeism, and then he'll get the government witnesses like me up to ask us what we're doing about it and what's changing and what results we're seeing.

So they lean into very specific aspects of the public education system.

Um was that responsive to your question?

Nope.

Um, so we yes, I understand having public hearings.

Are they gonna create policies after that and recommend them to the mayor?

Yes, on the budget.

Are they going to propose a budget and vote it up or down?

Or is it like what is that?

Yeah, yeah, I'm so sorry.

I gave a very, very um inadequate and partial response to your question.

Yes, so they have ultimate power over the budget for the entire um city.

Okay.

So we put together a budget with the mayor, which includes the funding for schools.

Okay.

All of that gets handed over to city council, which then makes adjustments, and they have final say over the budget.

So including the school system.

So that's that.

That's what I was trying to understand in the right.

Yeah, yeah, and there's also a lot of laws that get passed that are relevant.

So, for example, a few years ago, just after I arrived, they passed a school discipline law that then mandated changes in the number of out-of-school suspension days that any school in the city um could um could put uh on any given student and so on and so forth.

So there's a there's a lot of lawmaking and rulemaking along with the budget.

I I promise I was not trying to trip you up.

Last question.

So is there a shared vision between the district schools and the charter schools?

There's a shared vision for quality, and what we look for in the traditional system is that they're providing a great neighborhood option for any family that wants it.

And what we look for in the charter system is honestly that they're leaning in to fill gaps and provide innovation in ways that the traditional system does not.

So we have, I could give examples if you're interested in the sort of extraordinary innovation we've seen in the charter sector.

We have an adult charter sector in Washington, DC.

Um that's part of our public school system that provides career training, GED training, and other things for adults.

We've got alternative schools, uh, one of which, Kingsman Academy is entirely competency-based, and they do things like international residencies for the hardest to serve students in the city that have not been successful in their traditional setting.

We have a full language immersion Hebrew school, we've got a full language immersion Mandarin School, we have a high school, a Montessori high school, not just Montessori elementary schools, and so on and so forth.

All of that has come from the charter sector.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Baronna.

Thank you also for your presentation.

I guess it's not a stretch to suggest that Mayor Bowser will not be in place forever, right?

My question would be you know, without really chiming in on specifics, what controls, what pieces are in place to ensure a certain level of fidelity, continuity for the next iteration, assuming the next mayor may not share Mayor Bowser's approach to the process.

I think it's a great, it's a great question.

I think the pieces that we're talking about here have been in place now for 20 years.

They have actually seen uh one, two, three mayors where there was some consistency of approach.

Um of course, if a new mayor in a different city council comes in, they could change laws.

Uh DC is a little bit different in the sense that the initial school reform act was an act of Congress, so we got a charter sector because of congressional action, because Congress has certain um rights in the district of Washington, uh, which as you know is not uh is not a state.

So I think there's always there's always that risk.

Um, for example, you might have uh a mayor who doesn't believe in mayoral control of schools, in which case there are things that could happen to sort of probably put in place a school board.

You might have a city council that wants to give the state board more authority over schools and so on and so forth.

We hear rumblings about these things all the time.

What I would say in response to that is just when you when you look at the track record of success, which was in part why I spent time on that, it's hard to imagine why you would want to make any kind of disruptive change.

Because when you're thinking about disruptive governance change, it has got to be worth the energy, time, unstat, and tears that's involved in it.

And it's gotta follow from a vision because form always follows function.

So you you have a vision of what you want to accomplish.

And 20 to 30 years ago in Washington, D.C., school wasn't starting on time.

Teachers were not being paid.

It was a dramatic moment for a real turnaround.

And that's what we did.

And every year we do better and better and better.

So I don't think anyone can make the case that we need to have a disruptive change in governance, regardless of their political leanings or their ideology.

Toby.

Yeah, Paul, it looks to me like, as deputy mayor for education, that you do not, that charter schools do not report up through you.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

So talk to us about that.

Uh in terms of in terms of consistency, it would seem to me, I mean, you're essentially you're the head of education for I'm gonna, I'm gonna, it sounds like for the hundred neighbor what you call the neighborhood schools, at least that's but not the 150 charter schools, correct?

I'm just I just want to understand from a cons from a governance standpoint from a consensus consistency standpoint, that there wouldn't be benefits to charter schools reporting up through you.

I'm not trying to get in trouble, I'm just trying to.

No, no, no, no.

I'm trying to think about the best way to um to to kind of respond and talk about that.

It's a very, very, very important question.

And we have relied, and I think we've been blessed with an incredibly strong authorizer.

So when you talk about what are we looking for, it's consistency of quality of learning outcomes.

And the DC public charter school board has really been best in best in class, has held very high standards, has been unafraid to close schools that were underperforming.

And in that sense, we're happy because the charter sector is doing what it's supposed to do.

It is innovating, it is introducing high quality, it is creating some competitive spirit in the marketplace of schools that the traditional system responded to.

DCPS is now slightly outperforming the charter sector in certain measures, uh, but that may not always be the case.

Let's assume that we'll sort of move back to a place where we're all kind of equal.

So, what I'm saying is if that's happening, we don't need to control it per se.

But since the mayor does appoint all the board members, what is true is you can appoint members that actually share a vision.

And recently, when we've been interviewing candidates for the board that the mayor is choosing from, we've talked a lot about whether or not folks have an idea in their hearts that the charter sector should grow to subsume the entire city, or they have an idea in their hearts that actually what we need is a deeply collaborative public school ecosystem, and we need to consider any high-stakes decision around a charter school in the context of the whole city.

And we now have a set of measures that we use for that that the charter school board is going to be taking on as it makes those considerations.

So just a quick follow-up question.

It's sort of related.

