More Mayoral Control?
Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard says he will ask the State to transfer control of any failing Indianapolis Public Schools it takes over this year and he will convert them into a modified version of charter schools.
In his address this morning to the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee the Mayor said his plan would be a compromise between leaving those schools in the hands of IPS and the state assuming complete control.
Ballard said he has been working on this plan for a while and cited the following change in state law which he says his administration helped put into the budget bill this past session. It amends IC 20-31-9.5…
Sec. 5. (a) The executive of a city or county in which one (1) or more turnaround academies are located may petition the state board to oversee the special management team. The petition must include the following:
(1) The names of one (1) or more turnaround academies located within the executive’s jurisdiction for which the executive wishes to conduct oversight.
(2) The functions the executive wishes to perform.
(3) Information on how and by whom those functions will be carried out.
(b) The state board may approve or not approve a petition under this section in whole or part.
I’ve embedded the Mayor’s comments and the change in state law in my slideshare account off to the right of your screen. And the State Department of Education helped draft the language.
Normally I take time after each session and read the budget bill cover to cover to catch stuff like this. This year I dropped the ball. And you would also think with all eyes, ears and people paid to lobby at the statehouse someone would have seen something, especially with all the talk about the Department of Education taking over failing schools and with language this broad an open ended. This language not only impacts Indianapolis, but gives power to every mayor and county executive in the state. But I digress.
The Mayor also told GIPC this morning that talk about giving the city control over IPS schools was premature and that time was needed to let the education reforms passed at the Statehouse time to work. The Mayor said that discussion should take place after the failing schools have turned around.
The education debate in this town just got a lot more interesting.
