The Indianapolis Public Education Corporation (IPEC) met for the first time last week. While they may not have started with a bang, this new body is set to be highly-influential in public education.

Long-term, they’ll oversee facilities and transportation for both Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) and all charter schools within IPS boundaries. Short-term, the financial fate of IPS rests fully in IPEC’s newly-appointed hands as recent legislation shifted the power of requesting a referendum from the IPS board to the IPEC board.

Will IPEC Pursue a Referendum This Fall?

I’ve written before about my certainty that IPEC will pursue a referendum. After all, IPS faces financial ruin when their current referendum expires next year. I don’t think there’s a world where it’s beneficial to IPEC (or, put in more human terms, our city’s families) for IPS to either limp along financially or collapse entirely.

So the only open questions for me are the timing of when said referendum is announced and what the ask will be.

I still largely believe that’s true. However, IPEC’s first meeting was definitely more low-key regarding the referendum question than I expected. After the meeting, IPEC Board Chair David Harris was quoted in IndyStar saying, “We want to make sure that everyone is on good financial footing as we embark on this new era in public education in Indianapolis. I think there seems to be a sense that [a referendum] is an important thing to move forward with. There will be questions about the size and the duration that will be important to think about and get input on.”

I guess it’s the sort of careful answer you might expect from someone tasked to lead a body like IPEC. He doesn’t commit full-bore while remaining largely supportive. Other members of the board likely fall somewhere on a spectrum of mildly supportive to existential crisis if a referendum doesn’t happen.

In short, IPS’ financial stability remains very much up in the air until a referendum is on the table and there’s a clear number attached. That’s coming. But for now, we’re still in a holding pattern.

Meanwhile, to answer the question in the title, IPEC can bring financial stability to IPS. Whether they will is, as they say, a devil still hiding in details that need worked out in the coming weeks as IPEC begins to engage the community in what a referendum could and should look like.

Who Will Be IPEC’s Executive Director?

In addition to having appointed the nine-member board, Mayor Joe Hogsett is tasked with appointing an executive director to lead IPEC’s work. In his own words, “the sooner the better.” The rough timeline they shared at the meeting was mid-May. In the meantime, the board appointed Michael O’Connor as the interim executive director.

Currently, O’Conner is a Principal at Bose Public Affairs Group. Mayor Hogsett brought O’Conner in last year to consult on the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance process as a sort of “hand of the king.” He’s slotted in to IPEC in a similar way, at least temporarily.

O’Conner served as an IPS board commissioner for six years, and was even board president from 2018-2020. Outside of that, he’s worked extensively in various levels of government (including as chief deputy mayor for the City of Indianapolis at one point) and in the pharmaceutical industry (including 13 years as the associate vice president of state government affairs at Eli Lilly and Company).

More Info on IPEC and Their Meeting Schedule

IPEC has a website. It’s relatively bare bones for now, but includes a list of the members and meeting minutes that have official documentation of key decisions (such as the temporary appointment of O’Conner).

The other key decision made at the first meeting was to vote to request funding from the Marion County Treasurer. IPEC’s board voted for the maximum request of 3% of collected property tax revenues from IPS and charter schools.

The website also specifies upcoming meeting dates, which include:

• May 28
• June 22
• July 21
• August 12

Times and locations are yet to be determined, though one hopes and expects they will choose times moving forward that are more amenable to public participation.