Indiana House lawmakers have passed a bill to give a new board control over transportation, accountability, and some facilities for Indianapolis district and charter schools.
HB 1423 creates the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, a nine-member board appointed by the Indianapolis mayor that would oversee key aspects of schools within its boundary, such as a transportation system and an accountability system that could be used to recommend closing inefficient or low-performing schools.
While the bill’s author, Indianapolis Republican Rep. Bob Behning, has said he intends for the corporation to control and eventually own school buildings on behalf of the schools under its jurisdiction, a recent amendment gives charter schools the right to opt out of facility management, though they would lose some local property tax funding.
Behning said he expects few schools would opt out.
“An opt-out makes absolutely no sense long term,” Behning said. “When you opt out as a charter, what you are opting out of is having parity in terms of having debt service of capital project dollars.”
But there were situations where a building was built with private investment, Behning said, creating concerns about the state “coming in and taking that investment away from them.”
Still, this change, made last week, drew criticism from IPS and its supporters. Democratic lawmakers also raised the opt-out issue, along with concerns about Indianapolis families losing electoral power.
“If you happen to have a nice building, and it’s paid off, you can say, ‘I’m not contributing my building to this overall project.’ At the same time, that same charter school could get about 60% of the property tax revenue it would otherwise get, and put it to whatever purpose it wants,” said Rep. Ed DeLaney, an Indianapolis Democrat, on the House floor Monday. “We’re not getting where we need to get, which is to have a uniform system of common schools.”
The bill now goes to the Senate, where it must pass by Feb. 24. Behning said he will suggest an amendment to the Senate Education Committee to give IPS the flexibility to opt into the facilities management provision of the bill.
The bill represents the culmination of the process begun by the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance, which lawmakers formed during the 2025 legislative session to study how district and charter schools might pool resources.
HB 1423 prescribes a timeline for how the new corporation will assume the power to levy taxes, as well as how it will design new transportation and accountability systems. The corporation will assume many of its management responsibilities beginning with the 2028-29 school year.
How exactly the corporation will assume control of privately, philanthropically, or bond-financed buildings is still to be determined. HB 1423 also does not address a key question of special education funding, which was included in ILEA’s initial report to Indiana lawmakers.
This article was written by Chalkbeat Indiana reporter Aleksandra Appleton.