Inaugural Showcase of Schools Just One Highlight of Exciting 2014-15

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Indianapolis Public Schools has finished the 2014-2015
academic year, and it was an exciting time of change and progress. As we
celebrate the successes of the Class of 2015, we wanted to take a look back at
some of our amazing district successes, too:

• The IPS “One-Stop Shop” open enrollment offered extended
  weekday and weekend hours, streamlining the process for families to register
  students and address other service needs. Our families efficiently enrolled
  their students before the start of the year, allowing
  their scholars to benefit from every educational minute of the school year.
  We also offered magnet, kindergarten and preschool enrollment online, making
  those processes easier than ever!
• Our new commitment to exceptional
  service to our community led to several changes: presenting a sleeker, warmer atmosphere in the John Morton
  Finney Education Center Guest Services area, making it more welcoming and accessible; a new website
  to make information easier for our families to find; and a mobile app to get
  information into our community’s hands faster!

• We restructured our schools into three learning
  communities, East, West and Magnet, under the supervision of three Academic Improvement Officers.
  With the help of Title I and United Way funding we also added Parental
  Involvement Educators (PIEs) or Community Coordinators at all schools,
  facilitating increased community involvement across the district.
• Our Business Alliance helped to ensure more
  community involvement by matching powerful community partners with priority
  schools.
• We provided breakfast and lunch at no cost to
  all our students to prevent basic needs from getting in the way of education, and
  even extended meal service through breaks.
• Our first Showcase of Schools at Circle Centre
  Mall highlighted the great choices and opportunities in all our schools!
• With the support of the Board of School
  Commissioners and guidance from community partners, we took strides toward more
  efficient operations with district-wide recycling and offering properties for
  sale!
• Our amazing educators gave us reasons to
  celebrate, too, as Tina Ahlgren, our 2014-2015 Teacher of the Year, finished a
  top three finalist for state Teacher of the Year.  Also, five district
  teachers were awarded $10,000 Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowships,
  tying one other school district in the state for the most awards.
• We determined baseline technology standards to
  assess and address any gaps in our classrooms.
• Sidener Academy for High Ability Students
  celebrated 100% passing rate on the ISTEP+ and was awarded the great honor of
  being a National Blue Ribbon School! Meanwhile, Center for Inquiry Schools 27 and
  84 were designated “Family Friendly Schools” by the Indiana Department of
  Education.
• Finally, we’re welcoming Arlington Community
  High School back into IPS after state takeover and looking forward to a great
  first year back.

Arlington’s return is just one of the great things we’re
looking forward to in the year to come. Watch for:

• A new Strategic Plan focusing on three goal
  areas: Teaching and Learning, Efficient Operations, and Family and Community
• Raises for our deserving IPS teachers
• Exciting school improvements through Innovation
  Schools and Transformation Zones
• Additional resources for school PIEs and
  extensions of our many community partnerships
• Collaboration with the Board of School
  Commissioners to realign grade configurations and move away from the 7-12
  community high school model (not to begin before the 2016-2017 school year)

After
watching the way our administration, teachers and the community rallied to convince legislators to refrain from cutting even more funding for our students than they did this
last year, we’re even more excited to see what we can all do together in
2015-2016!