Hamilton Southeastern Schools - EdTribune IN - Indiana Education Data

The Indianapolis Donut Has a Hole in the Middle

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

The Indianapolis metro area enrolled roughly the same number of students in 2025-26 as it did a decade ago. Almost none of them are in the same place.

Indianapolis Public Schools^↗ enrolled 19,774 students this year, down 9,809 from 29,583 in 2015-16. That is a 33.2% decline over 10 consecutive years of losses. At the same time, four outer-ring suburbs, Westfield-Washington^↗, Brownsburg^↗, Center Grove^↗, and Zionsville^↗, grew every single year over the same period, adding 8,405 students combined and hitting record highs in 2025-26. The 18-district metro area gained just 2,996 students total, a 1.4% increase. The redistribution underneath that flat line is the story.

The donut has layers

The usual suburban donut narrative, where families leave the city for surrounding districts, captures only the first ring of a more complex pattern.

The outer-ring suburbs are the headline. Westfield-Washington added 3,161 students (+43.7%), Brownsburg added 2,100 (+24.6%), Center Grove added 1,863 (+23.4%), and Zionsville added 1,281 (+19.1%). All four grew in all 10 years from 2016 to 2026. All four set enrollment records this year.

But the first-ring suburbs, the established Hamilton County communities of Carmel Clay^↗, Hamilton Southeastern^↗, and Noblesville^↗, peaked in 2019-20 and have been declining since. Together they lost 2,629 students since that peak, a 5.3% drop. Hamilton Southeastern, the largest of the three, fell from 22,183 to 20,633, a 7.0% decline. Carmel Clay is back below its 2016 level.

The donut is not just expanding outward. It is hollowing from the inside while the next ring out starts to soften. The growth frontier keeps moving.

Inside Marion County, IPS keeps shrinking

IPS accounted for 22.5% of all Marion County school corporation enrollment in 2015-16. By 2025-26 that share had fallen to 15.6%. The district's kindergarten class tells the pipeline story: 2,797 kindergartners in 2015-16, 1,687 in 2025-26, a 39.7% collapse.

The losses accelerated this year. IPS shed 1,281 students, the largest single-year drop since the pandemic erased 2,681 students between 2019-20 and 2020-21. The 2025-26 loss is larger than any pre-pandemic year and reversed two years of relative stability when losses had slowed to fewer than 200 students each.

Marion County's other township school corporations, by contrast, collectively gained 4,728 students (+4.6%) over the same decade. Franklin Township^↗, on the southeast edge, grew by 2,503 students (+27.6%), matching the outer suburbs' growth rate from within the county line.

Where the students are going

IPS operates in a school choice environment unlike any other in the state. Within and near IPS boundaries, 61% of public school students now attend charter or innovation network schools rather than IPS-managed schools, up from 51% in 2019-20, according to The Mind Trust.

The charter sector is not a simple beneficiary of IPS losses, however. Independent charter and innovation network schools in Indianapolis enrolled roughly 22,000 students in 2025-26, down nearly 3% from the prior year. Both sectors are losing students, which points to demographic contraction rather than a zero-sum transfer.

Outward migration is a second mechanism. Census estimates through 2022 showed Marion County losing population while Westfield ranked sixth nationally in growth among cities of 50,000 or more, adding 3,903 residents in a single year. Young families follow new housing stock, and the outer suburbs have been building aggressively: Westfield alone considered a 2,200-home development in late 2025.

A third factor is the maturation cycle hitting the first ring. Carmel, Fishers, and Noblesville were the growth suburbs of the 2000s. Their housing stock has aged, their lots are filled, and the families who moved in during the building boom are aging out of school-age children. The enrollment plateau, then decline, follows the same arc that IPS experienced a generation earlier.

The fiscal math

Indiana's tuition support formula distributes state funding on a per-pupil basis. At roughly $8,800 per student, the loss of 9,809 students since 2015-16 represents approximately $86 million in annual state funding that no longer flows to IPS. That is not a one-time cut. It compounds: fewer students mean fewer dollars, which can mean reduced programming, which can push more families toward alternatives.

