One thing this recent legislative session proved is that the charter school sector carries weight as a collective. It is as much a political force as it is an educational force. After all, charter schools have been in Indiana for some 25 years. Our state’s charter school law has been regularly ranked the strongest in the country by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Around 56,000 students now attend public charter schools statewide (with the Indiana Charter Innovation Center acting as explicit advocate on their behalf). And in Indianapolis, some 50-odd charter schools serve thousands of kids.

Whatever the future holds, it seems clear to me that Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) and the Indianapolis charter school sector now enter it on largely equal footing. Which leads me to ask, starting from this place of strength, where does the Indianapolis charter sector go from here?

Toward a Unified Educational Ecosystem?

Over the past 25 years, we’ve seen a real educational ecosystem develop across Indianapolis. The growth and proliferation of charter schools. Collaboration between IPS and the charter sector through their Innovation Network. A collection of nonprofits that support schools, students, and parents both inside the classroom and out.

But recent years have given rise to increasing tensions between IPS and the charter school sector. A few years back, a failed operating referendum push. Last year, calls from the IPS board for a moratorium on new charter school partnerships in the district. And this year, a clash over property tax sharing.

For all the unease, an opportunity beckons. I hear so many traditional public school advocates expressing sentiments about the future of education in Indianapolis that boil down to this: either IPS wins or charter schools win. Behind this view is the notion that coexistence is not possible. Or, perhaps, not desirable.

Like it or not, coexistence is here (and I happen to think it’s desirable). The charter sector is too big and too successful to suddenly go away. Neither do I wish IPS would suddenly cease to exist. I want them both to succeed. And I don’t think that’s an impossibility (one example being the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, which I’ll go into in more detail in a future story).  

All of which is a preamble for me to talk about the recent slate of charter school applications that went in front of the Indianapolis Charter School Board and the Indiana Charter School Board. And, through them, offer a few takeaways on where I think things are headed.

A Quick Tour Through Recent Charter Approvals

A quick glance at the suite of recent charter school approvals may just send a shiver down the spine of anyone who’s been calling for a moratorium on new approvals. But there’s a lot of nuance behind these additions to the landscape, not all of which are “new schools” in the traditional sense.

The Indianapolis Charter School Board approved the expansion of two local charter school networks.

• Victory College Prep (VCP), currently a K-12 school serving 1,100 students on the southeast side, sought to split their school into discrete elementary, middle, and high schools. Where they had one charter before, they now needed separate charters for each, which the mayor’s office readily granted. They’ll now serve elementary and middle school students at their existing campus and move their high school, starting this fall, to the building that formerly housed pilotED: Bethel Park (which will cease to operate at the end of this school year).
• Indiana Math and Science Academy (IMSA), which has a K-8 school on the westside and a preK-12 school on the north side, will add a third campus to its network in Haughville on the near west side. Unanimously approved by the board, they will serve students in K-12 starting fall 2026.

One other school is under consideration: Legal Prep Charter Academy. They had their preliminary hearing at the end of April and will go back in front of the board in June to face a formal vote on their charter. Legal Prep currently operates a charter school in Chicago, billed as “Chicago’s only legal themed high school: educating the next generation of lawyers and leaders.” They intend to open in fall 2026 (pending approval), want to start with somewhere around 200 students, and have plans to scale to as many as 825 over time.

Meanwhile, the Indiana Charter School Board approved a merger between ACE Prep Academy (K-6) and Circle City Prep (K-8). I’ll go into the particulars of that in a different piece, but for now suffice to say I see it as an example of two charter schools recognizing they could be stronger together on behalf of kids.

Lastly, Cold Spring School applied for and received a charter. Previously, Cold Spring School was an Innovation Network School under IPS. While it operated autonomously through its own nonprofit board, it did not hold its own charter. Now it does, even as it remains in the Innovation Network.

3 Trends for Charters, 1 Takeaway for Our Landscape as a Whole

For me, these recent approvals help cement a few trends we’ve seen developing among the local charter school sector in recent years. And they give rise to one larger takeaway that relates to where I began.

3 Trends for Charters

1. Expansion of existing networks will take precedence over the creation of new, standalone charters. The kind of moves VCP and IMSA are making aren’t innovative in Indianapolis. After all, we have networks like Paramount, Christel House, and Tindley that started small and grew over time. But I think this will increasingly be the norm (if it wasn’t already) when it comes to the growth of charter schools locally. With one exception, which leads to my next takeaway.
2. New, standalone charter schools will be increasingly niche or innovative. Whether or not you agree that Indianapolis needs a school like Legal Prep, it’s certainly an innovative model. I don’t think new charters that simply propose to “do school well” will be popping up anymore and the new proposals we do see will have some kind of hook to them.
3. Collaboration between and among charters will increase. It’s impossible to call what happened between VCP and Bethel Park Elementary collaborative. In the long run, it’s likely a good thing for the kids in that neighborhood. But the adults in the room could have been, well, more like adults. So there’s that. But I see the ACE Prep Academy and Circle City Prep merger as the more predictive case. These schools set a smart template for how different charter schools might work together on behalf of kids. I’ll unpack the implications more in a separate post.

1 Takeaway for the Landscape

IPS can’t take its Innovation Network for granted. Cold Spring School was one of the last Innovation Schools that didn’t hold its own charter. Will the IPS Board’s seeming stance on no more charter collaboration extend to future renewal of innovation agreements with schools? While it would be painful for many, if not all, these Innovation Schools can exist without IPS. They would just be independent charter schools.

Can IPS exist without its Innovation Schools? Yes again, but not without potentially more pain than any individual school it is currently partnering with would experience. IPS relies on Innovation Schools for a major chunk of its enrollment (which is why enrollment at IPS hasn’t declined much more significantly than it could have in recent years). They also get to take credit for Innovation Schools’ academic performance, which is host telling at the high school level where many of Indianapolis’ top high schools are Innovation Schools.

IPS may not want more collaboration. But it also can’t afford to walk away from the collaboration it’s already committed to. Like it or not, as I said before, coexistence is the only future. Accepting that doesn’t have to mean resignation. Instead, it can be a forcing mechanism to do right by kids across the city, not just in small pockets of success.