Paramount Schools of Excellence is opening a new, all-girls charter school in Washington Township that seeks to reduce barriers for underrepresented students in STEM.
But the new Girls IN STEM Academy faces opposition from Washington Township Schools supporters who say the charter academy entered their community without warning and is offering programs their public district already provides. Now they are taking their fight to the city in an attempt to block the charter network from opening this fall in a church along Michigan Road.
“We were all kind of caught off guard,” said Carla Schmid, a Washington Township educator and neighbor to the new school. She sees the charter school, and the competition it introduces for students and funding, as a threat to the traditional public school district she supports.
Meanwhile, parents drawn to the school’s promise of interactive STEM activities and partnerships with organizations like the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana are enrolling students in the K-6 school.
Prudence Dillehay, an Indianapolis resident already familiar with Paramount, says she’s excited for the opportunities the academy could bring to her granddaughter, who is entering kindergarten next year.
“She’s just such a curious child, and she loves to build and do things with her hands,” Dillehay said. “Seeing STEM alone just really got me excited, because I think that would be such a good fit.”
The charter network had its first public meeting about the Girls IN STEM Academy in another Indianapolis school district before deciding on the academy’s location. Having missed that opportunity to comment, Washington Township and its supporters are now seeking to delay the charter school’s opening by opposing Paramount’s requests to rezone the church property the network bought to house the new academy.
Trine University, the Angola-based private university that is providing oversight as the school’s charter authorizer, did not respond to emailed questions, but Paramount CEO Tommy Reddicks told Mirror Indy the network plans to move forward regardless of the opposition.
“What we’re trying to do is be a needle-moving solution for a national problem by offering something for young girls that’s never been offered here,” Reddicks said. “It wasn’t to say Washington Township lacks something. It has nothing to do with Washington Township … For us, it doesn’t matter what district it’s in. This is for girls.”
Paramount’s case for a new school
The girls STEM school concept had been floated for years, Reddicks said, and Paramount’s growing charter network, known for its inclusion of urban farming in classroom studies, explored several locations for the school across the city. The charter network already operates three schools within the boundaries of Indianapolis Public Schools as well as an online academy and schools in Lafayette and South Bend.
Paramount’s search for the new STEM school included talks with IPS and the property manager for Glendale Town Center. But, Reddicks said, as IPS worked through its own building plans and Paramount negotiated prices at Glendale, a third option emerged.
Reddicks said he came across a posting in late August or early September for the Witherspoon Presbyterian Church on Zillow.
“I saw the post, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, that building might be large enough. It’s on good property. There’s lots of parking,’” Reddicks said. “So, I called our broker, and we reached out to the church.”
The Rev. Winterbourne Harrison-Jones, a pastor at Witherspoon, said church leaders had already received multiple offers on the 5136 Michigan Road property as they looked to move the church into a larger building. The church’s governing body accepted Paramount’s market-value offer over pitches from developers, Harrison-Jones said, because the school’s mission matched that of the church.
“We did not want to see the building razed, nor the comforts of the neighborhood disturbed,” Harrison-Jones said, adding that he feels Paramount’s model of supporting girls in STEM is a game-changing opportunity for students.
Washington Township left out of early conversations
Washington Township leaders, however, hope the school never opens. They say the district already offers strong STEM programs and Paramount never approached the township with their plans. In fact, Paramount and its authorizer organized their first meeting in another school district.
“To not even talk to us to find out what are the gaps, what are the needs of the students?” Washington Township School Board Secretary Bill Turner said. “It just sounds like a solution searching for a problem.”
Charter school authorizers are required by state law to have a public hearing before approving a new school, providing the surrounding school district an opportunity to speak on the proposal. But if the location of the new school is yet to be decided, the law only requires the public hearing to take place in the county where the charter school may open and not within a specific school district.
Public records show Paramount held its meeting alongside the authorizer, Trine University, at a public library in Pike Township on June 6 — about five months before the charter network purchased Witherspoon church. Reddicks said the network advertised the meeting with Trine and gave a full presentation, but no one showed up.
Washington Township supporters say that’s because they only learned about the school months later from media reports and city notices for rezoning.
“They didn’t do what they should have done,” said Christina Smith, executive director of the Indianapolis Education Justice Coalition, a community group that advocates for public school districts. “They didn’t go to the community and say, ‘Hey, do you really want this? Do you need this? Can we put this in your neighborhood?’”
