IPS Is Consolidating Schools. What That Means If Your Child Has an IEP.

If you have a child with an IEP at an Indianapolis Public School, the news this month has probably landed somewhere between unsettling and alarming. I've had a few of these conversations already, so let me start with what's actually true, because a fair amount of what's going around isn't.

The referendum passed on November 3rd, by roughly 63 percent. Schools are still going to be consolidated anyway. That was always part of the plan, not a consequence of the vote. IPS committed to about $20 million in cuts during the campaign, and consolidation is where a good share of that comes from.

As I write this, no list of schools exists yet. Superintendent Johnson has said recommendations are coming this month.

And here's the detail that got lost in the coverage, the one I most want you to have tonight: any consolidation requires a school board vote, and it would take effect for the 2027–28 school year. Not in January. Not mid-year. You have a full school year.

So take a breath. Then let's talk about what to do with that year.

The timeline you can actually act on

The board meets three times this month at the John Morton-Finney Center, 120 E. Walnut Street:

• Work session: Tuesday, November 10
• Agenda review: Tuesday, November 17
• Action session: Thursday, November 19, also livestreamed

One caution. The district's own website currently gives two different dates for that agenda review session. Before you rearrange your evening and drive downtown, check the agenda on BoardDocs rather than trusting any date you read secondhand, including mine.

If you want to speak, registration closes at noon the day before, and you'll have three minutes. There's also a written comment form, which I mention because standing up in a board room is not something every parent can do, and nobody should feel they've failed their kid over that. Both forms live on the district's monthly board meeting post. The board administrator can be reached at [email protected].

The thing nobody has said

I've read the superintendent's November 4th message, the referendum page, the district's special education pages, and every piece of local coverage I can find.

Not one of them mentions students with disabilities in connection with the closures.

I don't think that's bad faith. Announcements get written about buildings and budgets, by people thinking about buildings and budgets. But roughly one in five IPS students has a disability. That's just over 4,000 children with IEPs, and what a consolidation does to their services hasn't been addressed at all.

There's a reason it won't get addressed on its own, and it's worth understanding.

Indiana has a statute that can actually compel a district to close an underutilized building. It has another one governing who gets the empty building afterward. Neither contains a single word about the children with IEPs inside it. There's no Indiana rule and no state guidance document on what a school closure means for special education. I went looking, and it simply isn't there.

The protections do exist. They're just somewhere else, in IDEA and in Article 7's general rules about placement and notice. Which means somebody has to invoke them, and that somebody is going to be you.

The question that decides everything

Everything in this situation turns on one distinction, and it's worth getting straight now, before you need it.

Courts have generally held that moving a child to a different building is not by itself a change of educational placement. "Placement" means the educational program: the classes, the services, the level of support. "Location" means the bricks and mortar. If your child's IEP can be delivered exactly as written at the new building, the move is a change of location, and the district can make it administratively.

But that reasoning has a limit, and the limit is the whole point. A district does not get to assign a child to a school that cannot do what the IEP requires.

So which one is your child? In IPS there's a fairly clean dividing line, and the district published the numbers itself. About 90 percent of IPS students with an IEP access the general curriculum in a typical classroom with support. Just under 10 percent get most of their education outside it, and those students are in named programs that sit in particular buildings:

• Programs for Young Children, ages 3 to 5
• Autism, Reach, and Nest, the district's three autism models
• Life Skills
• Arches, grades 6 through 12
• Intensive Intervention and therapeutic settings

If your child is in general education with push-in or pull-out support, a closure is most likely a change of location. Disruptive and sad, but legally straightforward.

If your child is in one of those clustered programs, this is a much more serious matter. The program lives in specific buildings. The receiving school may not have it, or may not have the trained staff, the peer group, or the physical space. That's where a building move becomes a change of placement, and placement is not somebody's administrative decision to make.

Indiana's rule on this is one sentence, and I'd memorize it:

"The CCC determines the placement in which a student will receive services." (511 IAC 7-42-10(a)(3))

Not the special education office. Not a facilities plan. The case conference committee, and you are a member of it.

What to do right now, before any list comes out

The most useful thing you can do this month has nothing to do with closures at all. You're building a baseline.

Get a dated copy of your child's current IEP and write down, exactly as it's written:

• Service minutes: how many, how often, how long
• The setting each service happens in
• The percentage of the day in general education
• Every related service, including speech, OT, PT, counseling, nursing
• Transportation, including specialized equipment or an aide on the bus
• Whether your child is in one of the named programs above

I know this sounds like homework nobody asked for. But it's the difference between walking into a meeting saying "I think he's losing services" and saying "his IEP says 300 minutes a week in a Life Skills setting, and this building doesn't have one." The first is an impression. The second is a comparison, and comparisons are what move people.

Write down your transportation reality too. Pick-up time, drop-off time, how long the ride actually takes door to door. If that ride gets dramatically longer next year, you'll want the before number, and nobody ever has it afterward.

One piece of history worth knowing. When IPS last closed buildings in 2023, affected families got a one-year transportation reprieve, and once it ended, transportation continued only if the new school was in the student's zone. So ask about transportation specifically. Don't assume it follows the child.