Chalkbeat reported in August 2025 that Indianapolis had roughly 9,000 more seats than students across IPS and charter schools, with nearly 7,000 empty on the IPS side. One-third of IPS buildings operated below 60% capacity.

Chalkbeat reported in August 2025 that Indianapolis had roughly 9,000 more seats than students across IPS and charter schools, with nearly 7,000 empty on the IPS side. The 2025-26 loss of 6.1% outpaced even the most pessimistic projections.

Diversifying at every ring

The demographic shifts complicate a narrative that frames suburban growth as white flight. All three rings are diversifying, and the suburbs are diversifying faster than IPS.

IPS was 20.5% white in 2015-16 and 17.4% in 2025-26, a 3.1 percentage-point shift. The first-ring suburbs dropped from 77.4% to 66.2% white over the same period, an 11.2-point swing driven partly by rapid Asian student enrollment growth (from 7.6% to 11.5% of the first-ring population). The outer ring fell from 83.0% to 69.0% white, a 14-point decline as Black, Hispanic, and Asian enrollment grew across Westfield, Brownsburg, Center Grove, and Zionsville.

The students moving outward are not exclusively white. The outer ring's Black student population nearly tripled from 1,344 to 3,795 over the decade. Hispanic enrollment more than doubled from 1,522 to 3,330. What looks like a classic suburban donut from a distance is, at closer range, a broader demographic redistribution that is reshaping the suburbs as much as it is emptying the urban core.

The ring that ran out of room

The metro area's near-zero-sum arithmetic means that every student gained in an outer suburb roughly corresponds to a student lost somewhere else. Carmel, Fishers, and Noblesville were the growth suburbs of the 2000s. Their lots are filled, their housing stock has aged, and the families who moved in during the building boom are watching their youngest children graduate. Hamilton Southeastern has lost 1,550 students since its 2020 peak. Carmel Clay is back below its 2016 level.

Westfield and Brownsburg are still growing, still building. But Westfield's housing permits dropped 34% through November 2025, and city leaders estimate they need 2,200 home sales per year to sustain enrollment growth. They have averaged closer to 1,600. When the outer ring's growth slows, the donut stops expanding. What remains is IPS, operating buildings at one-third capacity in a county where it educates barely one in six public school students, with 1,687 kindergartners where a decade ago there were 2,797.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

133 Indiana School Corporations Hit Record Lows

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Fort Wayne Community Schools^↗ is Indiana's largest school corporation, with 28,200 students. Evansville Vanderburgh^↗ is the second-largest, with 20,914. Hamilton Southeastern^↗ is third, with 20,633. Indianapolis Public Schools^↗ is fourth, with 19,774. All four are at their lowest enrollment in more than a decade. So are Carmel Clay^↗, MSD Wayne Township^↗, and Vigo County^↗. Seven of Indiana's 10 largest corporations now sit at their 11-year floor.

They are not alone. In 2025-26, 133 of Indiana's 430 public school corporations enrolled fewer students than in any year since 2016. Those 133 corporations collectively serve 444,529 students, 43.2% of the state's total enrollment. The losses are not contained to any one region or size category: 12 of the corporations at record lows enroll more than 10,000 students; 30 enroll fewer than 1,000.

The state itself is at its floor

Indiana's total public school enrollment in 2025-26 stands at 1,028,466, the lowest point in the 2016-2026 window. The state lost 11,724 students from the prior year, a 1.1% drop and the second-largest single-year decline of the past decade. Only the pandemic year of 2020-21 was worse, when 17,270 students vanished from rolls.

The 2026 decline hit harder than the numbers suggest. In 2024-25, Indiana had gained 7,466 students, its best year since 2018, creating the appearance of stabilization. That gain evaporated entirely and then some: the state is now 26,888 students below its 2019 pre-pandemic enrollment, a 2.5% deficit that has only widened.

Of the 424 corporations with data in both years, 281 lost students in 2025-26. Only 138 grew.

