Victory College Prep Fall 2025 Renewal Hearing (December 9, 2025)
Victory College Prep Fall 2025 Renewal Hearing
On December 9, 2025, the Office of Education Innovation (OEI) convened a renewal hearing for Victory College Prep (VCP) to review the school's application and performance over the past five-year term. While the school network operates as a K-12 entity, the specific charter under review tonight is the newly structured Elementary School charter (K-4), following the school's transition from a unified K-12 model to a three-school, two-campus configuration earlier in the term. The meeting featured presentations from the school's leadership team, public testimony from board members, educators, students, and community partners, and a detailed Q&A session regarding academic performance, enrollment strategies, financial sustainability, and special education support. OEI Director Shana Cavasos noted that the final renewal decision is made by OEI staff and will be communicated within the next couple of weeks.
Consent Calendar
- No consent calendar items were discussed or approved during this meeting.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Marcy Brown Carter (Board Chair): Expressed full support for the school's renewal, highlighting the successful transition to local independence in 2019. She emphasized the school's financial surplus, the ability to purchase a second building in cash, a record student population of 1,300, and increased teacher pay and benefits as key indicators of long-term sustainability.
- Amanda Meadows (Assistant Principal & Parent): Stated strong support for the renewal, asserting that the split into a standalone elementary school has improved developmental programming and literacy outcomes. She noted that students of color and those living in poverty at VCP Elementary are performing better than their peers throughout Indiana.
- Lisa Wills (Elementary Teacher & Mentor): Expressed full support for the renewal, arguing that the new school model allows for more developmentally appropriate learning. She stated that the approval is essential for teachers to better serve students and indicated that the school is on track to achieve a 10% increase in student proficiency in reading and math.
- Aiden Carpenter (Student, read by colleague): Through his colleague, expressed deep personal gratitude and full support for the renewal. He described the school experience as "genuinely life-changing," noting he is on track to graduate with significant dual enrollment credits and plans to attend the University of Indianapolis. He argued that supporting the renewal will allow the school to continue changing lives for families like his.
- Felipe Quatracancy (Teach for America Indianapolis): Expressed strong support for the renewal on behalf of Teach for America. He stated that VCP offers recruits the best opportunity to scale up quickly for summer training and argued that approving the renewal would increase the quality of education across the city.
- Peggy Frame (Executive Director, Southeast Community Services): Expressed full support for the renewal, characterizing VCP as a community leader. She highlighted the successful partnership in providing career coaching, financial coaching, and food pantry support, stating that the renewal is essential for the network's long-term sustainability as a vital resource hub through 2040.
Discussion Items
Academic Performance and Intervention Strategies
- Tara Muller (Chief Academic Officer) and Valerie Miller (Elementary Principal) discussed strategies to elevate academic indicators to meet standards, specifically in English Language Arts and Math. They detailed the implementation of "Science of Reading" training for over 50% of teachers, the hiring of data specialists to close achievement gaps in real-time, and increased support for Special Education (SPED) and Multilingual Learners (MLL).
- Speaker Position: The administration expressed confidence that their current interventions will drive a 10% proficiency growth, citing an increase in MLL ELA proficiency from 6% to 21% and math proficiency from 6% to 30% since 2021, significantly outperforming state averages.
High School Readiness and Dual Credit
- Chelsea Easter (High School Principal) outlined steps taken to improve SAT readiness, including transitioning to an integrated math curriculum and implementing mandatory, tiered SAT prep courses.
- Post-Secondary Success: The team explained the "Indiana College Core" program, noting that 65% of the student population is signed up. They addressed parental confusion in the initial rollout, stating that student success rates at Ivy Tech have since validated the program for families.
Student Support, Attendance, and Culture
- Valerie Miller and Ryan Gall discussed the implementation of "pathway rooms" (behavior support) and "reverse suspensions" to engage families. They emphasized a shift toward restorative practices and reported that approximately 93% of the student body was retained due to high engagement and incentives.
- Attendance Strategies: The school attributed improved attendance to incentivizing families, partnership with transportation, and a network pyramid goal where 90% of families are engaged monthly. They noted that 20% of suspensions previously came from elementary school, leading to the addition of behavior coaches.
Staffing and Leadership Development
- Ryan Gall noted an 80-85% staff retention rate, attributed to competitive starting salaries (increased from $37,000 to $51,500), robust benefits, and a culture of coaching. He highlighted the "Trailblazer Program," a fellowship designed to grow mid-level leaders from internal staff.
- Valerie Miller expressed that her long tenure (17 years) is sustained by the supportive community and the opportunity to serve a student body that reflects her own background.
Enrollment and Facilities
- Tara Muller discussed a scrappy enrollment strategy involving 40 daycare visits to ensure kindergarten targets are met, noting that filling kindergarten naturally backfills higher grades. The school is addressing a historical under-enrollment in ninth grade through targeted outreach to outgoing eighth graders.
