INDLS adds Beech Grove ahead of Union Schools shutdown
The Indiana Digital Learning School – long the sole virtual school arm for the Union School Corporation – expands its reach ahead of Union’s impending state-mandated closure, adding Beech Grove City Schools to its portfolio of virtual school partners.
This move comes as the Union School Corporation continues to find ways to protect its physical school and virtual education programs from state shutdown . . . and it serves as protection for INDLS should Union lose its legal fight and have to shut down in summer 2027.
Under this arrangement, INDLS (which uses the national Stride/K12 program curriculum) now operates separate virtual schools under the Union and Beech Grove school districts. Five total virtual schools will operate across the two districts: three under Union and two under Beech Grove.
As you likely recall, the future of Union, which had hosted INDLS’s only three schools for years, was thrown into uncertainty when Republican lawmakers quietly inserted an amendment into SEA 1-2025 that singled out the district for closure by July 1, 2027. The small rural school corporation has relied on its virtual programs, making the legislation – carried by its own state representative – a direct threat to its community and to thousands of online students.
Now, while on the surface the Beech Grove addition to INDLS looks like an immediate reaction to the threat of closure, Union Schools Superintendent Galen Mast tells us the idea of INDLS diversifying its portfolio had already been in the works, even before SEA 1.
The core of the new partnership with Beech Grove is about managing growth and expanding options for families, not only reacting to immediate threats. “We’ve been talking about capping the number of students that we have for quite some time,” Superintendent Mast details. “We felt like we were getting a little bit too big in terms of students, and so this is something we’ve talked about for years already.”
All of this went into motion this summer. The Beech Grove City Schools Board of Trustees, at a late July special meeting, approved the Indiana Digital Learning School at Beech Grove City Schools and the Indiana Digital Alternative Learning School at Beech Grove.
Beech Grove Superintendent Laura Hammack tells your favorite education newsletter that her district’s partnership with INDLS grew from rising demand for virtual education among local families.
“Since 2020, we have seen a significant increase in the number of families seeking virtual options. While we have offered virtual learning within our district, we did not feel that our program was as robust as it needed to be to meet family needs,” Superintendent Hammack explains.
Prior to approval of the new schools, Beech Grove’s school board in June held a work session to learn more about potential options to meet the needs Dr. Hammack mentioned, and the board heard a presentation from the K12 Virtual Schools team. Beech Grove isn’t unique in this regard, as dozens of traditional brick-and-mortar public schools have been opening their own statewide virtual schools around the state, trying to meet the demand for more online learning opportunities in the post-pandemic world.
Following board approval, Beech Grove requested the establishment of the two schools from the Indiana Department of Education, which subsequently issued new school numbers. The district is now in the onboarding phase, and Dr. Hammack and leaders are eager “to offer families these new and innovative educational opportunities.”
Changes came quickly to the INDLS website, which for years had displayed the Union School Corporation logo on its masthead. Now, INDLS features a new logo that still incorporates Union’s rocket ship mascot and its blue school colors, but with the addition of Beech Grove’s school color of orange.
A Stride spokesperson stresses, again, that the Beech Grove schools are not a replacement for Union’s programs but an expansion of the network. “This structure is not a replacement of Union with Beech Grove, but rather two separate district partnerships under the same Indiana Digital framework.”
But, the spokesperson adds, “Should Union be dissolved under state law, Indiana Digital can continue to serve students virtually through Beech Grove.”
Still, for Union Schools, there are political implications here. The partnership might be a lifeline for the district. By spreading INDLS across two districts, Union is betting, at least in part, it can blunt the legislature’s threat.
Superintendent Mast has spent months preparing a survival strategy to weather the political storm, with the major part of the plan including challenging the law in court (Union Sch. Corp. v. State, No. 68D01-2505-PL-000399). Steps include capping enrollment in its virtual program to show legislators that the school is controlling growth responsibly, and the addition of Beech Grove to INDLS helps that.
Mast has had a theory since the beginning of the legislative actions that the true reason behind lawmakers’ insistence to close the small corporation is its virtual school arm, which enrolls thousands of students, while its physical school buildings host fewer than 300 students in person.
However, lawmakers responsible for the amendment contend that the reason is for Union’s dismal ILEARN and IREAD scores over the years. The corporation’s test scores did improve from 2024 to 2025, though rates are still on the low end. On the math ILEARN in 2025, 27% of Union students tested proficient, up from the mere 5.4% in 2024. And in ELA, 23.6% tested proficient in 2025. On IREAD, 77.8% of Union third graders passed this year, up from 42.6% in 2024.
There’s no secret Union Schools’ enrollment tripled in 2018 after it partnered with INDLS, attracting students statewide. The influx of per-pupil state funding from those virtual enrollments has played a role in keeping the small district afloat.
“We’re curious to see what the legislators are going to do then, in terms of, you know, if this truly is about the online school, what are they going to do about this now?” Mast explains, “Because the idea, at least in part, well, if they’re going to go after Union. Let’s diversify, and let’s, let’s see if they go after another school as well.”
Under the new structure with Beech Grove, Union capped its virtual students at its current capacity – between 4,000 and 6,000 are enrolled this fall. Any new students going forward will join Beech Grove’s virtual school. Should Union Schools in fact close at the end of the 2026-27 school year, its virtual students can then transfer to Beech Grove.
Keep in mind as well that next year is expected to be a big year for the state to begin cracking down on virtual schools, per what we’ve been hearing from state leaders, including Secretary of Education Katie Jenner. Dr. Jenner told reporters earlier this summer that the next task the State Board of Education will take on is online schools, though she declined to divulge further specific details on what that will look like.
Lawmakers also seemingly have been itching for some guardrails regarding virtual schools (more so in the Senate than in the House), so you may see some more legislation regarding the subject come 2026.
Meanwhile, at Union Schools, Mast tells us morale among staff remains strong, with teachers and administrators prioritizing students’ needs as the new school year begins. He continues to hold out hope that the district will win its challenge to SEA 1-2025 in court, or that lawmakers will change their minds come the short session.
“We’re hoping that legislators, in this next short session, somebody champions it. Heads it up, and says, ‘All right, we need to go back and revisit this and do the right thing,” Superintendent Mast hopes.