Opinion: IPS Needs to Work on Building Trust in Many Indianapolis Communities

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

By Abbey Chambers

IPS’s Rebuilding Stronger plan, which would overhaul K-12 public education in Indianapolis, proposes to cut costs and increase and improve educational and extracurricular programming. Perhaps it’s a good plan, but historic and present racial inequities and disparities in educational offerings and student achievement have made it difficult for some community members to trust that IPS administrators have the best interests of communities at heart—especially communities of color. 

As a researcher, I work to understand residents’ perspectives on how their communities are changing and what’s needed to help make their communities strong, thriving places. I attend several community meetings each month and interview residents and other community members in historically and systemically disinvested areas about challenges, needs, and goals they have for the places where they live and work. 

What I hear from people about the city’s schools is unsettling. 

Community members have said there aren’t any K-12 schools in their area, even though I can identify several charter schools nearby. When asked why, people have told me those charter schools are not neighborhood schools. Recently, one woman bluntly said to me, “I don’t trust charter schools.” 

Yet, IPS’s new plan seems to double-down on the charter school model. 

I can understand community members’ perspectives. It seems charter schools constantly and abruptly open and close. (Of course, not in wealthier, whiter communities.) 

It seems students come from almost anywhere to attend a charter school. No one I talk to in the communities where I work points to a charter school and says to me, “That’s where our neighborhood kids go. That’s our neighborhood school.” 

Part of the problem is that school leaders are rarely present in community meetings where residents and community partners and stakeholders discuss needs and goals and where they collaborate on solutions to pressing, complex challenges. This is true for charter and non-charter school leaders as well as IPS school board members and administrators. When I ask why schools are not represented or who in nearby schools can help me understand the socioeconomic barriers students and their families face, no one seems to know. 

In parts of the city where strong, synergistic collaborations can make meaningful contributions toward overcoming socioeconomic inequities, there are too few trusted and meaningful relationships between community members and school leaders. 

Why aren’t school leaders in the room when community members, partners, and stakeholders discuss challenges like food access, mobility, housing, and workforce development? Aren’t these issues relevant to school leaders who serve students whose families struggle? School leaders are uniquely positioned to offer valuable perspectives on how these issues impact their students and families and what solutions might help. But where in the community are the schools? Not geographically, of course, but socially? 

Schools are critical threads in the social fabric of any community. But IPS needs to strengthen its ties with the communities it serves. School leaders and IPS board members and administrators must become trusted and embedded members of communities. They must be present consistently to listen, learn, understand, and contribute toward socioeconomic equity and inclusion goals community members set for themselves and the places where they live and work. 

As IPS School Board members finalize the Rebuilding Stronger plan, they should commit to clearly defined goals and steps for deepening community engagement and embeddedness, building trust, and strengthening ties to Indianapolis communities. 

Abbey Chambers is an independent qualitative researcher who studies socioeconomic inequities and exclusions in economic development and neighborhood change.