In the face of shrinking enrollment and competition for students, some districts have opened their own microschools to help retain and attract families.
But a superintendent in Indiana is taking the idea even further by launching microschools—essentially tiny, innovative schools that have traditionally been charter or private schools—across the state. George Philhower’s 1,200-student district, Eastern Hancock, obtained a charter under the state’s charter school law to open a statewide microschool network. Philhower is both the superintendent of Eastern Hancock and the CEO of the new Indiana Microschool Collaborative.
This setup has allowed the district to partner with local organizations and open schools in such diverse locations as a university campus and a small-town church.
Education Week spoke with Philhower about how his network functions and why this approach can help districts compete for students when parents have an increasing number of schooling options. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How does the microschool network fit into the district?
When we launched, we wanted it to be semi-separate from the district but also working in conjunction with it. There are districts that are doing school-within-a-school microschools. Ours is a completely separate LEA [local education agency].
There’s cool stuff about microschools, but in terms of financial stability, there needs to be a network to support them that has back-office support. And we wanted the ability to branch out beyond Hancock County. So, we have a charter that allows us to plant microschool sites anywhere in the state of Indiana.
We’ve got a separate board. Just like any other charter in Indiana, it’s a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. I’ve got my elected school board for the district, and then two of its five board members are on the appointed microschool board.
Currently, the Indiana Microschool Collaborative oversees five schools. What are they like?
They’re all unique. Our vision is that each kid gets to go to a school that feels like it was designed just for them. We’ve got one that opened in 2025 in a campground. It has 70 kids, and by the end of that year, we had 140 kids on the waiting list for that one.
We have one that was a private school last year and a very successful one with lots of happy families, but it was small. And so they came under our umbrella, and there was already lots of vision alignment with them, and now, the educator who runs it doesn’t have to worry about payroll and those kind of things. They just get to do the job of working with kids.
Every kid should get to go to a school that they feel is designed just for them. And I think it's our job to figure out what that should look like.
And then, we have a site in Randolph County, which is near the Ohio border, and that one is in partnership with a different district, and it is co-located inside one of their elementaries.
Our preference is to work with the local district, too, through an innovation agreement because a growing number of families are choosing home school or online schooling in a lot of cases because there’s no other options for families.
If we can work with the district to use our charter through an innovation agreement, then we can help them recapture kids that they were losing before.
Does opening microschools outside your district boundaries come off as an aggressive maneuver to other districts?
I’m sure that there are some districts that wish that we weren’t doing this. We are willing to work with whichever district and we think we’ve got potential to help most districts because most districts are losing kids these days. There are probably some that, it would be safe to say, they kind of like having the monopoly, and anything that might look different is scary, and they would prefer that not happen. But our preference is to work with existing districts, because there’s lots of things that parents love about the existing district in most cases.
What lessons have you learned so far?
We need to do a better job with PR and marketing, just to make sure that people know that this is an option and also get the messaging a little more right, because school choice is really complicated, and we want to make sure people are hearing the correct message.
We probably need to be thinking about not just the personalization piece of it but what are the potential themes. As we’re thinking about helping districts reattract kids, the options are endless. You could have a performing arts-related microschool. You could have a specific sports-related microschool. You could have a STEM microschool. You just literally name it, and we could create a school that is relevant to those kids that are interested in those things.
Would you recommend this microschool strategy to other districts?
The short answer is yes. Every kid should get to go to a school that they feel is designed just for them. And I think it’s our job to figure out what that should look like. And “just for them” doesn’t mean that it’s like a theme park every day. But this is the space where I feel comfortable growing. I think microschools are a good way to get to that.
Does this strategy help districts that are feeling competitive pressure from private schools, charter schools, and virtual schools?
One hundred percent. In Indiana, kids can go to school wherever they want. Forty percent of Eastern Hancock kids come from out of the district. I need their families to feel like we are the best choice.