- Financial Sustainability: The network secured $11 million from the Lilly Endowment to fund co-teachers in every classroom and facility upgrades. Ryan Gall stated the goal is to maintain strong cash reserves for 5-10 years while upgrading both the Sloan and new Bethel campuses.
Board Governance
- Marcy Brown Carter described the board as highly active, meeting bi-monthly with committees meeting monthly. She outlined a focus on utilizing new funding for facility upgrades and maintaining academic rigor. She emphasized that the board relies on data-driven cadence and has strategically recruited members to avoid overburdening individuals.
Key Outcomes
- Request for Renewal: The Victory College Prep network formally requested a 15-year "Enduring Excellence" renewal for the Elementary School charter (and implicitly the network's continued operation). The administration argued that a longer term is necessary to sustain the momentum of their new building projects, staffing models, and state-average academic goals.
- Data Highlight: The school highlighted a cumulative student proficiency growth of 8% over the last charter cycle, compared to a 2-3% increase for the district and state, aiming to reach 10% growth in the next cycle.
- Next Steps: No vote was taken during the hearing, as renewal decisions are made by OEI staff. The final decision, including the term length, is expected to be communicated by OEI within the next two weeks.
- Future Goal: The school committed to keeping proficiency growth on track to match or exceed state averages by 2030, with an enrollment cap of 1,500 students by 2028.
Meeting Transcript
Good evening, everybody. Thank you for joining us tonight. We're gonna this is the fall. I could read my own notes. This is the fall 2025 renewal hearing for tonight only Victory College Prep is on our agenda. I'm Shana Cavasos, I'm the director of the Office of Education Innovation. We're just gonna go around and just briefly introduce the members of my team who are here with me. We'll actually start with three. I am Brielle Petty, and I am the senior governance performance analyst for OE. Hi, Holly Morgan, Deputy Director. Madeline Gabots, senior academic analyst. Ungoodseek and senior financial performance analyst. So like I said, tonight we are here for a renewal hearing. Um and then we will begin immediately with public comment. Should be able to move through that quickly. And then at that point, we will just kind of go over a little bit about VCP's renewal application and then bring the team up to share with us. We'll do some kind of QA about the renewal application and um uh kind of goals for the next term, and then we will we should be able to wrap up. Um so just a little bit about so we are uh streaming on uh channel 16. So um I just like to kind of go through a little bit about what this process looks like for our authorizing office. Um so in the spring of a school's sixth year of operations, we issue a renewal report, and what that does is it combines the prior five years of data across the areas of our framework, academics, finance, governance, and including um two or three depending upon the school's age, um, in this case two, um, on the ground site visit evaluations with an independent evaluator. Uh, and so that information is put together and reviewed by our team for kind of the different trends that have occurred over the course of the term, um, presented to the school so that they understand kind of where they're at according to the performance framework heading into the renewal conversations. Uh, and then schools are asked to respond to any area where um an indicator on the framework is either approaching or not meeting standard, um, both to kind of determine what what was behind those trends, what is currently being done or what may be done in the future to address some of those areas, um, and then when is the plan for the um the standard to be met um at what point in the next term um based on whatever the information is that we are evaluating. Um so schools usually review uh they respond with that renewal application late summer. Um this team and other members of the OEI team review the application. Um we do a fairly um in-depth renewal interview with school leadership and board leadership to learn more about the application and um what all the various goals are that are being set and different issues that have kind of come into play over the course of a term. Um we have a public hearing like this where we talk publicly about a school's performance and open it up for public comment for members of our community. Uh and then a renewal decision is made um usually shortly following this meeting. So we uh are not a voting body and renewal decisions are made by the OEI staff, um, myself as director in consultation with the mayor. Um our intention tonight is to communicate that decision um I'd say within the next couple weeks. So with that, um, we're gonna open up the floor for a public comment. Um thank you, Holly. Uh you can see we have two little white microphones hanging from the ceiling. If you could make sure you are near standing pretty much underneath one of those before you begin to speak, then I'll make sure that you're recorded. Um you'll have two minutes to speak. We're gonna set a timer up here. I feel confident that we will um have plenty of time, so just listen for that and then please conclude your thoughts once it sounds. Um what am I missing? Standing the other microphone said that. Oh, we did um receive online public comment from folks who maybe couldn't be here with us this evening. Um, of those com all of those comments were provided to our entire team several hours before the meeting started so that we could review and have that information um available heading into tonight. So the first person that we will hear from is Marcy Brown Carter. Does that sound good? I know you need that you need an X. Oh, that's a great idea. I can't hear it, but yeah, you're good. Okay, thanks everybody. Uh hi Marcy Brown Carter, long-time board member uh Victory College Prep and the current board chair as of this fall. Um, as you all know, uh, in 2019, Victory College Prep broke away from a national management company so that we would have the opportunity to uh operate ourselves locally and independently. Um, that's been a pretty amazing experience as somebody who'd been on the board for a long time and seen both. Um, as you all know too, uh, Victory College Prep completely and fully committed to the city of Indianapolis, particularly the Southeast Side where we've been located for all these years.
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