House GOP folds Union School Corp. dissolution into SB 1
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the April 11, 2025 issue of Indiana Education Insight.
Deep within the 400 pages of the House Republican Caucus’ version of the massive property tax relief bill, SB 1, is an item mandating the closure of Union School Corporation by summer 2027.
Few details emerged this week since the amendment’s adoption and the passage of SB 1 on the House floor as to exactly why lawmakers want to close this school district specifically, and not any others. Student performance seems to be the main contributing factor, the lawmakers involved say.
Union School Corporation is a small district located in Modoc, straddling Randolph County and Henry County. The district boasts a small brick-and-mortar student population of less than 300, but it hosts thousands of students in its virtual school.
The district would dissolve on July 1, 2027, per the bill. The section of the district located in Henry County would become part of the Blue River Valley Schools district, and the section in Randolph County would be integrated into the Monroe Central School Corporation.
The proposal was added to SB 1 in the House Committee on Ways and Means Monday, and it apparently came as a surprise to the Union School Corporation.
In a scathing letter following the committee vote on the bill, Superintendent Galen Mast condemns the state’s call to close the school in SB 1, and vows to “fight this proposed amendment every step of the way.”
“This proposed amendment came out of nowhere and is a tricky way to force consolidation,” Superintendent Mast asserts.
He continues on, assuring district parents that Union has a “strong legal team” and believes what the General Assembly is proposing may be unconstitutional.
“We find this legislation unconstitutional, a backhanded attempt to close down a school that is thriving and a method to begin forced consolidation of other smaller schools across the state. Union has been here for the community for the past 70 years and we plan to be here for another 7 decades,” Mast writes.
Mast in his letter calls out “our very own legislators,” Rep. J.D. Prescott (R) of Union City and Sen. Scott Alexander (R) of Muncie, for playing a role in the request. Rep. Prescott, though he sits on Ways and Means, has remained mostly quiet on the issue, and dodged press questions all week as well.
House Speaker Todd Huston (R) of Fishers says the concept for closure of Union Schools came from Rep. Prescott, but provided few details as to why SB 1 is singling out that school district.
“There was a concern from the representative of that area that the school district serves so few kids, and it was an opportunity to make sure that we had, you know, the consolidation just, frankly, made sense,” the Speaker divulges.
However, he deferred other specifics to the lawmakers representing the area. “You’d have to ask Rep. Prescott or Sen. Alexander. I know they’ve led the conversations,” the Speaker defers.
Following the comments from Mast in his letter, accusations appeared on social media stating Rep. Prescott has been “threatening” Union Schools with legislation to close its doors. In response, Prescott tweeted at mid-week that such accusations are “entirely false.”
In a second tweet, Rep. Prescott, however, acknowledged Union’s dismal test scores, perhaps justifying why House Republicans are proposing its closure. “No, I never threatened Union. I can not ignore an academically failing school district, though,” Rep. Prescott asserts. “This is about doing what is best for the kids and the community. 62% of parents have taken their kids out of the school district.”
Still, as is apparent in the superintendent’s letter, the school district was caught off guard by the mandate to dissolve in the next two years. And, little explanation was provided in Ways and Means on why the Union provision was added in the first place . . . into a property tax bill.
During discussion in committee on SB 1, the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association released a series of confused tweets asking why Union School Corporation was being asked to dissolve. “We are asking why Union Schl Corp is being closed by SB1. According to leaders at the school, no one in the district is requesting this. We are trying to find out if this is a performance issue? Closed due to size concerns? The why behind the what is an important policy question,” the association tweeted Monday.
ISRSA continued in its tweet thread that the organization is supportive of accountability for online schools, but the proposal from the House came out of nowhere. “There are multiple online schools across the state. Just closing one doesn’t really document a clear policy from a state perspective. Plus it will not really close, just shift somewhere else?” the association writes.
Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association Executive Director Chris Lagoni tells your favorite education newsletter that he’s continuing discussions with lawmakers about the Union School Corporation closure in SB 1 and offering suggested solutions.
He says he gathered a better picture of what exactly the concern is here, “We were confused about what the concern was since it was not clearly outlined in Ways and Means, but we have had meetings and communication the last two days, and we think we understand the concern,” Lagoni states. “We hope to collaborate to create a policy that is easy to understand and documents expectations uniformly across the state.”
Lagoni, a former small school super himself, further tells us the real concern is the lack of specific answers on why this is being done. “We are currently in a capricious process where an entity was ‘selected’ for closure. We can’t say the same lens is being applied equally across the state,” he explains. He says now, all other public schools in the state will be wondering what variables warrant closure by the state, since there is no clear statewide policy
A key issue here does appear to be the school’s performance, and, as Prescott mentioned in his social media posts, the number of students choosing not to attend school there. The district is one of the lowest performing in the state in terms of statewide assessment scores.
Union students have not performed well on ILEARN, with most students consistently scoring well below proficiency since 2019 in math and English/Language arts, so performance is at play here in addition to its size. On the math ILEARN in 2024, a mere 5.4% of Union students tested proficient, and 84% scored below proficiency. In ELA, only 14.9% scored proficient, and 63.4% scored below proficiency. On IREAD-3, 42.6% of students show proficiency.
Union isn’t necessarily the smallest school in the state, but its test scores and its virtual model are playing a role in what’s proposed in SB 1. Medora Community School Corporation, for example, is the smallest district with fewer than 200 students (and attendant perpetual funding problems, as we have chronicled for you in these pages). Medora scored better on ILEARN in 2024 than Union, with 34.4% of students testing proficient in math, and 32.8% in ELA.
