Indiana House Bill 1136, introduced by Republicans Jake Teshka of South Bend and Jeff Thompson of Lizton, is a declaration of war against the very idea of public schools governed by the people through elected school boards.
The bill would destroy public schools in areas where at least half of students attend a school that is not operated by the public school corporation, but it’s written so narrowly that it would only affect five school corporations in the state: IPS, Gary, and three rural schools (Tri-Township in Northern Indiana, Union in East Central Indiana, and Cannelton south on the Ohio River).
House Bill 1136 is racist
Public education in the United States is one of the lasting reforms won during Reconstruction, when Black people who had just liberated themselves from slavery entered government and shaped the first democratic institutions in U.S. history. Only after the Civil War did we win public schools for all children and colleges for the training of teachers needed to educate them.
House Bill 1136 is antidemocratic
This bill would strip the right of predominantly Black Hoosiers in Indianapolis and Gary to elect and govern their school systems, replacing elected governing boards with ones with a majority of members appointed by far-right Governor Mike Braun. Charter schools have no accountability to the public, even as they recklessly spend our money to enrich their grifting operators.
House Bill 1136 is anti-worker
The Indiana State Teachers Association is the largest union in the State of Indiana, and is the union organizing teachers in IPS, Cannelton, Union and Tri-Township Schools; the Indiana Federation of Teachers organizes Gary. Alongside teachers, other school staff are organized in AFSCME, SEIU, and other unions. All of these workers’ organizations would be destroyed without a vote by the workers if their schools were disbanded and reorganized as charter schools.
Charter schools are not the answer to the real problems in public education
The scheme to disband elected school boards and further erode our public school system was concocted by politicians working alongside astroturfed “think-tanks” like The Mind Trust. In place of elected boards, the proposed seven-member boards of the charter schools will be appointed by politicians without oversight from the public. The governor will appoint a board majority with four seats, along with one member appointed by the mayor, one appointed by the county council, and the final member appointed by the executive director of the Indiana Charter School Board, currently James Betley.
Charter operators prey on genuine criticism of the condition of public schools, but capitalists and their politicians do not care about Black children or families and do not actually address their criticisms. To understand how capitalists respond to criticisms, we need look no further than policing. If politicians were truly responsive to our concerns, police would have been defunded as a result of the legitimate grievances raised by Black America. Instead, police across the country are receiving record budgets, even though the hundreds of millions of dollars they receive could be diverted to solve social problems without terrorizing Black communities.
Charter schools have no obligation to stay open to serve students. In fact, around one in three charters have closed since 2001 in Indianapolis alone. Not only do charter schools fail to stay open, but they fail the majority of their students. Jeanie Lindsay, reporting for Indiana Public Media, noted that Indiana’s high-school graduation overall rate hovered at 87 percent in 2020. However, charter schools only graduated 59% of their seniors, compared to 92% of students attending actual public schools.
Charter schools present the illusion of “choice” to Black families that their child can attend a “better” school if they only abandon community schools. But the history of education reveals that our public schools were never adequately funded nor supported to serve working-class and poor students.
What does a real solution look like?
The solution to the crisis in public education is not to end democratic control over education, or to replace public schools with government-funded private and religious schools. House Bill 1136 would strip power away from working and oppressed people in their own communities and give control of their schools, stripped of their unions and privately-run, over to far-right Republican Governor Mike Braun. Project 2025, which has emboldened state Republicans, seeks to get rid of the Department of Education and further privatize public schools. As Jane Cutter writes:
Schooling does not exist in a vacuum. A foundational reorganization of the economy, taking over the richest corporations and diverting the massive military budget to meet human needs, will mean that students arrive healthy and well-nourished to school having slept soundly in safe, secure housing. Our teachers and other school staff will no longer need to work a second job just to pay the rent when rents are capped at 10% of income.
Fully funding education will mean that class sizes can be drastically reduced—an intervention that has been proven by research to improve student learning especially for poor and nationally oppressed students. Our crumbling school buildings can be renovated or replaced to become beautiful palaces of learning.
Racist, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ school curricula and policies would be replaced with a liberatory pedagogy that inculcates self-determination and mutual respect.
Free access to higher education would also be recognized as a right. Student debt must be erased. Likewise all children and families should have access to free, high-quality pre-school and childcare, which has been shown to play a critical role in supporting healthy child development. The basic tenet of current special education legislation—that all children, with and without disabilities, have a right to a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment—would become a reality.
Workers can come together to defeat this bill and keep the basic democratic rights they have already won. Our fight is the struggle for more control of our public school system by school workers and the working-class communities they serve. This is the only way to democratically ensure a high-quality, liberatory education for all students.
Featured photo: 2025 swear-in ceremony of elected members of the IPS Board of Commissioners.