The big systems are shrinking fastest

What distinguishes Indiana's 2026 enrollment picture is not the number of small rural districts in decline. It is the scale of the corporations being pulled under.

IPS has lost 9,809 students since 2016, a 33.2% decline. That trajectory has not paused for a single year in a decade. South Bend^↗ has shed 31.2% of its enrollment over the same period, falling from 18,680 to 12,851. Vigo County, anchored by Terre Haute, is down 14.2% from its 2016 peak of 15,140.

Even corporations in affluent suburbs are now shrinking. Hamilton Southeastern, which sits in Fishers and one of the state's fastest-growing communities, peaked at 22,183 students in 2020 and has lost 1,550 since. Carmel Clay peaked at 16,664 the same year and is now at 15,913.

Nine corporations have declined every single year for a full decade, from 2017 through 2026: IPS, South Bend, Elkhart, Plymouth, Portage Township, North Adams, Brown County, Whitko, and Maconaquah. For these systems, the pandemic was not a turning point. It was one year in a trajectory that began long before COVID and shows no sign of reversing.

A shrinking pipeline reinforces the slide

Indiana's kindergarten enrollment has fallen 9.3% since 2016, from 77,038 to 69,849. Grade 12, meanwhile, has grown 13.4%, from 74,935 to 85,006. In 2025-26, the state enrolled 15,157 more 12th graders than kindergarteners, a structural deficit that points to continued decline as larger cohorts age out and smaller ones enter.

The most likely driver is Indiana's sustained birth decline. The state recorded its lowest fertility rate on record in 2023, at 58.9 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. Births fell 12% between 2007 and 2023, with the sharpest drops among non-Hispanic women, whose fertility rates have declined at an average annual rate of 1.6% since 2016. A modest 1.6% uptick in 2024 births will not reach kindergarten classrooms until 2030 at the earliest.

Indiana's Choice Scholarship voucher program, which served 76,067 students in 2024-25, continues to pull students from public rolls. The state is set to expand vouchers to all families beginning in 2026-27, removing income restrictions entirely at an estimated additional cost of $93 million. The program's effect on public enrollment is uneven: rural corporations, where private school options are scarce, face the same demographic decline without the competitive pressure. Suburban and urban corporations face both.

The growth corridor is narrowing

An Indiana University analysis of 2006-2024 enrollment data identified a structural divergence: "Major urban school corporations like Indianapolis Public Schools and Gary Community School Corporation continue to face declining enrollment" while "enrollment growth in suburban corporations such as Hamilton Southeastern, Brownsburg, and Westfield-Washington reflects housing development and shifting population patterns."

The 2026 data complicates that framing. Hamilton Southeastern, cited by IU researchers as a suburban growth example, is now at its record low. So is Carmel Clay. The line between shrinking urban systems and growing suburban ones, which held through most of the decade, is blurring.

The 60 that bucked the trend

Not every corporation is shrinking. Sixty are at their highest enrollment in the 11-year window: Franklin Township^↗ at 11,572 (up 27.6% since 2016), Brownsburg^↗ at 10,627, Westfield-Washington^↗ at 10,396 (up 43.7%), Center Grove at 9,811, and Crown Point at 9,289. These are overwhelmingly outer-ring Indianapolis suburbs and northwest Indiana communities absorbing families priced out of or choosing to leave core urban systems.

The ratio is lopsided. For every corporation at a record high, more than two are at a record low. That gap has widened since the pandemic: in 2021, 176 corporations hit their low point while 46 hit their high. By 2026, the low count has fallen to 133 but the high count has also fallen, to 60. The state is not splitting into winners and losers so much as producing fewer winners while the losses spread.

The long slide ahead

The 133 corporations at record lows are not all in freefall. Fifty-seven have been declining for only one or two consecutive years. But 52 have been falling for three or four, and 12 have been in continuous decline for nine or 10 years straight.

