In a legislative session big on waves and low on beach, House Bill 1501 is throwing out a lot more waves. And, unlike House Bill 1136, I think this one has a more realistic chance of gaining traction in the legislature.

What Does House Bill 1501 Propose?

Across ten pint-sized pages, House Bill 1501 proposes to 1) Establish a three-year “centralized school facilities pilot program,” and 2) Establish a three-year “student transportation pilot program.” It also creates a mechanism by which these pilot programs can be made permanent after the initial three years.

Just like what happened with House Bill 1136, this legislation is written to impact a narrow set of public school districts in Indiana, namely those where over half of the students who legally reside in the district choose to attend schools not within the district or an innovation network school. That means just five districts are automatically impacted by this legislation: Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), Gary Community School Corporation, Union School Corporation, Tri-Township Consolidated School Corporation, and Cannelton City Schools. Beyond those five districts, the legislation allows for up to three other school districts to apply to the Indiana Department of Education to participate in the pilot program.

Each pilot program is overseen by a board. The details for each board are basically copy-and-paste after the headline of what they’re meant to oversee. The downstream effects won’t be, so I’ll tackle those independently through the lens of IPS. But here’s the rough outlines of how these boards would be constructed.

• Each program would establish a local board for each participating school district. So Indianapolis would have a board (one for transportation, one for facilities), Gary would have a board (one for transportation, one for facilities), etc.
• Each board would include five members (two selected by the mayor or city executive, one by the legislative body of the city where a school district is located, one by the speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives, and the last by the president pro tempore of the Indiana Senate). These members cannot include staff, leadership, or board members from the school district in question. So an active IPS board member could not also serve on, say, the transportation board.
• Board members must have demonstrated expertise in the area the board oversees. For the facilities board, that means things like facility management, urban planning, budget development, operations management, etc. For the transportation board, that means things like transportation logistics, finance and business, and budget development.

But What Do the Boards Do?

It’s one thing to establish these boards. It’s another to wind them up and let them zoom all over the public education landscape. By which I mean, what will they actually be empowered to do? Quite a lot, as it stands. I examine each program on its own as they would be separate in practice.

School Facilities Pilot Program

The legislation details that “each local board shall create a pilot program implementation plan” that is supposed to accomplish 16 different items. Some are bland and boring and others are, judging by the reaction from some corners, quite the bombshell. For instance, IPS has listed this piece of legislation on their website as one of three they are tracking that could have “profound effects on Indianapolis Public Schools.” And they don’t mean profound in the positive, philosophical sense.

Notably, this board would be empowered to:

• Approve or deny referendum requests related to capital improvements
• Make decisions about excess capacity in school facilities

As I said, there are 16 items they’re in charge of. I left out 14 (which I encourage you to read about in the actual legislation if you’re curious). But those two alone are a powerful two. The first means local school districts that participate in this pilot need this new board’s approval to seek a referendum. In fact, the legislation outright gives the board the power to “approve or deny any property tax levy approved by the governing body of the applicable school corporation.” That’s particularly meaningful in the context of IPS, whose current referendum runs out in 2026. This legislation would put a new obstacle in the way of even getting a referendum on the ballot, let alone getting one passed.

The other bullet is nearly as meaningful as it gives the board full control over a district’s facilities. While IPS has taken measures in past years to right-size the district’s physical footprint in regards to its enrollment, they still have empty or under-enrolled facilities on the books. This board would be making facility decisions on behalf of IPS.

Now, I imagine legislators had the $1 on their minds when writing this portion of the legislation. The $1 law essentially allows charter schools to purchase vacant school buildings from public school districts for $1 rather than paying market value. It’s in theory meant to ensure that school buildings remain in use as educational institutions.

There have been high-profile dust-ups over the past few years where IPS has fought to not allow independent charter schools to buy their vacant facilities for $1, claiming they were exempt. New legislation last year clarified exemptions and largely put the $1 law out of the spotlight. But I imagine that legislators seeing the $1 law cause more headaches than intended outcomes the past few years led them to push for this more nuclear option where control over facilities is taken out of IPS’ hands entirely.

In summary? This legislation would remove control over referendums and facilities from a handful of public school districts and put that power into the hands of an appointed board.

Student Transportation Pilot Program

Where the facilities board had 16 powers, the transportation board only has 13. The main power here to highlight is that this board will create a pilot program that “allow[s] for additional flexibility and creativity to accommodate student needs throughout the school day.” The purpose of this program is ultimately to “provide transportation to all students attending: (1) public schools, including charter schools; and (2) nonpublic schools with at least one employee within the geographic boundaries of the school corporation.” And that’s as specific as it gets, with a lot of discretion left up to the future pilot program board to figure out a more innovative transportation system for students that satisfies the above.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that the traditional way of getting kids to school (yellow buses) is in many ways outdated and inefficient. I don’t know anyone who loves traditional school transportation. It’s the kind of thing that tries to make the best of an incredibly complex and hairy problem. And for a lot of years it checked the pretty essential box of getting kids from their homes to their public schools. But the system is creaking as enrollment opens up and families no longer automatically attend the nearest-zoned school.

Of the two pilot programs in this legislation, the transportation one would seem the easier pill to swallow for IPS. Yes, they would lose control over their traditional transportation system (and that’s not nothing), but hypothetically their students will still get to their schools and extracurricular activities on time. That’s a big difference from losing control over referendums and facilities.

But I’m sympathetic to IPS on the transportation issue too. For all the criticisms levied at charter schools, there’s one I rarely hear that I think is actually quite a good criticism (or at least an issue that charter school supporters like myself too infrequently contend with). They fragment student transportation. In turn, physical access can be a major barrier. There are obvious advantages to efficiencies of scale in something like transportation. There are obvious disadvantages to making each school run its own transportation system (or, at times, not really offer one at all because it is cost- and logistics-prohibitive).

There’s a world where this legislation calls for a pilot program that allows all school districts and independent charter schools in a geographic area to opt in to gain efficiency and cost savings in getting students to their school. It could benefit both IPS and local charter schools and expand students’ access to more school options (which would be a good thing).

But in summary, as currently written, it comes at the expense of forcing IPS and other public school districts to give up control in a way that feels overly punitive. This isn’t presented as a collaborative solution. It’s a slap on the wrist.

A Final Thought

We need better school facilities utilization in Indianapolis and statewide. We also need better student transportation services. Both of these pilot programs purport to creating pathways to solve those pain points. But in this case, they also steamroll local authority to do it.

While I don’t think the folks behind this legislation are in some dark-money cabal intent on destroying public education as we know it, I’m also not jumping for joy that this is the proposal they put forth to address these particular challenges.