By Aleksandra Appleton, Chalkbeat Indiana

Jen Shipley would have never considered public school for her rising third grader, whom she had homeschooled since kindergarten.

In public schools, she said she saw cuts to recess and enrichment, an overreliance on screens, and not enough time to give each student individual attention, she said.

But a 2025 meeting with Indiana Microschool Collaborative CEO George Philhower and Nature’s Gift microschool leader Erin Wolski changed her mind. They painted a picture of a public school located in the woods in Hancock County that would emphasize parental involvement and a flexible schedule, while drawing from Montessori and classical education to allow students to move at their own pace.

Over the next school year, Shipley’s daughter excelled in math where she had been struggling at home. It was hard to leave their full-time homeschooling community, but Shipley said it was worth it.

“I love that she can learn from teachers who love teaching reading and math,” Shipley said. “Sure I could teach my child a science experiment, but not with the same passion behind it.”

Nature’s Gift’s, which just wrapped up its first year, is the Indiana Microschool Collaborative’s first microschool. But the collective plans to open five more sites with spots for hundreds more students across eastern central Indiana. Planned sites in Richmond and New Palestine already have waitlists for admission, a sign that parents’ interest in microschools continues to grow.

The collaborative’s approach is distinctive — and not just for its education model. In fact, the Indiana Microschool Collaborative, or IMC, could be a harbinger of how emerging models for schooling in the state will increasingly blur traditional lines.

It’s a network of microschools, which operate with a degree of independence, but it’s also classified as a single charter school in terms of state funding. And it doesn’t just draw on resources and services from a traditional school district — its CEO, Philhower, is also that district’s superintendent.

Eastern Hancock Schools, a rural district serving around 1,200 students across three schools, provides administrative support to Nature’s Gift through a shared services agreement. However, the charter school is an independent entity and authorized by the Indiana Charter School Board.

Philhower envisions Indiana microschools working collaboratively with their local districts to offer families an alternative to leaving the public school system altogether. For families, this opens up possibilities like learning at home some days and learning in a classroom on others, while districts still earn some revenue from providing facilities or administrative support.

“At a broader level, the goal is not to create separation between schools but to create more connected and flexible public learning opportunities for families,” Philhower said.

Not everyone is so taken with the idea. Some Indiana superintendents have spoken to the collaborative about bringing microschools to their districts, said Jeff Butts, of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents. But the collaborative’s Richmond site has been criticized by the superintendent of the local school district, who said losing students to IMC would lead to district funding cuts and staff reductions.

That kind of financial crunch would hit rural districts especially hard, said Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, president at Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

Then there are broader concerns about whether such arrangements are appropriate or fair. Fuentes-Rohwer questioned how Philhower can promote both the district and the collective and serve both well.

“Charter schools are based on the idea that the public schools are failing to provide something for kids. Your job as a superintendent is to fix that, and provide what’s needed so that every student can be the best that they can be,” Fuentes-Rowher said. “If it’s about smaller class sizes or individualized attention, why is that not provided to all kids at the district?”

Philhower said he believes in school choice, and that all students should get to attend “a school that feels like it was designed for them.”

“Nothing is stopping us from providing that. One benefit to Eastern Hancock is we get to learn from these sites,” he said. “And these sites get to learn from us.”

Funding and operating microschools throughout the state

Indiana’s microschools have operated mostly as small private schools, although in 2023, Purdue Polytechnic High School opened the Lab School, a microschool within a public charter school serving around 20 students

The microschools’ approaches share an emphasis on small environments and personalized instruction. But with small staffs, there are some tradeoffs.

At Nature’s Gift, parents pick up and drop off every day. The school can incorporate some special education goals into small group instruction, but other services for students with an Individualized Education Program might be offered virtually, school leaders said. That format might not be appropriate for every student.

Each IMC site serves between 60 and 100 students, and will have “its own educators and identity that fits the local community,” Philhower said, though there is collaboration with districts “around professional learning, systems, curriculum design, and student experiences.”

Under Indiana law, IMC could be eligible to receive local property tax revenue from multiple districts. Philhower said IMC has not discussed participating in a referendum, and would only participate if its partner districts wanted the school to do so.

For state funding purposes, IMC is one big charter school, Philhower said. That also means the new locations are not subject to an Indiana law that requires charter authorizers to hold public hearings before granting charters to new schools.

That left local education leaders in one county blindsided.

Wayne County superintendents were not included in IMC’s plans to open a microschool on the campus of Indiana University East in Richmond this fall, said Mike McCoy, superintendent of the local district, Centerville-Abington Community Schools.