You started your comments by making the comment that that, like Denver, you struggle with autonomy versus I think you said consistency, I'm not sure.

So coherence was the word I use coherence.

Similar.

There you go.

Just walk through that because in terms of assigning responsibility for the positive results.

You didn't talk about autonomy, and I was just curious about the whether or not that was an important part of your success.

It is, yes.

And that was an omission on my part, so thank you for pointing it out.

But I would say where we have valued autonomy is within the charter sector.

All of those LEAs, all of those charter schools are deeply autonomous.

And I think if you look at the history of Washington, it is very clear that the charter sector is part of the reason, not the only reason, but a big part of the reason for the performance success that we have seen.

So yes, that that is important.

I think we struggle with it more at the current moment because we are no longer in a world in which we are going to continue to open schools.

If you think about the history of DC, it was essentially individual entrepreneurs making decisions about schools they wanted to see come into existence that would appear before a board with high standards and say yes or no and then hold them to account.

We can't work anymore in a world in which individual entrepreneurs are getting to decide whether or not a school should open or not.

It's one of the geniuses of the Denver approach from a neighborhood perspective of saying we need a school in this part of the city or not, and we've looked very closely at that.

But we can't have entrepreneurs driving a growth agenda.

We have to have our schools working together to make sure we're meeting needs.

And by the way, there's tons of needs we're not we're not meeting.

Angie.

Thank you.

Um quick question pertaining to facilities and then one on funding.

So earlier you had mentioned something about, and just if you mentioned it, just please clarify I missed some of it.

But you talked about requests for offer um for the charter schools to obtain buildings.

So can you explain to me are there any funds that are exchanged kind of like in the Denver model?

So they actually pay towards the bottom line of whatever's required to maintain that facility.

Um we have a dollar rule, so I didn't understand if there were any funds exchanged and giving that building that facility to a charter school.

I mean, the short answer is no, because the building is just handed over at basically a dollar rent for a uh 99-year lease or whatever it is.

So the building is just given, and then the charter school itself has the building and has to maintain it, often had to upgrade it, do renovations and so forth to make it, you know, to bring it up to the standard.

So it essentially was was it wasn't exactly gifting the building, but it was basically saying we have a school we no longer need in the traditional system, and you put it out to offer, and it's essentially going to a charter school as is, and they now have to maintain it.

Do you also intersect that with any type of analysis based upon student population need, placement, location within the city, et cetera, or is it just a charter school made an application, they are willing to maintain the building and therefore they can have it?

At the time there was some consideration to those questions, but not always.

Okay.

And the last one that we did, the consideration was because I was in this seat and we had we're basically running out of buildings.

Uh, you had to be very high performing, and in that instance, you had to be willing to help us with the cost of a rec center that was actually attached to the building.

So we were trying to integrate it in that way.

But in general, we don't have we have no more buildings left, and so it's not really a question for us.

We now just do the facilities allotment as I was sharing earlier.

Okay, thank you.

And then one final question.

This is on a different specifically on the funding component.

Do you have voucher systems so that, for example, you mentioned the $28,000 per pupil?

So does that is that transferable to the private and parochial um schools as well, or is that only what goes towards um public schools and charter schools?

So yeah, the money that the money that I was describing comes from our local budget, so that's the 28,000, that is public school funding.

In addition to that, we have a congressionally mandated voucher program, the opportunity scholarship program.

There are about 1,300 students that take advantage of that.

And um it's a dollar amount allocated every year by Congress.

Superintendent.

Thank you, Paul.

So helpful.

Um, and I actually have questions pro for both of you a little bit.

Are your funding is your funding that you receive in both of your entities connected to property values at all?

Meaning, how are the education in Indiana, it's driven our local by property taxes?

Is that the case in either DC or Denver?

Well, I'll I'll answer first and say only indirectly, because what we're talking about is the city's revenues.

So it just comes out of the city budget.

Okay.

So yes, it's connected to property values and property taxes, because that's where we get a lot, you know, but it's also commercial real estate, sales tax.

It's it's our schools are funded out of our local um uh city budget.

Yeah, yeah.

Similar for our mill levy funds.

Our mill levy funds, uh, similarly, you would describe them as local taxes related to property tax values across the city.

Got it.

And then uh Denver uh sorry, Denver, Alyssa.

Paul talked about teacher compensation being comparable across sector.

In Denver, because it was all sitting under the board, then regardless of type, was the teacher compensation model the same?

No, that's a great question.

So once charter schools got their allocation, they could choose to spend it on whatever they wanted to.

So density of you know, a budget might air towards teachers, might err towards something else, depending on that charter leader's discretion.

Okay.

And then sorry, one more mayor, then I'm finished.

Did you in DC you also have a weighted formula that you spoke about that's established by council or who established the weights?

Yeah, that's it's it's it's a it's a locally determined and it lives in law in local law.

Okay, so city council.

And applies across both the charter sector and the traditional yes.

Okay, and then similarly in in Denver, funds came from the state, DPS then applies the weights and distributes the dollars to all schools, regardless of type in the same way.

There are some weights applied at the state level for similar reasons, students that are considered uh harder to serve, and then the district added on its own weights.

Okay, and then across all schools.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, Tina.

I promise, Paul, there's a question at the end of this for governance, but I want to just make sure that I understand the governance structure in comparison to what we have here in Indianapolis to kind of lead up to this question again.

Um, this is very back of the napkin math from quick research, so I want to confirm that my thinking around this is correct.

So um in uh DC public schools in Washington, DC, um, so you have a single school system across the city entity, about 400,000 registered voters up approximately in approximately 60 miles uh of a space.

So when you talk about electing a mayor, um all 400,000 of those registered voters can elect the mayor who runs the school system, all 400,000 of those voters um elect the state board of education, right?