Trine didn’t respond to emailed questions about its authorization process, but Reddicks said he thought the law could be improved upon by adding another meeting when a school’s location is known.
“I understand the frustration,” Reddicks said, “But I don’t think a lot of authorizers, out of the blue, will award a charter to a school that either has a bad application or doesn’t have a good location.”
Concerns about school oversight
Some Washington Township residents say the process left them feeling like they lost their chance to ask questions before the school was approved.
They say they’re baffled by Paramount’s decision to seek approvals from Trine University, which is three hours northeast of Indianapolis, rather than from a local authorizer who is familiar with the city’s education landscape and whose meetings are more accessible to those living in Washington Township.
They also expressed frustration with Paramount’s Girls IN STEM Academy charter application, pointing out that a 68-page document posted to Trine’s website appears to be a replica of the network’s school in South Bend.
This all comes as Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, authored legislation this year proposing to restrict approval and oversight of Indianapolis charter schools to only the Indianapolis Charter School Board and Indiana Charter School Board, both of which have offices in Indianapolis.
Some parents have also raised concerns that the all-girls school wouldn’t accept transgender students. However, Reddicks said the academy is open to enrolling the girls, and Paramount’s team visited New York to study how a school there accommodated the needs of transgender students.
Reddicks said Paramount sought Trine as its authorizer because the network already had established a relationship with the university, which also oversees Paramount’s online academy and South Bend school.
The Paramount CEO added that its Girls IN STEM Academy uses a “replication” model where authorizers like Trine can grant multiple charters at once. Through its initial South Bend application, Paramount also was granted approval to open the new academy and three additional schools that have yet to be named in public documents.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re going to make a decision to open up three more schools through Trine University,” Reddicks said, “But it does mean that the pathway there would be a little less work in terms of their due diligence.”
He said he recently became aware that some links on Trine’s website did not carry over in a recent update, which is why a link to the Girls IN STEM Academy application directed viewers to information about Paramount’s South Bend school. An updated application was available on Trine’s website Wednesday afternoon, Jan. 24.
Trine also didn’t respond to Mirror Indy’s questions about charter school applications. A 20-slide powerpoint specific to Paramount’s plans for the Girls IN STEM Academy is posted on Trine’s website. Chrystal Westerhaus, the academy’s principal, said she hopes the school can grow to be seen as a partner and not a threat.
“We recognize the voices of the community, and we’re going to be intentional about making sure we’re a positive partner with not only the local community but also the school district,” Westerhaus said. “We value the work that Washington Township schools are doing and only want to be seen as a choice.”
Washington Township’s fight turns to zoning
Washington Township Schools leaders, however, are now turning their attention to the network’s rezoning efforts.
The township has joined other community groups who have formally opposed Paramount’s requests to rezone the Witherspoon church property. So far, they have successfully secured multiple continuances of the city zoning hearing, despite positive recommendations from Indianapolis planning staff to grant the network’s request.
The zoning process has now been delayed through at least mid-February, though Reddicks says he expects additional appeals.
“Given the threats that we’ve had so far from the legal team representing Washington Township,” Reddicks said, “I feel pretty certain that we won’t be able to open in the Witherspoon site in the fall unless they were to drop the efforts.”
Washington Township Associate Superintendent Sean Taylor said though the district has joined the opposition, it is not spending additional resources outside of the township’s existing legal partnerships. Shelley Hake Clark, a member of the Washington Township Parent Council Network, said the zoning issue isn’t something administrators should have to fight in the first place.
“They, in some ways, are trying to just run a district. They’re just trying to do their teaching and learning,” Hake Clark said. “I don’t fault them at all for getting information and protecting themselves.”
Meanwhile, Reddicks has made clear the Girls IN STEM Academy will open in the fall, even if that means finding a temporary location to start with as the network waits out zoning issues. Paramount is already researching other sites, Reddicks said, which the network has done twice before to expedite opening.
“It’s an exercise in patience,” Reddicks said. “The way we want to keep this narrative moving forward is we do great things for kids. We want to continue to do great things for kids. If that means we have to swallow heart for a bit and walk through this fire for a little bit, we’re happy to.”
Paramount’s zoning request is next scheduled to appear before the city’s Metropolitan Development Commission Hearing Examiner at 1 p.m. Feb. 15 at the City-County Building.
Clarification: This article was updated at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 25, to reflect that Witherspoon Presbyterian Church’s governing body accepted Paramount’s offer.
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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