Stalled tax plan to revive Indianapolis Public Schools pushes charters and district further apart

In the end, nobody got the money they wanted. 

The months-long effort to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes for Indianapolis Public Schools had adversaries from the start. 

The money was meant to fund the district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan, a massive reorganization to expand academic offerings, reconfigure grades, and make IPS schools more attractive to students as the district loses students to charter schools. 

But perhaps unsurprisingly, charter schools, which typically don’t receive property tax revenue, wanted a greater portion of that money than what the district was willing to offer. And opposition to the Rebuilding Stronger plan from parents and other community members lingered.