Um who oversees the standards and all those things.

So I think about here in Indianapolis, um, so we have about 600,000 registered voters in about 360 square miles, but 11 school districts.

So our boundaries um mean that Indianapolis Public Schools, you only have about a third of those registered voters, if even that, that have what I would call a direct stake rate in the operations of Indianapolis public schools.

So I say that to say when you know we have two-thirds of those voters electing the mayor, electing, and we have 400,000 registered voters electing our state board of education, 400,000 voters electing the folks who decide how much money comes from our school, right?

Um from the state level.

And so I guess my question is because it's a much more direct um impact, right?

I vote for this person, this impacts my schools.

Do you see education being a major player in the conversation around electing a mayor?

Right.

So does the mayor have to really like when they're campaigning, is is education one of the primary topics because every one of those 400,000 voters is going to be impacted by their public school education is going to be impacted by that mayor's election.

Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense.

It's a great question, and the simple answer is absolutely yes.

In fact, there are many who believe that Adrian Fenty, who was a former mayor, actually lost his election because of dissatisfaction with some moves he'd made in the school system.

So it's a very, very powerful and important part of our mayoral elections.

Yeah, okay.

I appreciate that.

Again, because I think as a very different perspective here at Indianapolis, um, again, especially with 11 different school districts, because they're all voting for the same mayor, they're all voting separately for the same city council, right?

Individual pieces.

Um, but you know, them the mayor and the city council um are tasked with making decisions for that that whole area.

Um but India's only you know public schools only serving you know less than a third of that voter space, if that makes sense.

So I just think it makes a very different conversation, and so I I wanted to make sure understanding kind of how that that worked.

And and I think that it makes sense then that it would be a much bigger conversation in the election process and on people's minds when they go to the voting booth.

Toby.

Paul, I just have uh asked excuse me about transportation.

Yeah.

So you have no yellow buses except for the exceptions that you talked about, correct?

That's right.

The students with special needs who are required to have it in their IEPs.

And so it sounds like you rely on you have a good public transportation system that you rely on.

I'm just curious, and and so you you identify these hundred schools as neighborhood schools, right?

And so there must be a geographic dispersion of those schools such that I I really want to know the percentage of of students that walk to school versus take public transportation or some other alternative.

Do you do you have that just in a general sense what those percentages might be?

Uh so we do we do know that.

In fact, my office uh very proudly has an entire uh website infrastructure with all of Washington DC's data on it called Edscape.

And Edscape has uh how far every student travels to school and information about the the modality.

Um most students don't walk because so many students are not attending their neighborhood schools, we have a quarter of our students are going to their neighborhood school.

Uh and we do find that residents of wards seven and eight, which are our lowest income uh neighborhoods travel the farthest because they're um working to get to better quality schools often outside of their own neighborhood.

Um so we do know those things, but I don't know the exact numbers of walkers versus transport riders.

But those are the two options, right?

Or or your your parents, somebody else drives you.

That's right.

But is it do you have just a general sense of what the percentage would be with respect to public transportation?

I mean it's it's it's probably somewhere around 80 percent.

I mean it's gonna be very, very high.

Thank you.

Well, in the interest of time, again, Paul, thank you.

Uh Alyssa, thank you.

Uh I would ask of you, Paul, the same as I ask of Melissa, as long as we are not too intrusive if we have follow-up uh questions or if a member of the alliance would like to talk to you uh about uh the DC uh schools, uh I hope that you would uh be willing to take those phone calls again.

Uh I'll monitor them uh closely that to that they're not too frequent.

Well, I have uh I found this to be very impressive and provocative discussion, so I would be glad to follow up with the well thank you.

Thank you.

It's been an honor.

Thank you both for coming again.

I can't can't tell you how much your uh input has been valuable.

Well, as Paul and Alyssa are hopefully uh making their way uh back to their hotels or home.

Um Mike, are we ready to begin the public comment uh section of uh our program?

Uh I was gonna give a quick update on the task force I forgot and then we will move to that.

Yeah.

Um so thank you, Mayor.

The task force work is moving along well.

Uh the transportation task force has met twice and has some additional additional data collection requests that are ongoing and will be reported back to the group.

The facilities task forces met once and has a second meeting scheduled.

And I feel comfortable in saying that both groups will be ready to report out a series of options for the ILEA to consider and choose from within the original time frame we laid out in the last meeting.

And mayor, if you're satisfied with that update, I'll move straight to the public comment guidance.

Okay.

It was all good.

It was really good.

Let's uh let's go ahead and go forward with the uh uh the public comment section.

Great.

Uh as in prior meetings, we're following the public comment procedure shared on our website.

Based on the signups for this evening, each speaker will have one minute to speak when your name is called and the timer begins.

Proceed until the timer sounds.

Please be respectful of the time limit.

We're actually a little late getting to this and finish your comments promptly at the time to allow as many people as possible to speak.

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

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

Disruptive or offensive comments or similar behavior uh will not be tolerated.

With that, uh um what we'll do is have Roman uh oh, I shouldn't note comments submitted online prior to tonight's meeting and emails directed to the alliance were shared with the alliance members and will be posted online in the days to come.

So we thank everybody so far, and then Roman is going to announce two names um at first, so we ask that the second person come up and wait for the first one to proceed, and then we'll get through our public cometers that way.

Roman.

All right.

Just as mentioned before, um, want to call your name, please come up to the microphone.

The next speaker can line up right behind you.

So first we'll hear from An Wynne, followed by Kate Scott Daniel.

Good evening, everyone.

Um so my name is Anween and I'm an immigrant from Vietnam.

Um I came here after high school.

Um I first learned about elected school board in my college political science class.

Coming from a country where school board uh appointed, I found the idea of voters choosing school board members, both empowering and deeply democratic.

