Tipp City Schools
Where We Are. Where We Are Going
Presented to the Board of Education by Aaron Moran, Superintendent
Tipp City Schools enters the 2026–2027 school year with meaningful momentum and clear expectations for what comes next.
Across the district, we are strengthening instruction, expanding student opportunities, investing in facilities and technology, developing our staff, and maintaining disciplined stewardship of community resources. We are also being clear about where performance must improve and where our systems must become stronger.
Our State of the District can be understood through four questions:
Are our students learning and growing?
Are they being given meaningful opportunities?
Are we using community resources responsibly?
Are we preparing this district for the future?
These questions provide a clear measure of our progress and a framework for the work ahead.
Three Years of Building Momentum
Over the past three years, Tipp City Schools has built momentum that extends beyond individual programs, initiatives, or test scores.
Collaboration, connectivity, and trust have deepened within the district and across the broader school community. Staff, families, community partners, and local leaders increasingly work from a shared understanding of the district’s direction and priorities.
That stronger foundation allows us to stay focused on what matters most: our students.
The progress is also becoming visible. Our building projects represent tangible investments in the future of Tipp City Schools and in the learning environments our students will experience for decades to come.
Relationships beyond the district have also become increasingly productive. Cooperation and partnership with City Leadership and other community organizations have expanded, creating greater alignment around facilities, infrastructure, safety, community planning, and opportunities for students.
The tone surrounding the district has changed as well. Communication, problem-solving, and cooperation have strengthened across the district and community. We have developed a stronger shared understanding of our direction and priorities, allowing us to work more effectively together and stay focused on moving the district forward.
We are operating from a stronger foundation than we were three years ago: greater stability, stronger collaboration, clearer direction, visible investment, and increased capacity to focus our collective energy on students.
That momentum provides the foundation for the four questions guiding our work.
1. Are Our Students Learning and Growing?
Preliminary 2025–2026 achievement data provides a mixed but useful picture of district performance. Several areas show encouraging growth.
Early literacy indicators improved across the primary grades. Successful interventions moved 63% of at-risk kindergarten students to on-track status, up from 44.4% the previous year. By second grade, 139 students were on track, with only 14 remaining off track. That momentum continued into third grade, where reading proficiency reached 82.1% and overall English Language Arts proficiency reached 87.8%.
At the middle school level, the trend is also encouraging. Over the past two years, the Middle School Performance Index increased from 95.6 to 99.6. Within that progress, sixth-grade Mathematics proficiency increased from 76.5% to 86.0%, while sixth-grade English Language Arts reached 84.9%.
The sixth-grade results also demonstrate the value of intentional structure. Recognizing the transition from elementary to middle school as a district priority, the Middle School developed a pod structure that provides students with greater continuity while creating stronger opportunities for teacher collaboration, student intervention, and enrichment.
Combined with instructional coaching, Teacher-Based Teams (TBT), common planning, and the continued development of our Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), these structures are strengthening how staff examine student performance, adjust instruction, and share effective practices.
Sustained improvement does not come from isolated efforts. It requires a system in which staff have the time, support, data, and shared expectations necessary to respond consistently to student needs.
At the same time, preliminary results indicate that performance was not uniformly stronger. Overall scores declined in several areas, with mathematics performance at Tippecanoe High School representing a clear area for improvement.
All students need to grow. Our achievement and growth data also indicate that some groups of students are not progressing at the rate we expect. Understanding where that is occurring—and responding with greater instructional precision—will be an important focus moving forward.
We are using the preliminary data now to sharpen instructional focus, strengthen alignment, and target support where results are not meeting district expectations.
Our Direction
Our next step is to make effective instructional practices increasingly consistent across classrooms, grade levels, and buildings while maintaining clear expectations for student growth and achievement.
2. Are Students Being Given Meaningful Opportunities?
Academic achievement is essential, but the student experience extends beyond test scores or individual classrooms.
Our responsibility is to ensure students have opportunities to discover interests, develop talents, build confidence, and prepare for what comes after Tipp City Schools.
We have been intentional about expanding access to learning opportunities within the school day. Gifted supports have increased so students ready for greater challenge have more consistent opportunities for enrichment and advanced learning. Gifted instructional coaches at Broadway, L.T. Ball, TMS, and now THS work directly with teachers and administrators to identify and develop meaningful opportunities for advanced learners.
At the same time, inclusion has become a clearer district expectation, increasing access to grade-level instruction, peers, and appropriate support within the general education environment.
Together, these efforts reflect our expectation that every student should have access to the challenge, support, and opportunities needed to grow.
