New charter girls school faces pushback

Washington Township groups try to halt rezoning

Multiple Washington Township community and school organizations have banded together to stop rezoning a former church as a charter school, with the hope of preventing the school from opening altogether.

The new school, the Girls IN STEM Academy, is set to open in fall 2024 in the former Witherspoon Presbyterian Church at 5136 Michigan Road in the Highland-Kessler neighborhood, but first the building must be rezoned from a church to a school.

Detractors say that the charter operator, Paramount Schools of Excellence, didn’t do enough to engage the community ahead of getting the charter approved.

“Charter schools like Paramount have to be very careful that they’re not making decisions for families,” said Leslie Bowles, a Washington Township parent. “They didn’t sit down with families of color that they are saying that they’re creating space for to ask if this is something that we wanted.”

Paramount leaders say they held the proper public hearings and that some prospective parents have welcomed the school, saying it will provide an innovative education model for underserved populations.

Tierra Ruffin said she hopes the new school will offer a more diverse educational environment for her daughter than her current school in Avon.

“I feel like she needs to have that representation that people that look like her, outside of myself, are also successful and people that look like her, a young

Black girl, can go into the fields of STEM,” Ruffin told IndyStar.

Washington Township pushes back against charter

While the law requires charter school authorizers to hold a public hearing in the school district where they intend to open a school, state law says that the meeting can held anywhere in the county if the location isn’t settled. Paramount held a public hearing in June at the Eagle Branch Library in Pike