Now, as a model of two kids attending IBS school and the wife of a teacher also in IBS.

I am leaving that belief.

This is why I strongly oppose to any reposal or any ideas to make our school board partially elected or partially appointed or appointed, mixing elected and appointed members under my accountability and open the door to favor uh favoriteism.

Democracy only works when all members answer directly to voters.

To everyone here in this room today, regardless of school choice.

Do you wonder why people in nearby township and donut county have elect the school ball while we all here sitting and wondering if we should compromise the entitled of our school ball in the fact names of stability, efficiency, and school choice.

Democracy may be in buffet, but it's worth protecting that idea.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Kate Scott, and after that, Angela Lee.

Hello.

Well, many of us here do disagree on some points.

I think that few of us want to feed the goals of the far right MAGA legislators who want to divide and ruin Indianapolis schools.

This gives them an excuse to strip us of our rights to make community decisions and to then force an all-charter and voucher landscape.

That allows for increased far-right control of education and floods of public funding for privately run religious schools.

They can't do it in their own rural districts, so they're trying to do it here instead.

If we don't want that, then our goal should be to strengthen and stabilize a really special system of neighborhood schools and charters.

So I'm hoping ILEA will recommend the following.

One, a fully elected school board with no new committees or boards or special seats or bureaucracy.

IPS administration and the school board are best placed to streamline operations in a cost-effective way, and citizens deserve real input, not just a slice.

Two, a moratorium on the opening of new charters.

We don't have the students to fill them or the budget to operate them, which is good for nobody.

More closed schools and failed charters give the legislature all the excuses they need to strip the Indianapolis local government and its citizens of our right to make community decisions.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Uh next was Danielle Cruz and then Angela Lee.

Did you repeat the names, please?

Danielle Lee.

Danielle Cruz and Angela Lee.

Okay.

See?

Hi, my name is Angela Lee.

I'm a mother of two students at IPS School 74.

After a decade of living in downtown Indianapolis, for I've noticed that many couples will live downtown for years, but once they have their first child, within four years, they move away to a suburb or sometimes to another Indianapolis township.

These areas do not have more school choices in IPS.

In fact, they have fewer.

These families end up attending whatever local neighborhood public school that their kids can take the bus or walk to.

Never have I heard of them attending charters in their new location or even agonizing over which school in their new town they wanted to live close to close to.

Choices result in decision paralysis and anxiety that cause families to leave the IPS boundary area.

Please recommend that our legislators place a moratorium on the opening of any new charter schools in the IPS district boundary area until 2035.

We don't need more choices with 9,000 unfilled student seats.

New charter schools would result in the closure of more schools and cause more young families to leave our district.

Please also recommend that our legislators keep all IPS boundary decision making regarding facilities, transportation, and approval of new charter schools centralized with our locally elected and accountable IPS board.

Unelected decision makers would add to the distrust of our district.

Next up is Brian Duarte.

And then Kim Graham.

Good evening.

My name is Dr.

Brian Duart.

I'm an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Purdue, but my testimony is my own, does not reflect the views of my employer.

As a taxpayer and scholar researching the effects of school choice markets, I strongly suggest that the ILEA maintain a fully elected board to oversee our public schools.

Research shows that constituents prefer fully elected school boards as the governing structure for public schools.

I also think it's a mistake to use Denver and DC as models of success.

For example, in 2024, the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder found that the study alleging that Denver's reform is the most effective in U.S.

history was quote unsupported.

Additionally, research does not support that mayoral control, as described in DC is an effective reform, which is probably why appointed school boards are currently being phased out in Chicago.

Thank you.

All right.

After Kim Graham, next is Kai Bong.

Good evening.

My name is Kim Graham, and I'm here to speak for the families that are going to be affected by the decisions that the ILEA will be recommending to the State House.

We need to put the families first.

We need to listen to what the families want for transportation.

It doesn't need IPS or charter running the bus system.

We need to elect a whole new board that do know transportation that will be able to figure out how our children can get to school.

We need to start working together.

IPS charter innovation, put the egos aside, and let's think about the kids and the kids come first.

Quality schools is what the families want.

And we're talking about real quality schools.

The schools where our children are learning how to read, write, do math, and when they get to high school, they can go to college and go to the trades and be successful citizens here in Indianapolis.

So as you make the decision, think about the families because this will affect the families for the next 20 years, and it's going to make a difference.

It does take a village to raise a child, and that's what Indianapolis needs to think about, the families that we have here.

Let's start working together, everybody.

IPS charter and families.

No more bashing.

We're past that.

It's time to make a decision to for our children to have a better education.

Thank you.

Kim Green.

Next is Kai Bong, and then after Katrina Anderson.

Good evening.

Um hi, my name is Kai.

I'm an educator in the city.

After learning more about Denver Public Schools in the district of Washington, I think.

Thank you so much.

Next is Katrina Anderson, and then after Naleli Garcia Nava.

Good evening.

My name is Katrina Anderson, and I am here to discuss the financial challenges faced by IPS.

As a proud graduate of IPS, I am deeply concerned about the trajectory of the district.

IPS is experiencing a decrease in enrollment.

If this trend persists, IPS could deplete its financial resources by 2027.

The implications of such a financial crisis are significant.

IPS could risk a state takeover, a scenario that would not only result in a loss of local control over our schools, but also a loss of our community's voice in our children's education.

We must work collaborative collaboratively, sorry, to prevent this outcome.

IPS must remain under the stewardship of our community rather than being governed by the state.

The ILEA should advocate for recommendations that incorporate substantial structural changes to governance, changes that will facilitate the success of our educational system.

It is anticipated that IPS will seek a new referendum as the existing one is set to expire in 2026.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next next is Naleli Garcia Nava and then Brianna Dynes.

