The future is unclear for an Indianapolis charter school run out of a prominent historically Black church on the east side.
Rooted School Indy, based out of Eastern Star Church’s flagship 30th Street campus, is up for renewal with its charter school authorizer this year.
The seventh to 12th grade school was founded in 2020 to help students of color overcome financial wealth gaps. The school, which serves about 150 students, promises on its website that every graduate will leave with “a job offer in one hand and a college acceptance letter in the other.”
However, the school’s authorizer — the Mayor’s Office of Education Innovation — has expressed concern over Rooted’s academics.
The mayor’s office has issued multiple formal warnings to Rooted over the past three years about its enrollment numbers and classroom practices.
The Indy office is in its earliest stages of its charter review process, but the concerns signal a difficult path for renewal. That typically takes place in the spring the year before a school’s charter is set to expire.
Meanwhile, Rooted leaders are pursuing a new authorizer, a process the school said it launched before the renewal process began. They’ll present their pitch to the new authorizer, and to add first to sixth grades, during a public meeting March 3.
“Our focus really is about making sure that we are strengthening and supporting our educational program to help support students,” Rooted Executive Director Ma’at Lands said. “It’s really just about making sure that we are with an authorizer that can meet those needs.”
Upcoming meetings
Rooted School Indy public hearing
🗓️ 6:30-8:30 p.m. March 3
📍 Rooted School Indy, 5750 E. 30th St.
View an agenda and submit public comment before the meeting.
Trine University charter authorizer board meeting
🗓️ 11 a.m. March 12
📍 Franks Conference Room on the fourth floor of Trine University’s C.W. Sponsel Administration Center, 315 1 Univ Ave., Angola
Check here for an agenda before the meeting.
Is Rooted School at risk of losing its charter?
Loss of a charter can trigger the first steps in a school’s closure. That’s what happened last year with the former Bethel Park Elementary on the city’s southeast side.
However, under Indiana law, if a school seeks a new authorizer before learning its charter will end, the school can bypass an additional layer of approvals needed to change authorizers and keep the school open.
That’s what has the mayor’s office worried. Even though its renewal process is just beginning, Rooted submitted a letter in February to pursue a charter with Trine University, which runs an authorization office in far northeast Indiana.
Time is of the essence. Legislation awaiting Gov. Mike Braun’s signature limits who can authorize charter schools located within the IPS boundary. Only the mayor’s office, the state charter board and IPS — should the district decide it wants to get into authorizing — would be allowed to oversee those Indianapolis schools. The legislation, if signed, would keep Trine from entering new charter agreements with schools in Indianapolis after April 1.
Shaina Cavazos, director of the Mayor’s Office of Education Innovation, wrote a letter to Trine’s charter schools director after learning in mid-February that Rooted wanted to change authorizers. In the letter, Cavazos said her office was preparing to inform the school it wasn’t eligible for renewal.
“Changing authorizers at this stage raises concerns about whether the renewal accountability process is being sidestepped,” Cavazos wrote in the letter, obtained through a public records request.
See the letter
Rooted leaders say they’ve been considering a change in authorizers for a couple of years, long before their school’s renewal process began. Lands said Rooted’s school board voted in October to pursue a relationship with Trine.
She said Rooted was attracted to the university’s approach of hands-on oversight with frequent school visits. The partnership could also open up new dual college credit opportunities offered through Trine.
“Having their team be able to come to the schools,” Lands said, “they’re able to really have the capacity to see where we are as a school and then be able to provide that feedback that will continue to help us grow and improve.”
‘A hard environment to learn in’
Sara Hoopingarner said she wasn’t surprised to hear Rooted’s charter was in question.
Now 19 years old, Hoopingarner attended the school for a little over a semester when she was 15. She said teachers changed roles often and the school struggled to meet her needs as a student with ADHD. She was assigned a special education teacher, Hoopingarner said, but the instructor was often too busy to provide the one-on-one support that was required under the education plan she created with the school.
By the end of her first semester, she said, Rooted was struggling to find staff and combined two freshman classes into one. That meant at times there were more than 40 kids assigned to the same classroom. Sometimes students were seated two to a desk.
“It was a very hard environment to learn in,” Hoopingarner said. “It felt very unserious.”
Lands said she couldn’t speak to an individual student’s experience. But she said the school has not changed teachers’ roles mid-year. She said the school has brought on new teachers, but special education staff positions have been filled since the school’s opening.
Though Hoopingarner attended Rooted in 2023, notices from the school’s authorizer show academic challenges continued years later. The mayor’s office issued warnings to the school in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Cavazos wrote in her February letter to Trine that academic concerns “remain unresolved.”
Cavazos addressed another worry in her letter: Rooted wants to expand. In their letter of intent to Trine, Rooted leaders expressed a desire to grow to serve grades K-12 starting in 2028. That was news to the mayor’s office, said Cavazos, who told Trine in her letter that she found the proposal “troubling.”
“The school has not demonstrated the sustained performance or resolution of core issues that would warrant expanded public trust,” she wrote in her letter to Trine. “Over six years of operation, the school had repeated opportunities to address these core functions and failed to do so.”
Will Trine University step in?
It’s unclear whether Trine was aware of academic concerns before receiving Cavazos’ letter and whether the authorizer plans to move forward with Rooted’s application.
Emily Gaskill, the executive director of Trine’s authorization office, didn’t respond to Mirror Indy’s requests for an interview. She sent a statement explaining Trine’s process of evaluating charter applications and said it would be too early to comment on Rooted’s interest.
“We remain committed to a transparent process that allows for public input while ensuring careful, educator-informed evaluation before any decision is made,” Gaskill’s statement reads, in part.
See the full statement
Trine published notice for the public hearing March 3 to discuss Rooted’s charter proposals — one for grades K-6 and another for grades 7-12. After the public hearing, the charter school’s applications would move to Trine University’s charter board for approval.
The more than 50-page applications were posted publicly on Trine’s website the week of March 1.
The school leader said she was unaware that the mayor’s office was contemplating pulling its support. She said Rooted had worked to address the issues raised in the authorizer’s notices and provided data showing year-over-year increases in the school’s standardized test results in 2025.
“We have satisfied all of the requirements,” Lands said.
The university’s charter board is set to meet next on March 12, just weeks before the April 1 deadline established under the new Indianapolis public education legislation. As of March 2, the board has not posted an agenda for the meeting.
It would be unusually fast to see a charter application approved in just a matter of weeks. In Indianapolis, it typically takes four to six months from the time a school sends its initial letter of intent for an authorizer to approve a new charter agreement.
Lands deferred to Trine when asked if she thought her school’s application would be heard before April.
“Our decision is really grounded in what’s best for our students,” Lands said, “what is the fit for the authorizer that aligns to who we are as a school to be able to make sure that we get the best outcomes for our students.”
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Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.
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