Fishers reader says HSE school board’s rejection of Operation Education was reasonable & logical

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Dear Editor:

In this new era of hyper-politicized school boards, what needs to be emphasized in the wake of the charter school withdrawing its application to HSE Schools is that the community’s loud rejection of their proposal was not politically motivated. The Opportunity Education Charter School as presented at the most recent school board meeting just showed a decided lack of forethought and due diligence, so much in fact that even some of the conservative board members were vocally uneasy with it.

A fringe, uninformed minority within Fishers will dismiss as political theatrics what ultimately was a very reasonable, logical, and nonpartisan response to a monolithic superintendent who decided to wing it because he assumed he already had the votes.

Recognizing that not all students are destined for the collegiate path toward a career, HSE Schools has for a long time identified a need to beef up its Career and Technical Education (CTE) offerings to students. Our district leadership conducted zero feasibility studies for improving this existing CTE infrastructure, reached out to zero nationally recognized CTE charter schools, and tried to unilaterally select an out-of-state charter program that in 19 years of existence specialized in only small college prep schools, had never opened or operated a CTE school, and had zero faculty on staff with meaningful CTE experience.

When a representative for Operation Education was asked at the school board meeting why HSE Schools should fund a charter program with no CTE track record whatsoever, he stood at the podium and with a straight face replied, “It’s a leap of faith.”

A leap of faith.

I think this was the moment when nearly everyone at the school board meeting realized how unserious Operation Education was, and that the only reason they had even made it that far in the application process was because they were chummy with district leadership. This wasn’t a win for liberals or a loss for conservatives; it was a statement of basic fairness and a repudiation of cronyism.

To borrow some old teaching lingo, Superintendent Mapes and his Operation Education pals didn’t show their work, and they were graded accordingly.

Brian Sweany
Fishers