Demolition of Joyce Kilmer School 69 begins. New school slated for 2027

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The demolition of the 93-year-old Joyce Kilmer School 69 has begun to make way for a new school. 

When the school building closed in 2022, it was in the worst overall physical and learning-environment condition of any district school, according to an analysis commissioned by IPS.

The new school, set to open in fall 2027, will be an elementary school for high-ability students. Bill Murphy, chief operations officer of IPS, said the project is especially important in a neighborhood that has faced disinvestment and exclusionary practices.

“We want to make sure that in particular, kids in Martindale Brightwood who qualify for high ability education are accessing it,” Murphy said.

Construction is scheduled to begin this spring. The 68,000-square-foot building will accommodate up to 650 students and is expected to cost $35 million. The project is funded by a voter-approved $410 million capital referendum in 2023. Murphy said the district has sought community input on the project.

Because the high-ability program will be open to students in other neighborhoods, Murphy said he doesn’t expect enrollment at nearby schools to be affected.

“Citywide programs can be fantastic, but they do tend to result in longer drive times unless they can be centrally located,” Murphy said. “So the reason that we are building a new site at Joyce Kilmer is that location reduces travel times by somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes for kids around the city.”

Building history

In 2016, the IPS board approved a contract with Neighborhood Charter Network to restart School 69 as Kindezi Academy due to consecutive F ratings on the state’s A-F accountability scale.

But five years later, the district offered the network a one-year probationary contract due to lagging academic improvements. In 2022, Kindezi leaders said they would not continue running the school. They claimed one reason was outdated infrastructure that had not been updated as expected, which impacted their ability to improve learning.

WFYI education reporter Sydney Dauphinais covers Marion County schools. Contact her at sdauphinais@wfyi.org.

WFYI education editor Eric Weddle contributed to this story.