Indiana's per-pupil funding system means each lost student reduces revenue immediately. The state ranks 35th nationally in education spending per pupil and saw the second-lowest growth in per-pupil funding of any state between 2002 and 2020. A recent property tax overhaul will require public school districts to share property tax revenue with charter schools starting in 2028.

The 60 corporations at record highs are nearly all in the same place: the suburban ring around Indianapolis, where new housing subdivisions are still being platted. The 133 at record lows span every other geography in the state. When the next October count arrives, the lopsided ratio will likely persist. But the distinction that matters is not how many are at highs versus lows. It is whether the corporations at their floor still have enough students to sustain a full complement of AP classes, a marching band, and a guidance counselor who knows every senior by name. For the 30 record-low corporations below 1,000 students, those are not abstract questions. They are staffing decisions being made right now.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Hispanic Students Are Now Indiana's Largest Minority Group

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

For nine consecutive years, Indiana's Hispanic student population grew. It grew through a pandemic, through a national enrollment crisis, through a decade in which the state's total enrollment fell by 18,061 students. Hispanic enrollment added 42,137 students over that span, a 36.1% increase that reshaped Indiana's demographic profile more than any other single trend.

Then, in 2025-26, the growth stopped. Hispanic enrollment fell by 102 students, the first decline in the dataset.

The crossover and its context

Hispanic students surpassed Black students as Indiana's largest minority group in 2019-20, when 134,319 Hispanic students edged past 133,932 Black students by a margin of just 387. The crossover had been visible for years: the gap between the two groups narrowed from 13,138 in 2016 to 4,015 in 2019, closing at a rate of roughly 3,000 students per year.

By 2025-26, the gap had widened to 16,163. Indiana now enrolls 158,808 Hispanic students and 142,645 Black students. Hispanic students account for 15.4% of the state's enrollment, up from 11.1% a decade ago. Black students account for 13.9%, up modestly from 12.4%.

The crossover reflects a broader national pattern. Indiana's Hispanic population grew 42.2% between 2010 and 2020, adding 164,484 residents, while the Black population grew 9.5%. That general-population trend arrived in schools with a roughly five-year lag, as children born during the growth years entered kindergarten.

Where the growth is concentrated

The growth is not uniform. It runs along two geographic corridors and is conspicuously absent from the places that already had large Hispanic populations.

The northern manufacturing belt, anchored by Elkhart and surrounding counties, has been attracting Latino workers to the recreational vehicle and auto parts industries for decades. Goshen Community Schools^↗ is now 57.8% Hispanic, with 3,474 Hispanic students in a district of 6,008. Fort Wayne Community Schools^↗ added 1,960 Hispanic students since 2016, the largest absolute gain of any district in the state, reaching 6,695.

The second corridor runs through smaller cities in southern and central Indiana. Seymour Community Schools^↗ grew its Hispanic enrollment by 151.5%, from 1,007 to 2,533 students. Jackson County, where Seymour sits, saw a 159% increase in its Hispanic population between the 2010 and 2020 Censuses, the largest proportional shift of any Indiana county.

The most striking growth, however, is in the Indianapolis suburbs. Carmel Clay Schools^↗ added 785 Hispanic students since 2016, a 184.7% increase. Hamilton Southeastern Schools^↗ added 738 (+58.1%). Westfield-Washington added 688 (+125.1%). Noblesville added 582 (+103.0%). These are affluent, fast-growing districts in Hamilton County where Hispanic families are arriving alongside the broader suburban expansion, not replacing departing white families.

A 93,000-student rebalancing

The Hispanic crossover is one piece of a larger compositional shift. White enrollment fell from 725,492 to 631,886 since 2016, a loss of 93,606 students. The white share of enrollment dropped from 69.3% to 61.4%, a decline of 7.9 percentage points in a decade.

Every non-white group grew. Asian enrollment rose 48.7% (+10,964). Multiracial enrollment rose 20.1% (+9,861). Black enrollment rose 9.9% (+12,836). But Hispanic enrollment's 36.1% growth (+42,137) accounted for more new students than all other non-white groups combined.