Good afternoon.

My name is Nayeli Garcia.

Steam leaders and community partners.

As a nursing student and community advocate here in Indianapolis, I've seen that education is not just about academics.

It's about life and opportunity.

When our students are supported, our families rise.

When they are overlooked, our entire community feels the weight of the neglect.

Accountability is where progress begins.

It means insurance resources reach every classroom, policies reflects equity equity, and that every child, regardless of background, is given the chance to succeed.

We must rise the standard for our schools, our leaders, and ourselves.

Because investing in education is investing in the health, hope, and heartbeat of Indiana's future.

Together, let's build a city and a state where compassion leads policy and learning becomes the foundation of lasting change.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Brianna Dynes.

And next, Guthrie Bayer.

Okay.

Um what I see have seen a lot here, you know, in these meetings and uh presentations is a kind of revolving door of the kind of usual folks benefiting from privatization while regular people try to make the system that the people at the top broke.

Uh this is political because it's about the bigger picture of power and money flows.

Take those.

Uh implicated in corrupt sweetheart deals from the Hogs administration.

Who do people have to sleep with to make sure our district schools are funded?

We hear people talk, we've heard so-called education leaders talk about educating our children as if it's a business in a market.

Rather than making sure our resources make all schools quality, not bussing one kid, you know, some kids to quality schools here while leaving others behind.

Why are why aren't we focused on making all schools quality uh rather than focus on uh making business decisions?

Under Hogset, insiders cash in while families struggle.

Y'all know the rest.

Uh check out Mirror Indy.

Prove us wrong, exit the corrupt revolving door.

Thank you.

Vote for fully public, fully democratic recommendations and fight for them.

If you're confused by what that means, you can visit Central Indiana DSA.org, FFFP.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Guthrie Bayer, and after Madison Whitcomb.

Um hi, my name is Guthrie Pyer.

I'm an IPS graduate.

And uh we heard a lot about uh DC's governance structure.

Um, but something that was mentioned but not fully examined is that Washington DC is spending 10,000 dollars more per student than IPS is, and I think that's really the relevant factor.

We're talking about governance reforms, um, but we're not willing to talk about spending more money.

Um, and that's the key issue because as long as the ILEA discussion remains about transferring existing um infrastructure, uh transportation services or facilities uh from one group of schools to another instead of expanding the revenue that funds the schools.

Um ultimately what's going to happen is that uh charter schools will just receive uh deteriorating and insufficient service.

Uh so this discussion around governance reforms um and transferring facilities and infrastructure and transportation services isn't going to fix anything.

Thank you.

Next is Madison Wickham, and then after Devin Thomas.

Good evening.

My name is Madison Whitcomb, granddaughter of John Whitcomb, the Porter County watchdog who spent 30 years fighting government transparency, and distant cousin to Governor James Whitcomb, who helped build Indiana's first public institution such as Indiana School for the Blind and School for the Deaf.

One thing they both understand is the same thing that made Indiana great to begin with.

Change is made through the democratic process and not unelected boards or heavy-handed government action.

Mayor, you were once called Mr.

Clean for persecuting corrupt officials.

Now you're under investigation for ignoring conflicts of interest involving 80 million dollars in city deals with your former chief of staff.

You covered up sexual harassment complaints.

Your own democratic counselors have called for your resignation.

And now you chair this unelected board, exempt from open door laws, meeting in secret to privatize Indianapolis schools.

Do you know what this board represents?

It's surely not collaboration.

It's consolidation of government control before wiping your hands clean when in March this board dissolves.

My grandfather would recognize this board for exactly what it is.

Oligarchy with a deadline.

Thank you.

You have one choice to redeem you.

Tell the legislator this anti-democratic process is illegitimate and you cannot in good conscience continue.

Demand fully public and fully funded schools or privatized schools or privatized schools behind closed doors and let Hestry become the judge for the coward you became.

Next is Devin Thomas.

And then Devin isn't here.

Devin's not here.

Devin's not here.

So next we'll do Michael Saradakis.

And after Audria McLeod, I only have a minute, so I just wanted to issue a few fact checks uh for the presentations that came up earlier.

Uh so uh our uh friend from uh DC mentioned that 80 out of 115 schools uh were shut down.

Uh here in Indy, we had 33% of our charter school shutdown, and we called that a catastrophe.

So I don't know why we would want to emulate a system that had double that many closures.

Uh kids need stability.

That's not stability.

Uh you may have caught it between the equivocations, but uh the DC state board is uh the uh office that's actually elected, doesn't have real decision-making power.

Um if a charter uh CEO is choosing the elected officials, like in Denver, that's not democracy.

That is the definition of oligarchy.

Uh I don't have time to get into all the graph crimes I saw.

I apologize.

Uh Denver's family of school uh Denver's family of schools model has improved education outcomes.

It has not.

Uh in fact, Denver schools are even considered segregated.

Uh Denver touts their high performance schools, yet they engage in some in the same dumping of disabled and difficult students that was just revealed to be the case at Paramount and KIPP schools.

It doesn't matter what they promised.

We know the facts.

Thank you.

Um and I uh Yeah, that's yeah, I got more, but thank you.

Next is Audrea McLeod, and after Mary Ann Schlagel Ruger.

My name is Adria McLeod, and I'm an educator in a school that primarily services English learners and newcomers.

I am so passionate about the community I serve, and I am deeply concerned with how our immigrant communities and communities of color have been manipulated, disinformed, and exploited.

The Hoosers for Great Public Education Pact was founded by one of the appointees on this very board.

Their political donations include over 20 GOP Republicans.

You may have cheered and celebrated when these legislators handed you our property tax funding on a silver platter, but were you still cheering as they voted to expand ICE enforcement and activity in our city?

