Should Indianapolis become the next New Orleans? Or, whether or not it should, will it?

That question was implicitly at the core of a recent feature article in Chalkbeat Indiana. Indeed, the future of Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) does not look entirely rosy (even if its demise is not inevitable). And meetings of the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance have already seen multiple competing proposals put forth by the IPS Parent Council and Stand for Children Indiana in hopes of influencing the ILEA’s formal recommendations to the legislature in the coming months. 

I previously looked at the Parent Council’s demands in an earlier piece. Today, I want to examine Stand for Children Indiana’s “Together We Thrive” proposal, largely to explain exactly what I think it’s calling for. Currently, it’s the most comprehensive vision put forth by the charter school advocacy sector and appears to be supported, at least in large part, by the Indiana Charter Innovation Center.

What is the “Together We Thrive” Proposal? 

Back in August 2025, Stand for Children Indiana issued a proposal titled “Together We Thrive” that offered a vision for what education in Indianapolis could become. The report was co-signed by a collection of parents and teachers that span traditional IPS district schools, Innovation Network Schools, and independent charter schools. Here’s a few quotes from the introduction to give you a flavor of the report:

• “We envision a public education system that puts student outcomes first and focuses on equity, not school type.”
• “We believe in a strong and thriving IPS. We also recognize the value that high-quality public charter schools bring to our city.”
• “Our children are not “charter kids” or “IPS kids.” They are our kids and each of them represents the city’s future. And they deserve a school system that puts their needs above politics.”

What Does “Together We Thrive” Recommend?

The report offers four recommendations that range from a unified IPS district to transportation for all schools to a new accountability framework to a reimagined and right-sized IPS central office. I’ll unpack the first two recommendations the most given I don’t think recent news coverage fully reckoned with their implications.

“Recommendation 1: Create a unified IPS district that streamlines complex governance structures and reflects the students it serves.”

The report, as it were, comes out of the gate swinging. This is by far the most radical of the four recommendations as it would bring all IPS schools (both traditional and Innovation) and all charter schools within IPS boundaries under the control of a reconstituted IPS board that features a combination of elected members and mayoral appointees.

Now, the report (and early news coverage of it) emphasized that “not every school needs to be a charter.” But this is semantics, not reality. Because the report also states, “All public schools under the new IPS board’s jurisdiction should gradually transition to autonomous status.” 

Were this recommendation, or something like it, to be implemented, every public school in IPS boundaries would functionally become a charter school (operated by an independent board, and, one ought to assume, outside of the district’s collective bargaining agreement). Perhaps not charter in name, but certainly in function. 

Some may still look like Innovation Schools more than independent charter schools. But if a traditional public school is an orange and a charter school is an apple, this new system may have different flavors of apples. Yet they will all be apples. No more oranges. 

Now, the report doesn’t come out and say that more explicitly because I imagine the authors didn’t want the New Orleans specter looming over their shoulders. What is this specter?

Traditional public school advocates think New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is an educational nightmare scenario even as many charter school advocates hold it up as a revolutionary achievement in turning around an urban school district by essentially tearing up the traditional playbook and starting an entire city’s education system over from scratch. The reality is certainly nuanced. But the possibility of Indianapolis becoming akin to New Orleans from an educational perspective is a non-starter for many folks.

I’ll leave aside whether or not this path is the right one or the best one for our city. That’s secondary to understanding what is being proposed by a major charter advocacy group (and supported by other groups and leaders). It is a future where Indianapolis is an all-charter-school city where all charters are authorized by a single entity. That may not be a carbon-copy of New Orleans. But it would be a major step in that kind of direction.

“Recommendation 2: Ensure all schools offer transportation, ending the unfair patchwork system of today.” 

I focus here next because it’s an area that exemplifies the trade-offs that even charter schools are being asked to make in this proposal. In the possible move to an all-charter city, many schools (e.g. district-run schools) will gain autonomy. Just as many will lose some autonomy too. 

For starters, the single authorizer at the heart of the first recommendation means numerous charter schools will suddenly be forced to transition away from their previous authorizer. I’m not saying that’s inherently good or bad to unify the sector under a single authorizer. But it is disruptive and something not all charter schools will be happy about. 

Second, the transportation section of the report illuminates how independent charter schools may have to make operational compromises under this vision. This line of the report jumped out: “While schools would be autonomous, the IPS board would need to exercise decision-making authority on school start times and pick up times in order to keep routes manageable.”

In short: to create a more cohesive and efficient transportation system for this unified district, schools would lose control over their schedules. Of course, that’s how IPS operates in relation to its district-run schools already. But the impact could be painful for both schools and families at existing charter schools.

Let me offer a quick example from when I taught in a local charter school. My school had an extended school day. Kids arrived by 7:45 AM and left around 4:00 PM. Most schools have something closer to a 7-hour school day, so we essentially built in 75 extra minutes for kids per day.

My charter school implemented this extended schedule to create more space for academic support for kids who tested below grade level and have double-long blocks of class time for both math and English Language Arts. We literally had more time teaching core subjects than traditional public schools. That was a draw for many of the families who chose our school. What’s more, the extended day often aligned better with families’ work schedules.

There are good reasons to unify schedules when creating a transportation system. But there are trade-offs that must be reckoned with. 

Will the ILEA Formally Recommend Anything in This Report? 

Remember, the proposal I’m covering here is a set of recommendations presented to the ILEA in August. The ILEA is itself an advisory body tasked with creating a set of recommendations to put before the Indiana legislature. Whether or not anything from this proposal makes it into ILEA’s final recommendations is to be determined. 

But I do think the winds are blowing in this direction. Or at least the promise of a light breeze. If the winds start blowing stronger, we really could be on the path to an all-charter-school Indianapolis.

The genie, as they say, is out of the bottle. Good, bad, or otherwise, the ILEA gets to figure out what comes next.