Keep in mind, too, that Union was one of the four schools listed in the dead HB 1136 that called for corporations that met certain enrollment thresholds to dissolve and convert into charter schools. As you likely recall, Indianapolis Public Schools was also targeted under that bill, but the district avoided some of the extreme measures proposed by coming to a compromise with lawmakers to form a local education alliance with charter schools and the Office of the Mayor.
Both Rep. Prescott and Sen. Alexander, in partially breaking their silence over the past couple of days, in written statements explain they worked on the SB 1 amendment because of the poor performance of Union schools. Each cited ILEARN scores in their comments. Rep. Prescott implies that the goal is to start a conversation to better student progress in the district.
“These problems are not a new development, and this language was brought forward to help initiate the discussion on how to ensure these students are receiving the best education possible,” Sen. Alexander asserts.
“The Union School Corporation has faced longstanding challenges, including some of the lowest reading proficiency scores in the state and declining enrollment,” Rep. Prescott states. He adds that “This amendment is about starting a conversation on how to better serve these students and ensure they have access to a quality education.”
Union is unique in its expansion to the virtual school world, with a healthy contingent of 9,000 students enrolled in the online school in partnership with Indiana Digital Learning School.
Superintendent Mast suggests the school’s model is why it’s being targeted to dissolve. He explains, “Many people don’t know this, but Union is a substantially wealthy school district. Other districts want our resources. We may have less than 300 students in person, but we support nearly 9,000 students online with over 350 teachers through our partnership with INDLS.”
Mast continues, “We are Indiana’s leading option for virtual education and on the cutting edge of what today’s education should and can be in-person and online and that often brings about opposition. He contends, “Attacks like this are nothing new to Union. When you are doing great things, people notice and you often take center stage like we are now.”
Union’s Mast also argues that local property tax bills would increase should the Union School Corporation close.
Additionally, Union School Corporation Board of Trustees President Christie Ogden, in a lengthy Facebook post on Monday, details a meeting she had with Rep. Prescott that led to this point.
She said Prescott contacted her a few weeks ago and presented three options for Union School Corporation. The first option was for the Union School Board to vote to become a charter school, which would mean no longer receiving property tax money. The second option involved adjusting Union’s virtual school funding contract so that Union does not receive any funding from the virtual program. Rep. Prescott asked if Union could survive financially without the online option, and Ogden says she explained that while the school could survive independently for a number of years, they could not survive 100 years without it.
The third option was that Prescott would hold a House vote to close Union School Corporation by the end of April. Ogden writes, “I told him at the time it was illegal that he couldn’t do it. He said he could.”
Ogden further details that she, Mast, and the school’s attorney met with Prescott again and Sen. Alexander in which the solons told the group, Ogden recounts, “we needed to show them improvements in our test scores, or they had language written to shut us down.” She contends, “they never gave us an opportunity to show them data before they slipped the language into Senate Bill 1.” Ogden, like Mast, also suggested the virtual school model is why their school district is being asked to close.
Rep. Prescott in the comments on her post, refuted her characterization of their interactions, stating, “That is not how the conversation went. I never stated that the local school should vote to become a charter school. I referenced a bill introduced in the first half of the session that would have turned Union into a charter school if it passed. I stated that I did not believe that was the best option. The second option I mentioned was reining in the virtual school via funding. The third option is the proposal that is in SB1 today.”
On the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Greg Porter (D) of Indianapolis, the House Democratic fiscal leader, tried to remove the Union schools provision entirely, warning that the General Assembly simply deciding to close a school district could lead to a slippery slope.
“It’s unprecedented. It doesn’t happen. It’s never happened before. It never happened before,” Rep. Porter argues. “And now, all of a sudden, we’re going to we’re going to get rid of a school corporation … this is a significant departure from the ways that this state has operated over the years.”
House Ways and Means Chair Jeff Thompson (R) of Lizton, a retired teacher, asked for the defeat of the amendment because he believes Union School Corporation is misusing taxpayer dollars, implying the issue lies with the district only housing a few hundred students but collecting state dollars for thousands of virtual students. He also raised concern again about student performance.
“That simple, because taxpayer dollars are not being spent wisely at all, and the administrative cost for that size of school, it’s extremely large,” Rep. Thompson states. “And so if you really pro taxpayer, you’ve got to oppose this. So I strongly ask you to please oppose this amendment and continue on. It’s the right public policy, both for the students there, because again, we know the performance the numbers speak for themselves.
The House swiftly passed SB 1 Thursday, and we’re hearing the Senate had planned to concur on the changes as early as Monday, avoiding the expected conference committee altogether. However, that could change should any components of the deal struck between the Braun Administration and legislative leaders fall apart over the next few days . . . so anything is still possible.
While it appeared that Governor Mike Braun (R) had agreed on the latest proposal of SB 1 on Wednesday, by Thursday morning when the House was set to pass the bill, the Governor tweeted that he had heard concerns about some parts of the bill dealing with local income taxes and now his team was parsing the measure line-by-line to ensure it matches the agreement the Braun Administration had come to with lawmakers.
By Thursday evening (presumably after he had time to read every line of the nearly 400-page bill) the Governor tweeted again, this time supporting SB 1 as it passed the House, and stated he looks forward to the Senate sending the bill to his desk next week.
The Senate also hasn’t committed to concurring on SB 1 just yet.
Given all these moving parts, there may still be time as the clock ticks down to sine die for Union School Corporation to strike a new deal with legislators . . . and there’s also potential for this issue to rise to the level of the one or two issues that always seem to arise out of the blue toward the end of each session that sucks all the oxygen out of the legislative chambers and threatens to derail the process until resolved. Stay tuned.