1) When Indianapolis incorporated under "Unigov" in the late 60s, most services became county wide. But about 1/2 of Marion County kept its own school districts. That was racially motivated because most of the blacks were in the Indianapolis school district. There was aggressive busing WITHIN the IPS district, but the white folks were able to keep their outlying districts "pure". Nowadays that isn't a significant factor because the entire county is well integrated, but there are another 300,000 in surrounding counties that are almost all white.
2) Republicans have been extremely aggressive at hacking away at the IPS and also the Gary school districts with private school vouchers and public charters. A high percentage of the charters have either failed outright or not delivered any improvement over IPS, but facts don't matter to Republicans. They are still at it. There is now only one "real" high school in IPS. Three were turned over to for-profit charters this year. And the deal was that IPS had to lease the buildings to the charters for $1 per year and IPS still had to pay the cost of maintenance. None of this has to do with education. It is all about grooving public money to private hucksters. Undoubtedly they all make generous campaign contributions and "other assistance" to Republicans.
The political climate in Ft. Wayne is quite a bit different. Ft. Wayne is the most progressive city in Indiana, and mostly Democratic, so the vultures have mostly left them alone.
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