Indian River Charter High School — Vero Beach, Florida

Indian River Charter High School, usually called IRCHS or Charter High, is a public charter high school in Vero Beach. It opened in 1998 and is run by an independent nonprofit board under a charter sponsored by the School District of Indian River County. The school website gives its address as 6055 College Lane, and Vero Beach 32963 placed the campus next to Indian River State College's Mueller campus. Students are the Wolves.

Charter High is best known in Indian River County for the arts. Its Visual and Performing Arts program, VAPA, was described in June 2021 as the county's only school-based arts academy, with VAPA students making up about half of a student body of around 700. The school also offers a golf program, a dozen Advanced Placement classes and dual enrollment with the college next door. Admission is by application: the 2026-2027 application window had closed by fall 2026, with a waitlist open for later openings.

The Vero Beach charter grew from a small alternative. Early students included home-schooled teenagers and students who had left Vero Beach High and Sebastian River High, the county's two large public high schools, according to a June 2021 Vero Beach 32963 profile. The school gave students wide latitude over schedules and small classes, along with a code of conduct signed by parents and students at admission.

Enrollment climbed in the early 2000s. The school had about 150 students and no arts program in 2001; by 2002 it had 300 students and VAPA began to take shape. In May 2010 the 11th graduating class of Indian River Charter High School, 149 seniors, earned 1,543 college credit hours, and four graduates had already completed associate degrees at Indian River State College, Vero News reported. Forty-six percent of that class qualified for Florida Bright Futures scholarships.

By the 2017-2018 school year the Vero Beach campus had 686 students and 61 employees. An archived 2016 school About page listed the Schumann School for the Visual and Performing Arts, an IRCHS golf program, dual enrollment and an international exchange program.

A charter school runs under a contract with its sponsor district. In January 2018 the Indian River County School Board voted unanimously to renew the Indian River Charter High School charter for 15 years, after about a dozen district staff members reviewed the school for half a year on more than 20 criteria, including academics, fiscal management and student selection, according to Vero Beach 32963.

The same February 2018 report noted that the state had given the Vero Beach charter an A rating for the previous five years, that it had outscored Vero Beach High and Sebastian River High in state evaluations for nine years, and that 92 percent of 2016 graduates went to a two- or four-year college or into the armed services. District reviewers asked for a better plan to recruit minority students and staff; the school's application reported African American enrollment of 5.5 percent in 2016-2017, against 9.3 percent of the county population.

Questions about that issue continued. In December 2019 a district official told the School Board that three of the county's five charters, including Indian River Charter High, had not submitted required reports under the county's long-running federal desegregation order, Vero Beach 32963 reported. By June 2021 the school had held a state A rating for 10 years.

The dispute was over property tax money. Voters approved a 0.60-mill school levy in November 2012, and the five Indian River County charters, Indian River Charter High among them, argued they were owed a per-student share. In April 2016 Vero Beach 32963 reported that the charters, which educated 13 percent of county students, had received only 5 percent of the levy and $295 per student in capital funding, compared with $1,546 per student at district schools.

The levy ran from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2017 and charged 60 cents for every $1,000 of assessed property value in Indian River County. The Indian River County Tax Collector reported collections of $7.8 million in the first year and about $9.3 million in the last. Indian River Charter High joined North County Charter, Imagine School at South Vero, Sebastian Charter Junior High and St. Peter's Academy as plaintiffs, after a December 2015 mediation produced no offer. A sixth county charter, Somerset Academy, was scheduled to open for the 2020-21 school year.

On June 13, 2017 Circuit Judge Paul Kanarek ruled that the plain language of state law supported the charters. The district had collected $34.1 million from the levy and passed $1.7 million to the charters, which were owed about $2.55 million in principal, Vero Beach 32963 reported. The charters' lawyer said it was the first Florida ruling on how a district must share such a tax with charters.

In September 2017 the School Board agreed to pay nearly $3.3 million in withheld taxes and interest to the five charters, with monthly payments from February 2018 through January 2022, according to Vero Beach 32963. School Board Vice Chairperson Shawn Frost called the settlement a correction of a great injustice.

VAPA is the arts academy inside Indian River Charter High School, covering orchestra, jazz, choral music, dance, visual art and theater. In 2021 it enrolled more than 300 students. Two of the arts directors who built it retired in June 2021 after two decades at the school, and the longtime school director planned to step down a year later, closing out a 20-year leadership era at the Vero Beach charter.

The campus grew at the same time. A new 16-classroom wing and Charter Hall, a 500-seat enclosed performance space that opened in February 2021, were paid for with a mortgage rather than tax millage, because the nonprofit school receives limited district funding. With that expansion, enrollment at the College Lane campus was expected to reach about 750, and the school often keeps a waiting list.

Student work has also drawn national attention. In November 2016 a three-minute Charter High video placed in the top 10 of 250 entries nationwide in a $100,000 contest run by the Center for Education Reform, a Washington, D.C. group that supports charter schools, according to Vero Beach 32963.