These same legislators you lobby to fight for our charter schools are the same legislators welcoming Tom Homan with open arms to rally around the revival of HB 1531, a bill that will expand ice and terrorize our immigrant families.

They want you to believe they care about equitable education for your children.

Meanwhile, they are actively fighting to tear apart your families.

Do not be fooled.

It is only money and power they care about.

We cannot trust the mayor to control school board appointments when he has already shown us who he sees fit to make education decisions by this board in front of us.

Do we really want more GOP friendly appointments who will welcome ice race in our elementary school pickup lines?

All Indianapolis children deserve fully funded, fully democratic, fully public schools.

Next is Mary Ann.

After is Felipe Sisterinas.

My name is Mary Ann Schleigo Ruger, and I'm an IPS resident since 1995.

Charter schools told legislators they should receive IPS property tax money, and ILIA should be formed because their students are IPS students too.

Now that they have it, guess who Purdue Polly is spending those IPS taxpayer dollars on?

Answer to bus in students from outside IPS.

PPHS Broad Ripple is spending 154,000 out of the just over 300,000 they received in property taxes to run two full-size yellow school buses in Pike, Washington Township, and Lawrence School Districts, while still providing nothing but an I indigo city bus pass to the students living in IPS boundaries that are the vast majority of their students.

I'm sorry, I am lightheaded suddenly.

Can you just pause for a moment on my time?

Please, because I might faint otherwise.

Okay, just give me a second.

No, it's just been a long day.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

While still providing nothing but an indigo city bus pass to the students living in the boundaries, those are the vast majority of their property tax funding.

The two school buses run almost empty every day.

Before I Leah makes any recommendations, it and the public needed detailed accounting of how each charter school is spending the property tax monies they already have.

Please find that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next is Ada Limus.

And next after is Don Tia Dyson.

Madre Defensora is part of this hermosa community de ILA.

Authorizadores.

Gracias.

Thank you so much for your patience.

My name my name is Ada Lemeth, and I'm a mom of two Christian and Scarlet and a part of a wonderful community of parents, students, and educators who care about the future of Indianapolis.

The truth is all the talk and fighting about school types is hurting our kids.

It's time to stop that and then and fix the system.

We want all schools to have the freedom to do what's best for students.

We need fewer layers of rules and one clear way to measure how schools are doing.

And we need better bus routes so every family can get their kids to the right school for them.

Over 2,000 people have already said yes to this vision.

And we're ready because when we stand together, our children thrive.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Don Tia Dyson and after Bonnie Georges.

Good evening, uh Leah Ward.

My name is Don TA Dyson.

I am a father of four, two daughters on our role and two incredible special needs kids.

I am here today as a parent, an advocate, a community member who believes that every child deserves access to high quality education, regardless of the type of school they attend.

Too often we have conversations around school types creating division.

But what really matters in our schools is not their model.

Over the summer I've joined a group of parents, students and collected over 2,000 signatures across IPS neighborhoods.

And we and what we heard was clear.

Parents want their kids to be safe, access to reliable transportation, teachers that understand them, and to attend schools that are transparent and accountable.

Thank you so much though.

Thank you.

Next is Bonnie.

Bonnie Georges and after Demetrius Jones.

Good evening, everyone.

I am Bonnie George.

I'm an immigrant from Haiti, a father and a teacher here in IPS.

I've shared before how hard it was to navigate the school system when I first came here.

But tonight I feel proud because we've built something real together through our petition that we delivered to the ILEA.

Let's be honest.

The politics around school type are hurting our kids.

When we focus on labels like charter or traditional school, we stop working together and students lose out.

That's why I believe in a unified school system with a ton of more school, so principal and teachers can make the best choices for the students without waiting for someone to approve from the above.

Every child deserves the chance to succeed.

We need to shorten the number of authorizers, create one clear performance standard for all school, and expand transportation so every family has access no matter where they live.

And this is just my opinion.

So they believe when we we come together, we all can thrive.

Next is Demetrius Jones, and after Noami, Oliva.

Which is why I'm here today.

We've gotten so-called over school type, that we have lost focus on what's most important, our kids' education.

We need a system where all schools are held accountable under the same standards no matter what school type.

I believe that there should be a system of authorizers that is easy to understand.

Parents should never be confused about who to go to if they're having problems with their child school, teachers, or anything else going on with the kids' education.

Lastly, I believe transportation should be available for all school types because there are a lot of parents that don't have access to transportation.

This is important when choosing the school that is best fit for our children.

So I'm asking that you were thinking about your recommendations to make our school system better.

Please consider the voices of the 2,000 signatures that we collected from IPS residents who support Together We Thrive and think about what is best for our students and their families.

Thank you.

Next is Noemi Olivia, and after Ted Collins.

All right, I'll translate that as quick as possible.

Hello, my name is Noemia Oliva, and I'm a mother of an IPF student and a charter student.

I have proudly advocated for my daughter and other students for many years now, and I am part of a committee of the committee of parents and teachers who helped create the Together We Thrive recommendations.

I recently moved and had the task of finding a good school that fits my daughter's needs.

My youngest daughter decided to stay at her current IPS school, and my oldest daughter is now at a virtual charter school.

This is the first year they are both thriving academically, and I finally have a school that fits their needs.

It has been clear to me as a mom that teachers are one of the most important reasons why students thrive, or or if they don't.

When we think about a school performance framework, having a data, having data on teacher turnover rate would be important to me.

Also, academic and discipline data.

How can a school get support if it isn't transparent of what the needs are?

And how can I, as a parent, decide what schools are best, unless I have the necessary data on how a school is educating children who look like mine?

This is why I think school accountability is a clear framework in is it clear to successful schools in our district.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Ted Collins, and after Gail Cosby.