What to do once the list is announced

Put your request in writing, and ask for things by name.

Writing matters more than usual here, for a specific reason. If the district decides a move is "just a location change," it may issue no formal notice at all, and then there's nothing for you to disagree with. A written request creates a record either way, including a record of what they decline to do.

Ask for two things. Prior written notice under 34 CFR 300.503 and 511 IAC 7-42-7 of any proposed change to your child's placement or services. And a case conference committee meeting before any program relocation is finalized.

Prior written notice has required contents, and one of them does real work: the district has to describe the other options it considered and why it rejected each one. That forces a decision about your child rather than about a building.

I want to be straight with you about a weak spot. Indiana sets deadlines for all sorts of things, but there's no deadline for a school to convene a case conference after a parent asks for one. That's a genuine gap in the rules, and you should know about it going in. It's also exactly why you date your request, keep your copy, and send it to a named special education administrator instead of a general inbox.

A request you can copy

Fill in the brackets and send it to your child's case manager, the building principal, and the district's special education department.

Subject: Request for case conference and prior written notice, [child's name], [grade], [school]

Dear [name],

My child, [name], date of birth [DOB], attends [school] and receives special education services under an IEP.

Given the district's announced consolidation planning, I am requesting two things in writing.

First, prior written notice under 34 CFR 300.503 and 511 IAC 7-42-7 of any proposed change to [name]'s educational placement or the provision of a free appropriate public education, including any change in the building where services are delivered. Please include the options the committee considered and the reason each was rejected.

Second, a case conference committee meeting to be convened before any relocation of [name]'s program is finalized, so that the committee can determine placement as required by 511 IAC 7-42-10(a)(3). I would like the committee to address specifically whether every service in the current IEP, including [name the ones that matter most: the program, the service minutes, the related services, transportation], can be delivered as written at any proposed receiving school.

Please confirm receipt of this request and let me know the date of the meeting.

Thank you, [your name, phone number, and the date]

Keep the sent copy, and note the date you sent it.

At the case conference

Three things are worth holding firm on, and all three belong in the written IEP or the written notice, not in a conversation someone remembers differently later.

Whether each service can be delivered as written at the receiving building. Not "we'll make it work." Specifically: is the program there, is there licensed staff for it, is there a peer group, is there the space and the equipment. Ask for the answers in writing.

Transportation, treated as a related service. Transportation is part of the IEP, not a logistics afterthought. Indiana has no rule setting a maximum ride length, so there's no magic number you can invoke. But the committee does have to consider any potentially harmful effect on your child, and the strongest version of this argument is a comparison: how long is the ride for students without disabilities going to that same school?

That the receiving staff will actually know the IEP. Federal law requires every teacher and provider responsible for carrying it out to have access to the IEP and to be informed of their specific responsibilities under it. In a building move, this is the requirement most quietly skipped, and it's the one that burns kids in September. Ask for it in writing. It costs them nothing to agree to and it's awkward to refuse.

Two things to steer clear of. Don't agree to amend the IEP without a meeting, because Indiana lets a parent and a district skip the case conference and amend in writing instead, and for a program relocation that hands away the committee's authority over placement. And if you disagree with a proposed IEP, say so before it's implemented. The current IEP generally stays in place while the disagreement gets worked out.

If it can't be resolved, Indiana gives you a state complaint, mediation, and a due process hearing. One note, because a lot of parent guides are out of date on this: due process hearings filed since July 1, 2025 go through administrative law judges at the Office of Administrative Law Proceedings.

Two different fights, and please don't mix them up

This is the part I most want you to take with you.

Whether a building closes is a political question. It gets decided by a board, in public meetings, and your leverage is showing up, taking your three minutes, writing to commissioners, and voting. Your child's IEP gives you nothing here. You can't use it to keep a school open, and you can't use it to insist on a particular building.

What happens to your child's services is a legal question, and there you have real standing. The right to prior written notice. The right to a case conference. The right to have the committee, not an administrator, decide placement. The right to have the IEP implemented as written wherever your child ends up.

The parents I worry about are the ones who pour everything into the board room and then arrive at the case conference with nothing written down. Do both if you have it in you. If you only have room for one, do the second.

One more thing

Nothing has been decided yet. No list exists. Nothing changes before the 2027–28 school year.

If you do one thing after reading this, make it the boring one. Print the current IEP, write down the service minutes, put today's date on it, and put it somewhere you'll find it again.

And if the list does come out with your child's school on it, that's a hard day. I won't pretend otherwise. But it isn't the end of anything. The services belong to your child, not to the building.

Meet Me Where I Am Indy provides special education advocacy, functional behavioral assessments and behavior intervention plans for Indiana families. If your child's school is affected and you'd rather not walk into that case conference alone, reach out. I'm glad to talk it through.

Useful links: Indiana's Notice of Procedural Safeguards · IDOE dispute resolution · IPS school board · IPS special education

This post is general information for parents, not legal advice. The consolidation process is still developing and dates may change, so please verify anything time-sensitive with the district directly. For questions about your own child, talk with an education attorney or a special education advocate.

Photo: Nandish Jha / Unsplash