Neighborhood Educational Opportunities is done weighing its options for New Vistas High School when founder Rebecca Reiner retires.
Options Schools will take over the adult high school soon after being a partner with NEO for years.
Scott Williams, vice president of Craftsman Community Maker Labs of Indiana, is also on NEO’s board. The Craftsman organization is developing a makerspace in what Reiner calls “the cavern,” part of the old Camelot Lanes bowling alley off U.S. 6 near County Line Road.
NEO was established 14 years ago after Portage Township Schools closed its adult education facility in the former Garyton School.
“We were one of the first charter schools authorized by the state in 2002,” Williams said.
“We’re small, and it’s really hard to compete,” Reiner said.
Options is subsuming NEO, keeping the NEO name but operating under the Options umbrella. “NEO is going to grow. New Vistas is going to grow,” she said.
“We’re calling it our next act, NEO’s next act,” Reiner said.
NEO bought the 70,000-square-foot former bowling alley after shopping around for potential properties, including the 16,000-square-foot open-air pavilion near Portage Lakefront Park, the failed University Center that now houses the police department, the old police station and others. Then a real estate broker asked her, “How good’s your imagination?” before showing her the bowling alley, she said.
NEO, founded by Project Neighbors – her father Walt Reiner’s brainchild – needed only 45,000 square feet, but the bowling alley was the right place and available at the right time.
Then-Gov. Mike Pence had a low-interest,10-year loan option for charter schools. “I learned a lot that year,” Reiner said.
“We had to do the charter school proposal in one month,” she said. Reiner sketched out a design for the new school on her vision board at the old Garyton School, where she was working with Portage Adult Education at the time, and revised it repeatedly based on staff suggestions.
Now that she’s retiring, Options is taking over. President and CEO Mike Gustin and his team met with the NEO team for the first time recently.
“One of the things we bring is a lot of stability,” he said.
Options began with 260 students in two locations, Noblesville and Carmel, but has grown to about 1,500 students and 160 staff members in all 92 counties, Gustin said. “We have grown from this mom-and-pop into this medium-size corporation,” he said.
Williams became interested in NEO after becoming involved in the push to establish Craftsman Community Maker Labs. Like NEO, Williams and his team considered the open-air pavilion, but that didn’t work out. Like NEO, he found the old bowling alley the appropriate place to set up shop.
“Our science room was intended as a makerspace,” Reiner said.
“It’s really aligned with our adult education program,” she said, offering pre-apprenticeship programs and more.
“Our art teacher would love to do something with photography,” Reiner said.
The makerspace, opening in July, will have 4,600 square feet across three shops and a separate entrance.
Williams walked through “the cavern” to show what it would become.
“Right now, you’re seeing a lot of empty space,” he said, but that will change.
Shop A will be devoted to the arts, will equipment like a kiln, sublimation machine, 3D printers, laser engraver and other arts and crafts equipment.
That will be the first area to open, Williams said.
Shop B will be devoted to woodworking, with commercial quality equipment, he said. Users will need to bring their own materials; he hopes to arrange for discounts from local suppliers.
Shop C will be for metalworking and fabrication. That will be the last to open.
“The whole idea is to create a space where people can explore and make new things,” Williams said. That includes putting together family programming “to create something, to make something, to learn something new.”
In other words, Options Schools is helping Craftsman Community Maker Labs of Indiana participants have plenty of options for deciding what to try.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