A little fanciful brain work, uh, just like the classroom, and I mean absolutely no disrespect.

I totally support parents who want to make choices for their students.

But just a couple of questions.

So three patriots, what would they say?

What would Fannie Lou Hamer say about electing school boards?

What would the Reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King say about electing school boards?

And what would that former citizen of Indiana, the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, say about electing school boards?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Scale Cosby here.

She had to leave to do mommy.

Has she submitted it in writing already?

Uh okay, yeah.

Do you have a minute?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Uh try and get us out of here.

Okay.

My name is Dr.

Gail Cosby.

Obviously, it's not, but you know what I mean.

Uh I am a commissioner, a duly elected commissioner for Indianapolis Public Schools, although these comments tonight are my own.

In sixty seconds, allow me to ensure that no one in this room misunderstands exactly what is happening.

Point to an article published by Mirror India on October 20th entitled How a 14 year old plan is shaping IPS future.

This article highlights how the Mind Trust has worked a plan to systematically fracture the IPS district and outsource its authority.

Began with Mind Trust creating enroll Indy in 2015 to facilitate the selective sorting of students into schools.

And now we are at a crucible yet again with the creation of Together Ed, another arm of the Mind Trust poised to assume authority over transportation and potentially buildings.

Rest assured, none of this political strategizing is being done to benefit kids.

Um is the final most egregious step in this strategy.

It is designed to remove taxpayers and parents from the decision making process.

Can this shift in government be trusted now?

The answer is a resounding no.

This is our duly elected commissioner, so I'm gonna continue.

But imagine a shift to boards appointed by the mayor, or even the state over citizens who have no say in their selection and no line of sight into their decision.

Next is Thomas King, and after Melissa Lovella.

I know you need some age uh in this, and uh those of you who know I've been around for a while.

I'm a proud graduate of Arsenal Technical High School in school 54.

Um that singular experience of tech high school was the most formative thing in my educational life.

And uh I can't tell you how it is without question that that is the most benefit.

It was that um multiracial uh inclusive environment that was so important to me in the jobs that I've had.

So uh as I look at today's environment and I see the attempts to get rid of inclusion and diversity and equity.

Um, I think those are the very things that made my life at tech high school and life later so beneficial.

So we have to make sure we keep that in focus as we go forward.

And uh it's extremely important.

As I uh listen to the discussions tonight, uh I think you have a big job on your hands.

We can argue about whose right it is to make the decision, but the important thing is we make those decisions and make them quickly on behalf of these kids.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Melissa Lovello.

And after Hannah Marley.

Good evening, ILEA members.

My name is Melissa Lavella.

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

My hope for an outcome from this ILEA is that recommendations are made that preserve our local democracy democracy with a democratically elected school board.

I hope that the decisions and recommendations are ones that allow IPS to have a sound investment and facilities management strategy by advocating to repeal the one dollar law.

I hope that the alliance sees how irresponsible it would be to add any new charter schools within the IPS boundaries while the tax revenue resources are becoming more scarce.

I hope that the alliance can make recommendations that will hold charter schools to the same level of accountability with regard to their accounting, finances, teacher qualifications, and performance standards as district-run schools.

I hope that the alliance will make recommendations that reflect IPS as an asset that it is, and not the liability that is incorrectly often viewed as by our state legislative supermajority and others.

I hope that the alliance will make recommendations that set IPS up for longevity and success.

A strong IPS is necessary for our city to thrive, not a fragmented one.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Hannah, and after Hannah Marley.

Elizabeth Marine.

Hi, my name is Hannah Marley.

I'm a public school teacher at Crispus Addicts High School.

Um it was interesting to hear the perspective from DC.

I will say that one obvious difference is that we don't have a comprehensive public transportation system that functions at the same level as theirs.

At the last ILEA meeting, I heard the word trade-off used repeatedly by many members of this body.

Of course, there will be trade-offs.

Um, but the trade-offs are only abstract to you because many of you have no experience as an educator.

You don't have to see the trade-offs of your decisions and look them in the eye.

Two trade-offs were sitting outside the door to school 45 minutes early yesterday because they had to catch an early bus to get to school on time.

They can't come in early because they have to pass through metal detection.

Yes, it was cold outside, and it will only get colder.

Is that trade-off acceptable to you?

A busload of trade-offs were late to school this morning.

The day our school took the SAT because the city bus was not on time.

Is that trade-off acceptable to you?

The trade-offs of the recommendations you will make deserve full democratic elected representation in the governance of our schools and the allocation of our resources.

This is not an elected board and therefore is not democratically representative of the schools and communities already struggling under austerity conditions and lack of resources.

Thank you.

We demand the preservation and respect of our democratically elected accountable school board.

Thank you.

Next is Elizabeth Marino, and after Tai Juan Garrett.

Charters threaten the foundation of our public schools and our students' academic success.

Historically, charters exacerbate segregation and lack of transparency, accountability, and oversight.

As a teacher with 24 years in the classroom, I've seen firsthand the negative impact of charter schools in our communities.

I have many more examples that lack oversight that is common in charter schools in our state.

But I'd rather focus on the impact of our public schools.

Last year at IPS, I had 270 students in my English rosters.

I average 41 students per class in a room that barely holds 30 desks.

You can imagine the issues I face with overcrowded classes, lack of supplies, behavior issues, or regular attendance, the list goes on.

But most importantly, my ability to deliver high-quality instruction has been severely impeded due to lack of funding.

Thank you.

Is Tai Juan here?

Next is David Girton and then John Hooker.

Good afternoon.

My name is David Gerton, and I serve as Senior Vice President of Blailock Band and founder of the Indiana Project.

I'm proud to support Indianapolis Indianapolis Public Schools.