The net effect: Indiana lost 18,061 total students since 2016, a 1.7% decline. Without Hispanic growth, that decline would have been 60,198, a 5.8% drop. Hispanic students are the demographic ballast holding Indiana's enrollment numbers closer to stable.

The share gap tells a different story

In absolute numbers, the Hispanic-Black gap is large and growing. In share terms, the story is subtler.

Hispanic share rose 4.3 percentage points in a decade, from 11.1% to 15.4%. Black share rose 1.5 points, from 12.4% to 13.9%. Part of the Black share increase reflects the denominator shrinking as white enrollment fell. In absolute terms, Black enrollment grew by 12,836 students, with most of that growth concentrated in 2024 and 2025 (a combined gain of 6,833). That two-year surge warrants its own investigation.

A sudden stop

The 2025-26 data contains a discontinuity. After adding 7,879 Hispanic students the prior year, the largest single-year gain in the dataset, Indiana's Hispanic enrollment fell by 102. It is the first year-over-year decline in the 11-year trend window.

The district-level data reveals where the losses originated. Indianapolis Public Schools^↗ lost 488 Hispanic students in a single year. School City of Hammond lost 421. Goshen lost 148. Elkhart lost 139. South Bend lost 107. These are districts with large, established Hispanic communities, not districts on the margins.

The timing coincides with a period of heightened federal immigration enforcement in Indiana schools. In January 2025, federal agents attempted to deport a Honduran father connected to IPS, triggering a legal confrontation between Attorney General Todd Rokita and the district. Rokita sued IPS over policies that restricted ICE access to schools. IPS subsequently removed resources for undocumented students from its website.

At the state level, SB 76, which prohibits governmental bodies from impeding federal immigration enforcement, advanced through the legislature in early 2026. The bill's scope includes school districts, though its practical requirements remain ambiguous.

"We are already seeing higher levels of school absenteeism and negative changes in school climate, student mental health and community trust." -- Indiana State Teachers Association, via Chalkbeat Indiana, Feb. 2026

Whether the 2026 Hispanic enrollment dip reflects families leaving the state, shifting to private or homeschool options, or simply not enrolling children who are still present is impossible to determine from enrollment data alone. The data shows a count. It does not show a reason. But a decade-long growth trend does not reverse by accident, and the reversal appeared simultaneously in geographically scattered districts with large Hispanic populations.

Nineteen districts, one threshold

Nineteen Indiana school corporations are now more than 50% Hispanic. Another 50 are between 25% and 50%. School City of Whiting, in Lake County, leads at 79.1%. These districts face a specific operational challenge: serving a student body where the majority speak a home language other than English, with instructional programs whose per-pupil costs exceed those of general education. Nationally, 69% of high schools reported difficulty filling ESL or bilingual education vacancies for the 2024-25 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, making it one of the hardest subject areas to staff.

The districts where Hispanic enrollment grew fastest are not the state's poorest. Carmel, Hamilton Southeastern, Westfield, and Noblesville are among Indiana's most affluent districts. The pattern is not one of concentrated poverty. It is one of demographic diversification reaching places that, a decade ago, were overwhelmingly white.

One dip, two possible futures

The 2026 dip is a single data point. It could be a one-year anomaly driven by chilled enrollment during a period of enforcement anxiety, a statistical artifact of how enrollment snapshots capture a mobile population, or the start of something the data will take several more years to confirm.

What the data can say with confidence: Hispanic students added 42,137 to Indiana's enrollment over a decade in which total enrollment shrank. Without that growth, Indiana would have lost 60,198 students instead of 18,061. The districts absorbing that growth span the income spectrum, from Goshen's RV factories to Carmel's white-collar cul-de-sacs, and the infrastructure demands, bilingual staff, translated family communications, culturally responsive programming, now reach places that had never budgeted for them.

IPS lost 488 Hispanic students this year. Goshen lost 148. Elkhart lost 139. These are the districts with the deepest community roots, the established churches and soccer leagues and quinceañera supply shops. If the families who built those institutions are pulling back, the effect will show up not just in enrollment tables but on Main Street.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.