Indianapolis Public Schools

As you know, occasionally I am known to do a, um, [laughs] kind of a laugh, um, because, well, at one time, I was, I was very friendly with Tucker Carlson.

And, uh, at one time, uh, when I was fired from Indianapolis Public Schools, uh, for as the science coordinator, uh, whistleblowing the school's critical race theory policies and, you know, our directions to tell our teachers and principals they had to lie to parents about our racial policies at the school.

He, like Charlie Kirk, kind of checked in on me for a while.

And, uh, with Tucker, eventually that stopped, and he then turned into the loony bin that he is today, which is deeply unfortunate.

In this episode, I sat down with Heather Harris, chair of Barnes & Thornburg's Charter School and School Innovation Practice Group, to learn more about the legal side of developing strategies to help schools succeed.

Harris shares more about her path to working with Indianapolis public schools, recent legislation that will change the way many IPS schools handle things like transportation and infrastructure, and the work she does outside of the practice to support school innovation.

But before we get into the episode, here's a word from our sponsor.

Taft, today's modern law firm.

Yeah.

Obviously, it's been 25 years since that initial law, but now we're, I guess, seeing a development in school innovation, which is another part of your role at Barnes and Thornburg.

I'm just curious to talk, kind of shifting gears a little bit to Indianapolis specifically and how the Indianapolis Public Schools has really been maybe at the forefront of this kind of innovation.

Obviously, this year, Governor Braun established the Public Education Corporation.

WishTV is your education station.

Leaders for Indianapolis Public Schools say they want voters to weigh in on property tax increases this November but warn that budget cuts are coming either way.

IPS leaders say it's only a couple of extra dollars added on top of what homeowners are already paying.

The district says it has already cut $24 million from its budget this year, and even with voter approval, IPS is projecting another $20 million in annual cuts.

Yeah.

If you go to the IPS website, which is myips.org, right on the top bar, there's a 2026 referendum button.

And if you click on that, they have a calculator.

So you can enter your property value of your home and it will calculate it and tell you what your estimated tax bill change will be.

Y- you talked about charter schools and reform of K through 12.

Do charter schools and that type of approach hurt public schools like Indianapolis Public Schools?

No, they don't, and it's a, it's a canard that to suggest that they do.

No, they o- they only hurt in the sense that they draw, they, they offer a choice to parents who are looking for something better for their child.

We don't tell people, uh, "Y- you gotta buy groceries at that store, and you can only get your tires changed at this, um, outlet," but, um, uh, we don't tell them that.

But we do say, have said, "Your child will go to that school and only that school, whether you think it's the right, the best thing for them or not."

Well, y- you write that when you got to Purdue, um, only 15 students a year from Indianapolis Public Schools-

Yeah

And so now this is just returned to Title IX as it was originally intended.

So there's a lot of questions right now, a lot of people saying, what actually has Donald Trump done in this administration? As someone who went from a teacher to an administrator to being fired as a whistleblower at Indianapolis Public Schools for exposing the wild racial and sexual policies in the district that we were told to lie to our parents about.

And I was asked to lie to my teachers.

And my principals.

interrupt? Yeah.

Who were the people who were not saying nice things in IPS or had they left it?

either not in IPS, either had never attempted it or had left it.

I think our realtor had left it, but everybody else, yeah, were folks that had made different choices.

So all of my husband's coworkers were like, oh, if you've got school-aged kids, you gotta go live on the north side.

We didn't really know many people here, but the folks that I didn't know didn't have any experience with IPS.

And so, yeah, we couldn't really get any good intel, I guess, is what I would say.

There's a phenomena I like to reference, which is that Anytime you talk about the bus, you say, I love riding the bus.