Through our work, we are preparing young people, especially those from underrepresented communities to understand and engage with public finance, opening doors to careers and investment in and investment banking, underwriting, corporate finance, and financial analysis.

IPS students have been among our most promising participants, showing that with the right support, they can thrive in complex, high-impact fields.

My own journey began in IPS.

I attended school 70, school 59, and later graduated from Shorebridge High School.

And later I had the honor of serving on the Indianapolis Public School Board.

That experience shaped my commitment to educational equity and brought me here today.

I've seen firsthand what Indianapolis Public Schools can do when we invest in its students.

Let's keep building pathways that empower the next generation to lead, compete, and succeed.

Thank you.

After John, Tom King.

Good evening.

My name is John Hooker, and I'm the president and executive director of the Central Indiana Building Trade Unions, proudly representing over 35,000 men and women of the union construction industry here in Indianapolis.

I want to express our strong support for IPS.

Our union has helped help IPS graduates step into careers that offer real wages, real benefits, and a real future.

These aren't just jobs, they're an opportunity to build a life with dignity and purpose.

We've seen the IPS students show up ready to work, ready to learn, ready to grow.

When they are given the right tools and support, they rise to the challenge and they thrive in the skilled trades.

The Central Indiana Building Trades is proud to be partners with IPS on construction projects, maintenance projects, and upkeep around the city.

These investments don't just build schools, they build stronger families, stronger neighborhoods, and ultimately a stronger Indianapolis.

IPS is laying the foundation for the next generation of builders, leaders, and change makers, and we're proud to stand with them and help make that future possible.

Thank you.

Next is Elder Lionel Rush, and after Adrian Russell, good evening.

I'm Alma Elman.

I'm a preacher, and I usually take three hours.

Okay, so let me go quick.

As president of the entity nomination of Minister Alliance of Greater Indian Nepha's, I spent decades working alongside diverse coalitions that include faith leaders, civic organizations, and grassroots association with one goal in mind, and is to produce equitable outcomes for all people.

Having said that, I'll just move to this part.

We believe in a system where the people who are good enough to elect mayors and senators and prosecutors and presidents could and should be able to elect their own school board.

We believe deeply in and for the future of our children and their lives and their well-being and their education.

But we don't wish to have our children become the political football while uh while only the structure, methodology, and the size of who and what presides over and govern the school system, but not taken into account the historical, economic, environmental health, and other factors are impacted.

So I'll end by this.

Gene Clem, Junior Almadel Marshal, Bobby Tyscall, Varn Gray, Virgos Hurts, owner Dart Led Line.

That's me.

Number 16, Barbara Linda Joe.

Nineteen children in my family, James and Geneva, put all of them went to IPS.

Thanks.

After Adrian.

Mark Russell.

Good evening.

I'm Adrian Russell.

I'm a proud graduate of IPS and founder of Russell's Building Camp.

I'm honored to stand in full support of Indianapolis Public Schools.

Our camp, a local non-profit, was founded to create and introduce young people to life-changing careers in the construction and building trades.

IPS students have consistently shown up prepared, motivated, and ready to grow.

I've witnessed firsthand that when we put kids first and invest in programs such as Russell's Building Camp.

IPS students not only participate, they compete and thrive.

These young leaders are building more than structures.

They're building futures.

That success doesn't just happen by accident.

It happens when we surround students with mentorship, opportunity, and belief.

IPS is rebuilding stronger, and I'm proud to be part of that journey.

Let's keep expanding these pathways and proving what we already know.

IPS students can do anything when given the chance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mark Russell and after Jerome Stanford.

Good evening, members of Allia.

I commend for your attention and article in today's Indianapolis Star.

Special egg cuts have families on edge.

All this talk of supporting charters that do not educate students with special needs needs to be looked at.

Increasing numbers of children with autism with developmental delays.

Where is that part of this conversation?

Many of those students are students of color that the Urban League represents and advocates for.

Where is that conversation?

The government has laid off people, employees in the Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education, people that enforce the individuals with disabilities in education act.

Pretty soon, the only enforcement of opportunities for people that are disabled is going to be up to the state.

Unless, of course, we join them in the back of the bus as citizens taxpayers whose comments are limited to 60 seconds with less than a day's notice.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next, Anita Williams.

And after Woodrow Myers.

That concludes public comment.

I was waiting for Ms.

Williams.

I'm Dr.

Woodrow Myers.

My mom was an IPS teacher at a principal and helped to desegregate schools in the federal judge Dillon.

I'm a graduate of Short Ridge High School after growing up in Martindale, Brightwood, going to 56, 7480, and Shortridge, which allowed me to go to Stanford and Harvard Medical School.

So I think I have uh enough information about IPS's possibilities to suggest to you that this board, this group needs to swing for the fences.

Nothing in the charter that you've been given prohibits you from identifying the elephant in this room, which is Marion County does not need eleven different school districts.

You know that?

I know that.

There's no reason why you can't use the platform that you've been given to say that to those who will listen.

I also believe very strongly that you need to collaborate with the private schools in addition to the businesses far more than exist today.

There's still absence of love for IPS.

There's absence of nutrition.

The diagnosis is IPS isn't getting the oxygen that it needs, and it's being asked to operate with one hand tied behind its back.

Thank you.

Then now concludes the public comment.

Mayor, if I might make one point, those uh folks who felt limited by the one minute can submit their comments online through our portal, and we'll make sure all the ILEA members get your full comments.

Thank you, Mike.

Um, thank you to everyone who has offered public comment tonight.

Your input helps us shape this important work.

Um our next meeting will be uh held at 6 p.m.

on Wednesday, November the nineteenth.

Location and details will be shared on the ILEA website.

We look forward to continuing this work together.

Thank you all again for your attendance tonight, and this meeting is now hereby adjourned.