Hamilton Southeastern School Corp. is exploring the idea of creating a charter school for high school students in partnership with the national nonprofit Opportunity Education that would focus on connecting education with workforce readiness.
The HSE School Board voted unanimously Aug. 14 in favor of a memorandum of understanding with Opportunity Education, allowing the district to move forward while not fully committing to the project. The MOU also allows the district to apply for up to $2 million in grant funds to cover costs related to exploring the concept.
Before the vote, HSE Director of PK-12 Initiatives Steve Loser gave a presentation about what the district wants to achieve through the partnership. He said HSE underserves students who are interested in career exploration.
“We’re currently only serving 7 percent of our high school students (with) these career technical education opportunities,” he said. “We know from our students, our community, state of Indiana Department of Education, (there will be) demand for more of those opportunities moving forward … but we are limited by the spaces on our own current high school campuses.”
Loser said district officials started meeting with Opportunity Education representatives in late July. They came to visit, toured the community and learned more about the industries that have moved into the area.
“Indiana policy provides a uniquely aligned environment for innovative partnerships with school districts and career-connected learning,” he said. “OE is speaking to multiple cities, and the Fishers community and school leaders rose to the top of alignment. They found synergy between their mission, our community (and) the work that we’ve already done.”
District officials had been working with Ford Next Generation Learning, another national career-exploration education program. The district ended its participation in that program because the framework wasn’t a good fit but was continuing its work toward increased career exploration opportunities.
Loser said the goal of the partnership with OE is to open a charter school with HSE as the authorizer to serve 500 or more students, along with an academy that would offer career and technical education classes to high school students at Hamilton Southeastern or Fishers high schools who want to remain in those schools while working on specific career skills.
If it all works out, the new school would open in fall 2025.
Loser said next steps will include soliciting teacher and community input, formalizing the structure of a partnership and finding a location for the proposed charter school, along with securing the grant funding. He said the district would not have to repay the grant if the charter school proposal doesn’t work out.
A charter school authorized by HSE would have its own board and a separate budget. Funding follows the students, so a charter school would receive funds that otherwise would go into the HSE district budget. HSE would have some oversight as the authorizer but would not control day-to-day operations.
Opportunity Education was created in 2005 by Joe Ricketts, who founded financial services company Ameritrade in the 1970s. He also is the majority owner of the Chicago Cubs. The nonprofit initially focused on improving education in developing countries. More recently, it has been working on creating different education models in the United States.
For more, visit opportunityeducation.org.