We are also elevating the arts. Students have opportunities to participate and demonstrate their talents through theatre, vocal and instrumental music, visual arts, and emerging media. At TMS, opportunities have expanded to include broadcasting, video production, and theatre. Beginning in fifth grade, students have access to structured instrumental music, creating an earlier pathway for continued participation and development.
Preparing students for life beyond school also requires meaningful career exposure. Through partnerships with career services and Miami County Job and Family Services, students in grades 7–12 are gaining greater awareness of career pathways through experiences ranging from lunch-and-learns to internships.
Across classrooms and programs, students are increasingly being asked to explain their thinking, present their work, collaborate, and connect learning to authentic experiences. These opportunities build communication, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, resilience, and confidence.
Our Direction
We will continue asking:
Does every student have a meaningful opportunity to participate, contribute, grow, and discover an area in which they can succeed?
Our goal is not simply to maintain programs. It is to ensure those programs create meaningful value for students.
3. Are We Using Community Resources Responsibly?
Every academic, operational, staffing, technology, and facility decision carries a responsibility to the community.
Responsible stewardship requires more than staying within a budget. It requires protecting the district’s long-term financial position while directing resources toward areas that provide the greatest value for students.
Two years ago, the district began right-sizing staffing across employee groups. That review has continued annually as we align staffing levels with enrollment, student needs, programming, and available resources.
Fiscal and personnel discipline has helped extend the district’s financial outlook in the most recent five-year forecast. Maintaining a sufficient and stable fund balance provides flexibility to respond to student needs, manage uncertainty, and make thoughtful long-term decisions.
The PK–8 building project represents one of the largest community investments in district history. We continue managing that work with disciplined attention to schedule, budget, contingencies, project risk, and long-term operational value.
The same standard applies to technology and other capital investments. Decisions must improve the student and staff experience while strengthening security, reliability, efficiency, and long-term value.
Responsible stewardship also requires confronting facility needs that can no longer be deferred. Many of our athletic facilities require significant improvement to provide safe, functional environments for students, spectators, and the community.
Establishing a long-term plan for these facilities, beginning with the stadium and track, will require balancing student needs, community use, available resources, and long-term value.
Our Direction
Our financial standard remains straightforward:
Invest where the return to students and the district is clear. Control costs where additional spending does not create additional value. Preserve flexibility for future needs.
Responsible stewardship allows us to pursue improvement without compromising long-term stability.
4. Are We Preparing This District for the Future?
Preparing Tipp City Schools for the future requires more than responding to today’s needs.
It requires anticipating what students will need, what our facilities must support, how technology will change learning and work, and how we preserve options for future generations.
The new PK–8 facility is central to that work. It represents more than a new building. Its design supports greater collaboration, access to student services, flexible learning environments, improved safety and security, and stronger continuity across grade levels.
At the same time, planning continues for Tippecanoe High School and other district facilities. We must preserve flexibility for future instructional, athletic, operational, and community needs rather than limiting future options through short-term decisions.
Technology is another significant part of this work.
Artificial intelligence is already changing how students learn and how organizations operate. Our responsibility is to prepare students and staff to use these tools thoughtfully, responsibly, ethically, and effectively.
We are moving from staff development into classroom application, helping students develop appropriate skills in prompting, evaluation, ethics, and responsible AI use.
The objective is not technology for technology’s sake. It is preparing students for a future that will increasingly demand adaptability, critical thinking, communication, creativity, and sound judgment.
Preparing the district for the future also requires investing in our people.
Instructional coaches are positioned in every building, staff collaboration structures are expanding, and professional learning is becoming increasingly connected to district priorities and student performance.
Our Direction
We are building a district that is prepared rather than reactive—one that strengthens instructional capacity, develops its people, modernizes facilities and technology, preserves long-term options, expands opportunities for students, and maintains the financial capacity to respond to future needs.
What Comes Next
The district has made meaningful progress, but our strongest position is not what we have already accomplished.
It is the clarity we have about what comes next.
Our priorities moving forward are:
Raise academic expectations and student achievement.
Strengthen intervention, enrichment, inclusion, and instructional consistency.
Expand meaningful opportunities for students.
Successfully complete and transition into the new PK–8 facility.
Successfully complete planned renovations at Tippecanoe High School.
Prepare students and staff for the responsible use of artificial intelligence and emerging technology.
Protect the district’s long-term financial and operational position.
Continue developing a culture of collaboration, trust, accountability, and continuous improvement.
The work ahead requires discipline, consistency, and a willingness to evaluate whether our decisions are producing the outcomes we expect.
The questions guiding us remain simple:
Are our students learning and growing?
Are our students being given meaningful opportunities?
Are we using community resources responsibly?
Are we preparing this district for the future?
If we remain disciplined in answering those questions, Tipp City Schools will continue moving forward with stronger systems, clearer direction, and greater opportunities for our students.