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Indianapolis Public Schools is calling for a moratorium on new schools as state lawmakers advance legislation that would force the district to share property tax revenues with dozens of charter schools.
The statement from the school board last week also calls for a limit on the ability of authorizers to allow new charter schools to open — by only allowing the Indianapolis mayor’s office to give new charters the green light. Right now, seven authorizers have the power to let new charters open in Indianapolis.
“There is no way to create a sustainable system if the number of schools within the IPS boundary continues to grow,” the school board said in its Friday statement. “For at least the next two years, as we work toward a collective community vision, no new schools should open. We do not need more schools.”
The demand came shortly after the Indiana Senate passed Senate Bill 518, which would require the district to share revenues from property taxes and referendums as early as 2026. The bill compounds the long-term pressure on IPS — where enrollment declined by over 3% this year — and has led IPS officials to publicly lament the new charters officials have allowed to open within IPS borders. Combined with proposed property tax caps, IPS has said the legislation would force it to close schools.
Charter advocates, however, oppose such a moratorium on new schools and object to changes to restricting authorizing power for now.
Roughly 40 brick-and-mortar or blended-learning model charters have opened or been approved to open within IPS borders over the past decade — an average of about four new schools per year. About 30 of these charters have partnered with IPS as autonomous schools within the district’s Innovation Network. IPS also runs about 50 traditional public schools.
The fractured educational landscape will splinter resources to the point where every school will get some funding, but no school will get enough, Superintendent Aleesia Johnson told lawmakers earlier this month.
The Mind Trust, a nonprofit that helps establish charter schools in Indianapolis, said in a statement that a moratorium would be inconsistent with the district’s own efforts to launch new schools this school year, including reopening two large high school buildings.
“IPS and charter schools have an opportunity to work collaboratively to reshape our city’s public school system so that all children thrive,” the nonprofit said in a statement. “The Mind Trust is open to supporting sensible, locally-driven changes to school transportation, facilities management, and other systemic issues that can ensure all public school students are served well.”
Some district leaders say the infighting the Senate bill has generated among public school supporters misses a different issue: the state’s push to bolster state funding for private school choice.
IPS board member Allissa Impink said in a video posted Monday that disagreements between IPS and charters ultimately represent a distraction.
“For me this isn’t a fight between public charter schools and traditional district schools,” Impink said. “It’s about a broader effort to drain resources from public education.”
Tax-revenue bill’s impact on IPS remains unclear
It’s unclear, however, what the Senate bill’s total financial impact would be.
The bill requires IPS to share several types of property tax revenues: those collected for operating and debt costs, and any additional property taxes that voters approve through a referendum. The district has a $456 million operating budget.
Property taxes collected for debt or approved through a referendum could be shared as early as next year. But perhaps the biggest financial hit — sharing property taxes earmarked for operating expenses — would not come until 2028, when the bill mandates the start of a five-year phase-in period of sharing the revenue.
Scott Bess, head of the Indiana Charter Innovation Center that is pushing for more property tax revenue for charters, said the bill’s phase-in period for revenue sharing gives the district time to figure out parts of the charter model that it would like to recreate.
“There’s nothing in this that would force them to make those cuts now,” Bess said. “Again, they could choose to operate differently.”
“There is a model in the city that works,” Bess added, referring to the charter school model. “And they can do that even at full sharing [of property taxes], and have higher-performing schools through local control.”
Meanwhile, the IPS school board has met in closed-door sessions every week since the start of 2025 to discuss school consolidation.
In its Friday statement, the school board also called for a “local education alliance” of IPS residents to advise the board on how schools should change.
“This vision of the future should drive the policy decisions about any property tax sharing, not the other way around,” the board said.
Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.