Philhower said the school works with its authorizer, the Indiana Charter School Board, on hearings. The board did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, IU spokesman Mark Bode said IU East shared initial information about the new school in late March, followed by a meeting with the superintendents in April.

If he had been asked for input, McCoy said he would have suggested a model within a district that would allow students to stay with their peers while also taking classes at the university. His district already sends some students to IU East for a teaching pathway and other college courses.

Enrollment in Centerville-Abington, which has about 1,700 students, has fallen in the last several years due in part to local demographic changes, McCoy said.

Philhower said it makes sense for districts with declining enrollments to work with IMC schools instead of merely losing those students. After dipping slightly during the pandemic, enrollment in Philhower’s Eastern Hancock district has recovered to where it stood a decade ago.

But McCoy said a loss of even 10 students to a microschool could force his district to cut a teaching position.

“Schools in Wayne County, we’re working together more than we ever have,” McCoy said. “It’s unfortunate that we’re going to lose students.”

What teaching and learning at a microschool is like

On a recent Friday, Nature’s Gift students boarded an Eastern Hancock school bus for a field trip to the Conner Prairie museum.

The school paid Eastern Hancock schools for the gas and the cost of the driver’s time for the field trip, said Wolski, the school leader. Two Nature’s Gift teachers planned the outing. (Eastern Hancock does not provide daily transportation to and from the school.)

Teachers at Nature’s Gift don’t typically spend the whole day with just one group of students; Wolski is the licensed teacher for the middle school, but might also pull aside a group of five second graders for additional reading instruction, she said.

“I don’t feel like I’m on an island, and my whole career, I felt like I was on an island,” said Wolski, who previously spent 16 years teaching in both general education and special education roles.

Wolski said IMC hopes to add a special education coordinator in the future to be able to offer more services — like identification — in-house, rather than relying on Eastern Hancock.

The group instruction at the school is based on skill level, so it’s easier for students to move at their own pace, Wolski said. A first grader recently joined her math group for third to fifth grade students.

These learning groups might include approximately a dozen students at a time, though the school comes together in larger cohorts to work on Project Lead The Way curriculum.

Some students attend in-person only part-time, and complete the rest of their instruction at home. The flexibility allowed Shipley’s daughter to attend Nature’s Gift in person three days a week, leaving time to attend a wilderness school program while completing schoolwork at home.

“We are always thinking about outside the box ideas,” Wolski said. “When you work closely with parents, you have that partnership, and you can problem solve a lot easier.”

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Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education, https://www.chalkbeat.org/indiana/2026/06/22/microschool-network-expands-to-new-sites/

By Aleksandra Appleton, Chalkbeat Indiana

The Trump administration is giving Indiana new flexibility in how it spends some of its federal education funding.

But the waiver from the U.S. Department of Education is not nearly as expansive as what Indiana requested last year, when it sought a waiver from some provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the main federal law governing K-12 education.

The approved waiver will merge five federal funding streams to the tune of around $50 million over the next four years, according to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who spoke at a news conference with Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner and Indiana Gov. Mike Braun on Tuesday.

This strategy for federal education funding, often referred to as a block grant, is popular among conservatives championing fewer regulations. But others have criticized it, saying it could weaken accountability for the money and ultimately hurt certain students.

Indiana is now the third state after Iowa and Louisiana to receive a “Returning Education to the States” waiver from the Trump administration, which has also sought to close the Education Department. The flexibility the department provided to Iowa was also more modest than what the state originally sought.

McMahon and Jenner said the move will save Indiana an estimated $20 million in compliance costs over four years associated with administering the grants separately.

“As states, we have significant control over education. We set standards, choose our curriculum, and design assessments. When it comes to federal funding, our hands have always been tied, until now,” Jenner said.

The waiver will also allow the state to use its newly approved school accountability model as the sole accountability model for state and federal purposes.

At the state level, the waiver will merge the following funding streams:

• Title I, Part B grants, which cover assessment.
• Title II, Part A grants, which cover professional development.
• Title III, Part A grants, which cover education for English learners.
• Title IV, Part A grants, which cover enrichment.
• Title IV, Part B grants, which cover 21st Century Learning Centers.

The federal funding for these grants will not change under the waiver.

The waiver does not grant all Indiana districts similar flexibility to spend the money they receive from the state, as the state originally requested in its waiver application. Instead, it allows the state to create a pilot program for up to 15% of local education agencies that will allow them to merge Title II, Part A and Title IV, Part A funds.

The waiver also does not address Indiana’s request to redirect School Improvement Grant funding away from schools identified as low-performing. That request would have potentially diverted $25 million in annual federal funding to other schools, like charter schools and microschools.

