FRANKLIN, Ind. (WISH) — Franklin Community Middle School will host its annual Welcome to Reality event on Friday, offering eighth-grade students a hands-on, immersive experience designed to prepare them for the financial and personal responsibilities of adulthood.

Welcome to Reality is an interactive simulation that places students in the role of a 28-year-old working adult. Prior to the event, students select a career based on their grade point average and are assigned a corresponding salary.

During the event, students navigate through a series of stations including housing, transportation, utilities, and food. Students are required to make real-life financial decisions and manage a check registry to track expenses.

“This event is absolutely pivotal in the transition to high school for our students,” Monica Anderson, FCMS school counselor said. “The students experience, in real time, how their education can impact their future.”

Community members play a critical role in the simulation by facilitating transactions and serving as tour guides for students throughout the event.

The event is scheduled in groups throughout the school day:

• 8:15 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
• 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
• 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Locally grown food is typically more sustainable and fresher than imported groceries, but even in Indiana, where almost two thirds of the state is farmland, local veggies can be hard to find.

Some Indianapolis residents grow fruits and vegetables in their own backyards. Others might join a community garden. Many frequent the local network of farmers markets.

At least half a dozen community supported agriculture groups, known commonly as CSAs, provide another way to shrink the divide between Indianapolis dwellers and their food systems. From Greenwood to Noblesville, neighbors have banded together to create local agriculture cooperatives, buying food in bulk from nearby farmers — some even within city limits.

How CSAs work

Every week during the growing season, the Fisher family, Amish farmers in Montezuma, pack blue mail bins full of cucumbers, carrots and corn and send them to Indianapolis. A driver totes the bins about 80 miles east to the Irvington CSA, which has been connecting neighborhood residents with farm- to- Irvington produce for almost two decades. 

“It connects me to the food I eat,” Alyssa Chase, an Irvington CSA coordinator said. “I’ve been to the farm. I know exactly where it’s grown, and I know whose hands are picking it.”

The CSA model is simple. Participants pay farmers, usually smaller scale growers, an upfront fee to help cover season start-up costs. Then each week, the customers receive a delivery.

There’s no guarantee of bounty. CSA members might be blessed with an abundance of greens one week, but they also share with growers the risks involved with farming.

Not only does the local delivery model provide urbanites with fresh food and family farms some much-needed support, it’s more eco-friendly than the grocery store. A bustling network of refrigerated planes and trucks import 90 percent of Indiana’s produce, said Rachel Brandenburg, a food distribution manager at the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.

Indianapolis area farmers also offer slightly non-traditional, more tailored CSA programs, via monthly subscription boxes. Farmers markets offer a way to purchase local produce a la carte (even in the winter). Free food stands like in Fletcher Place and the White River State Park,’s U-Pick garden offer local produce at no cost.

“We’ve got a pretty robust system of urban growers here in Indy, some really shining examples who take the mission to their farms, the mission of feeding their neighbors,” Brandenburg said.

Starting in May each week at the Irvington CSA, members stop by the Downey Avenue Christian Church to pick up fresh produce. The first month can bring greens lettuce, kale and Swiss chard. Next sweet red strawberries appear in the bins, then cucumbers followed by carrots, squash, tomatoes and corn as summer turns to fall.

How to find fresh food near you

The Irvington CSA eventually spilled over into Greenwood, which now runs a separate CSA program delivering produce from the Fisher Farm to the southern suburbs. 

Similar programs have popped up across much of Indianapolis:

Kheprw’s Community Controlled Food Initiative offers year-round local produce pick-ups in Midtown, and Tuttle Orchards delivers subscription produce boxes across several area locations, with weekly pick ups at North Mass Boulder, Irvington Vinyl and Books, JCC Indianapolis, Geist Coffee, Wasson Nursery and Indiana Artisan.

Warfleigh resident Ben Matthews delivers his CSA boxes locally — by bike.

Bountiful Farm and Floral, a small urban farm, delivers produce directly to the homes of Irvington members. And Soul Food Project offers CSA delivery and pick up at the Binford Farmers Market, plus at its local farms in Irvington and Martindale-Brightwood.

IndyStar’s environmental reporting is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.

Sophie Hartley is an IndyStar environment reporter. You can reach her at sophie.hartley@indystar.com or on X at @sophienhartley.

INDIANAPOLIS — The victim of Sunday morning’s shootout on the north side of Indianapolis has been identified as 38-year-old Brittany Marie Members.

Two other people were wounded at a short-term rental property at 40^th Street and Park Avenue when an SUV full of gunmen opened fire on the house where Members’ daughter was hosting an after-prom party.

Approximately 100 shell casings from multiple guns were discovered at the scene as the result of three volleys of gunfire — two from the assailants and one from the people at the house.

A photograph from earlier in the evening showed three partygoers displaying four guns — two of them large semi-automatic rifles with banana clips — standing in front of party decorations.

Area residents told FOX59/CBS4 that party planners returned to the home Sunday night and removed the decorations nearly 24 hours after the early morning shooting.

“It was pure pandemonium, it was scary, it was terrifying, and I would have likened it to some type of war movie,” said Brandi Mitchell, a neighbor who awoke to a bullet hole in the front window of her home at 1 a.m. Sunday. “We heard a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming, so we just knew at that point it was gunfire, and I just immediately took cover.”

Neighborhood security video obtained by FOX59/CBS4 recorded the sounds of gunfire, people fleeing the scene on foot and a white SUV that rolled backward up Park Avenue after the first round of shots, headed back toward the house for a second volley and appeared to drive in reverse again after the partygoers fired back.

Mitchell said neighbors have recognized that the large yellow house across the street has been utilized as a short-term rental since early 2025, and while there was no previous trouble, she became uneasy as Saturday night rolled on and more young people arrived at the address.

“But as the night progressed, there were more and more people showing up, and we were getting a little agitated because it’s a lot of people,” Mitchell said. “And when there’s a lot of people, and didn’t look like a lot of supervision after those hours, it could get a little scary.”

The City’s Office of Public Health and Safety will deploy violence interrupters to reach out to victims and the community in an attempt to quell any potential retaliation.

“We don’t want that one shooting to become four, and we don’t want that one homicide to become four,” said Deputy Public Safety Director Tony Lopez.

In the coming days, Lopez’s staff will be “engaging with the family, engaging with others, trying to figure out if retaliation is possible, where’s the retaliation coming from.”

Lopez said warmer weather and springtime or end-of-school celebrations bring more parties to short-term rental properties around Indianapolis, making it challenging to monitor and follow up on violence that occasionally occurs.

City officials have indicated it is likely the owner of the Park Avenue property may face a fine for failing to register his short-term rental location with the Bureau of Neighborhood Services.