Robust debate is part of policymaking. Misunderstandings shouldn’t be. As discussion continues around HB 1423, we break down what the bill actually does, what it doesn’t do, and why accuracy matters for IPS families.
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The debate this week on House Bill 1423 made one thing clear: everyone in the room cares deeply about students and the future of public education in Indiana. We are grateful for lawmakers who remain focused on what matters most, ensuring students have access to schools where they can thrive.
We appreciate the seriousness with which legislators approached the discussion about the future of the public schools within IPS’s boundaries. At the same time, several claims made during the hearing require clarification. When legislation affects students, families, and public schools across Indiana’s largest school district, the stakes are high, and accuracy matters.
Here’s a closer look at what the bill does, what it doesn’t do, and where the record needs to be corrected.
We heard from several legislators that there are concerns about IPEC replacing the publicly elected IPS school board. That is neither the intent nor the structure of this legislation.
IPS will continue to have its regularly elected school board, which will remain responsible for the most important and fundamental work of a school district: educating students. That includes oversight of curriculum, staffing, contracts, and the vast majority of school operations.
The introduction of IPEC does not eliminate or replace that authority. Instead, it establishes an entity focused specifically on managing certain operational functions that have historically been costly, administratively burdensome, and uneven across the city.
IPEC would oversee a coordinated facilities and transportation office to ensure that all students within IPS’s boundaries, whether enrolled in an IPS-run school, innovation school, or charter school, have access to well-maintained buildings and safe, reliable transportation. By centralizing these functions, the bill aims to reduce administrative pressure on individual schools and allow them to focus more directly on teaching and learning.
This does not replace the IPS School Board. It adds operational support to serve all schools within the district.
This claim is not supported by the text of the legislation, nor has it been stated or implied by ILEA or the bill authors and sponsors.
The bill does not mandate district conversion. It does not create a framework for converting districts into charter schools. It does not alter the governance structure of IPS beyond the operational adjustments described above.
Instead, the bill streamlines accountability standards across schools and creates a centralized service provider for facilities and transportation within IPS. Those changes are administrative and operational in nature. They are not structural changes to district governance.
Characterizing this legislation as a pathway to converting all districts into charter systems misstates what the bill actually does and is intended to do.
Families living within IPS boundaries are already making active choices about where their children attend school. Today, only 38% of students who reside within IPS boundaries attend an IPS-run school. That reality reflects a significant and sustained pattern of family decision-making across the city.
But IPS families are not a monolith.
During testimony, we heard from both parents and teachers who love their IPS-run schools and that is a good thing. Families should have public school options they are proud of and confident in. At the same time, we also heard from families whose experiences have been different.
We also heard directly from families who said they need consistent, reliable transportation for their students regardless of the type of public school they attend. Many shared that while they would prefer a school that better fits their child’s needs, whether a district-managed school or an innovation school, transportation barriers force them to choose a less desirable option or significantly complicate their daily routines.
Those concerns are real.
Choosing to highlight one set of concerns does not erase the other. Policymaking requires weighing competing priorities and addressing tangible barriers that families are experiencing today. This bill is designed to address two of the most persistent operational challenges families have raised: transportation and facilities.
By creating unified transportation for all public schools within IPS boundaries, the legislation reduces logistical barriers and expands practical access to schools families are already choosing. It ensures that a family’s ability to select a school is not limited by whether transportation is available.
On facilities, what we heard from parents, regardless of where they landed on governance questions, was remarkably consistent: they want safe, well-maintained buildings, predictable long-term stability, and equitable investment in the schools their children attend. This bill establishes a centralized structure for managing school buildings and capital assets with that goal in mind. The intent is to provide greater transparency, responsible long-term planning, and more consistent stewardship of facilities across IPS boundaries. At its core, this is about ensuring students learn in safe and sustainable environments, not about changing who governs individual schools.
Far from taking something away from families, the bill centralizes operational services like transportation and facilities so that individual schools, whether district, innovation, or charter, can focus more directly on student learning.
The result is not fewer options for families. It is more accessible and more sustainable ones.
While many legislators referenced the dollar law as a key problem, it is not the cause of the fiscal cliff IPS is facing.
Broad Ripple High School is often cited as an example of a valuable property that IPS could have leveraged, if not for the dollar law. But Broad Ripple is an outlier, and importantly, IPS chose how to use that building. The district made the decision to reopen the Broad Ripple High School facility as a middle school and invested capital dollars into updating the athletic facilities. That was a strategic choice about how to deploy district assets.
Very few, if any, of the other buildings IPS has closed would carry the kind of market value necessary to meaningfully offset ongoing annual deficits. The financial challenges IPS faces are structural and recurring, not solvable through isolated real estate transactions.
There are multiple factors contributing to district budget shortfalls. Enrollment has declined statewide, reducing per-pupil revenue, while operating and administrative costs have continued to rise. Chalkbeat reported this week that IPS is projected to end the year with a $40 million cash flow deficit.
At the same time, expenses are outpacing revenue growth. While IPS has seen revenue increases, those gains have been eclipsed by rising costs, particularly debt service, which grew from $35 million in 2019 to $56 million in 2024.
It may be politically convenient to point to the dollar law, which has only been used a handful of times over the last decade, as the primary driver of IPS’s financial strain. But in reality, it represents a very small piece of a much larger and more complex fiscal puzzle.
We recognize that this is new and innovative work. It presents a real opportunity for leaders across the education sector to come together and design smarter systems, ones that ease some of the financial pressure IPS is experiencing while ensuring services like transportation and facilities are fair and accessible for all public school students in Indianapolis.
At the same time, what’s most important is that we ground this conversation in facts. We cannot move forward without clarity. Right now, too much confusion is shaping the narrative, and confusion makes collaboration harder. If we want to build something that truly serves students, we have to start with a shared understanding of how funding works, how services are delivered, and what this bill actually does and does not mean.
There will no doubt be challenges along the way. But if we approach this as partners, objective, informed, and focused on students, we believe this can strengthen collaboration across the district and better serve families throughout our community.
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