Education advocates had expressed concern that this move would have hurt students who have to stay at the schools identified as low-performing.

Similarly, critics have also said that merging dedicated federal funding streams for specific student needs into block grants risks losing the guardrails that ensure the funding reaches those students.

Denise Forte, president and CEO of The Education Trust, an advocacy group that tracks the status of state waiver requests, said in a Tuesday statement that the Trump administration “has abandoned” commitments to supporting students and schools and to publicly reporting important education data.

“Instead, the Department of Education will allow Indiana to rewrite its accountability system in a way that will mask student performance and move millions of dollars in dedicated funding away from students who need it most,” Forte said.

Indiana officials on Tuesday rejected such arguments.

“Our funding formulas … direct a certain number of dollars per student to every school. That money will continue to flow,” Jenner said. “Now the money will be able to be deployed exactly how they need it in a timely manner.”

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Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education, https://www.chalkbeat.org/indiana/2026/06/16/trump-administration-grants-federal-funding-and-accountability-waiver/ 

By Erica Meltzer, Chalkbeat Colorado

States most likely will not be able to place additional requirements or guardrails on scholarship groups funded through the new federal tax credit, according to a preview of the rules provided by the U.S. Treasury Department this week.

This position contradicts comments Education Secretary Linda McMahon made to Congress last month and at a Michigan school choice event in March in which she said states would be able to shape their own programs.

The U.S. Department of Education has declined to clarify those remarks, but it is ultimately the Treasury Department that will set the rules for the program.

And in remarks made Tuesday at a closed-door meeting and later released by the Treasury Department, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Kevin Salinger said that states may not impose “substantive” rules on scholarship groups that are more restrictive than federal law.

That’s welcome news for school choice groups who want more flexibility and limited rules for scholarship groups.

It may present a dilemma for Democratic governors who have said they are waiting to see these rules before deciding whether to opt in.

One of the key questions for this group has been whether they’ll be able to shape the program by putting additional rules on scholarship groups, requiring, for example, that they serve low-income families and students with disabilities or meet certain academic standards. Some Democrats have indicated they want the money only to go to public schools.

“I am never going to leave money on the table when it comes to supporting our kids in public schools,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said last week at the Education Writers Association conference in Baltimore when asked about the tax credit. But Moore said he was waiting on the regulations to decide whether to participate. “I do not believe that we should be taking public dollars and putting them towards private education.”

Salinger’s remarks indicate states will not be able to shape the program as they see fit, contradicting the administration’s promise to “return education to the states.”

Set to launch in 2027, the federal tax credit scholarship allows individuals to donate up to $1,700 to eligible nonprofits and get fully reimbursed through a federal income tax credit. The scholarship groups can provide vouchers to families earning up to 300% of the area median income to spend on educational expenses. Those expenses could be private school tuition, tutoring for a public school student, or specialized equipment or therapies.

Governors can decide whether their states participate, and those who do must submit lists of eligible scholarship organizations each year. Federal law imposes only minimal requirements, for example that scholarship groups operate as federally recognized nonprofits and provide money to students who attend more than one school.

The closed-door event at which Salinger spoke included a panel on ways public school students could also benefit.

Speaking at a separate Chalkbeat Ideas event Thursday, Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said Democratic states should be open to possibilities, such as scholarships funding afterschool tutoring through approved vendors.

“This is not money that we would have,” she said. “This is money that, instead of going to the federal government, could come to our state.”

Another question has been whether homeschool families can benefit. That’s likely to be determined by whether state law considers a home school to be a school in a legal sense.

Sailnger laid out other aspects of the rules that school choice groups have been watching carefully, clarifying that they can operate in multiple states and that caps on administrative costs won’t apply to their entire budgets, only to money they raise for scholarships.

The rules will be finalized by the end of September, Salinger said.

Large national scholarship groups hoped for this flexibility so they can expand and serve more families.

“We have gotten our clearest signs from Treasury yet that this tax credit is going to benefit all students across all sectors,” said Ashling Preston, director of federal affairs for the American Federation for Children. “Every governor has the information they need to opt in right now. There are hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars at stake in every state.”

But Augustus Mays, vice president for partnerships and engagement at the progressive advocacy group EdTrust, said the preview of the rules only reinforces his belief that Democratic governors should opt out.

“If you’re a governor and you think you’ll be able to have the authority to shape this program to align to your public school priorities,” he said, “the answer is no, you’re not going to have that authority.”

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Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education, https://www.chalkbeat.org/2026/06/11/treasury-previews-tax-credit-scholarship-rules-that-shape-school-choice/