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In the spring of 2024, financial challenges at Bethel Park Elementary prompted the mayor’s office to outline options for its future — including a partnership with neighboring charter school Victory College Prep.
The school’s board didn’t want to do that at the time, according to the school’s former principal. Instead, the school worked to respond to concerns from Mayor Joe Hogsett’s Office of Education Innovation, Bethel Park’s authorizer.
Now matters are coming to a head. OEI still has concerns about Bethel Park’s financial standing and could revoke the school’s charter next month, a move that could lead the school to close. But the school says it’s shown OEI that its fiscal health is on the mend. And it turns out that there’s another big change in the works: Victory College Prep is in the process of buying Bethel Park’s building.
All that has thrown the fate of Bethel Park — which enrolls about 225 students whose futures hang on OEI’s mid-February decision — into doubt. And some believe the chain of events represents an unwelcome attempt to force the school to merge with a nearby competitor.
“It does sort of feel like a conclusion has already been made,” said former Bethel Park principal Jennica Adkins, who said there was pressure from OEI on Bethel Park to merge with Victory College Prep this school year. “And there’s not a ton that we can do about that.”
OEI acknowledged approaching Victory College Prep to “gauge their interest and ability to provide support” to Bethel Park Elementary.
“Charter school authorizers have a responsibility to work with schools to anticipate issues before they intensify to ensure stability for students and responsible stewardship of public dollars,” the office said in a statement last month in response to questions from Chalkbeat.
OEI also said Bethel Park has applied for charter renewal after “years of declining financial health and amid months of intensifying cash flow concerns.”
As an authorizer of both Bethel Park and Victory College Prep, OEI oversees schools that have been granted permission to open by the Indianapolis Charter School Board. It also has the power to shutter schools for failing to meet certain standards.
“Quality authorizing practices encourage authorizers to exercise professional judgment and engage in efforts to problem solve when needed to ensure good outcomes for students,” OEI said in its statement.
In response, Bethel Park’s board is looking at options to purchase the building instead, using an option in its current lease with a branch of the Charter Schools Development Corporation that finances facilities for charter schools. Bethel Park’s current charter expires at the end of this school year, but the school is seeking approval from a different authorizer than OEI to keep its doors open. However, if their charter is revoked next month, state law would require a new authorizer to seek approval from the State Board of Education to allow the school to continue operating.
Jade Welch, Bethel Park’s current principal, said she is working hard to address the concerns from the mayor’s office while maintaining the school’s vision and community.
“I just want to maintain my school and do what I need to do,” Welch said.
Victory College Prep’s board of directors did not indicate whether it intends to take over Bethel Park, although it stressed that Bethel Park’s fate is up to the school and OEI to decide. The board said it wants students in the area to have access to high-quality education, and that it was “open” to the idea of providing “partnership support” to Bethel Park.
“If our current resources and capacity can ease financial pressures that could threaten such access for students and families in our region, we are compelled to take action,” Victory College Prep’s board said in a statement.
School protests potential loss of charter, citing improvements
In May 2023, the mayor’s office gave Bethel Park a notice of noncompliance — the least urgent level in the authorizer’s performance improvement framework — over its 2021-22 ILEARN and IREAD scores and its attendance rate. The school’s ILEARN scores were below those of students in nearby assigned schools or comparable schools, the office said. The school’s IREAD pass rate of 62% and its attendance rate of 87.6% also did not meet the office’s performance standard.
One year later, the school received a notice of deficiency over its cash reserves and year-end deficits that the office escalated from “moderate” to “high” concern.
The school has ended in an operating deficit every year since fiscal 2022, according to audit reports the school submitted to the state. The latest audit from last year expresses “substantial doubt” about the school’s ability to stay open. And since the 2020-21 school year, the school had not met OEI’s requirements for keeping at least 45 days of cash reserve in order to meet financial obligations in the case of an emergency, according to OEI.
But school leaders say they’ve tried to address the authorizer’s concerns. And in an email to OEI last July, Bethel Park’s board called the authorizer’s’s escalating concerns “unwarranted” due to the school’s positive cash balance, and said that “the school’s financial position is no longer at high risk.”
Its first notice of deficiency from OEI was largely due to bookkeeping errors that have been addressed, the school said in a Dec. 19 response to the authorizer. In the first few months of this school year, the school spent less money and brought in more revenue than anticipated, Bethel Park noted. It believes it will build up 40 to 45 days of cash reserves by the end of the fiscal year.
And its enrollment of 225 this year was above initial projections.
“We have learned from and responded to past financial mistakes and oversight and feel confident not only in our ability to finish out this school year, but also to establish an ongoing financial position which should inspire confidence in renewal of our charter,” the school wrote.
Bethel Park has also cut costs to shore up its finances, including ending a $150,000 annual coaching and consulting services agreement with the PilotED Foundation, which was led by the school’s founder, Jacob Allen.
The foundation, which ended operations in December, provided help with grant writing, legal assistance, board recruiting, and coaching, said Adkins, the school’s former principal. The foundation still provided six months of work pro bono after the expiration of its contract last June, she said.
The school’s third grade IREAD results have also jumped to a 72% pass rate in 2024. Its attendance rate, however, remains just below the 90% that OEI requested it reach by summer 2024, and its ILEARN results have been stagnant.
OEI said in its statement that even with the correction of the bookkeeping error, the school still had posted years of declining cash reserves, relatively slow enrollment growth, and high monthly expenses.
“Throughout the spring, summer, and fall, Bethel Park had to correct several errors in submitted financial documents and failed to meet multiple financial reporting deadlines,” OEI said. “In year six of a school’s charter, a strong authorizer should expect competent financial reporting and management.
Victory College Prep, which the mayor’s office described as a school in “strong financial standing,” did not disclose how much it is paying for the building. The school had higher rates of proficiency on the 2024 ILEARN exam than Bethel Park, and a slightly higher passing rate on the IREAD exam.
Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.
