I’m back. Well, I never really left.
But someone else has returned.
This month the brand new IPS board saw it fit to appoint Patrick Herrel to be the Director of Student Enrollment and Options.
Who is Patrick Herrel?
He was the right hand man to David Harris, CEO of the Mind Trust. The Mind Trust is a nonprofit organization that works to place IPS schools in privately owned hands by converting them to Innovation Network, or charter-operated, schools.
Patrick left the Mind Trust and Indianapolis to be the Director of the Mind Trust #2 in Cincinnati. Now he is back to run Student Enrollment and Options at IPS. And he doesn’t come cheap:
Combine this with the fact that Enroll Indy, another privatizing nonprofit focused on jointly enrolling students into both IPS and charter schools, moved into a prominent space on the first floor of the IPS Education center – and we have a recipe for disaster of EPIC money grubbing proportions.
The Mind Trust’s prodigal son and its daughter company Enroll Indy are now perfectly poised to seize even more public school $tudent$, propertie$, building$, and tax dollar$ intended to provide a free public education.
How many more nails will this board and administration drive into the coffin of public education in Indianapolis?
Maybe this is the final one necessary.