Palm Beach County takes on charter schools with planned lawsuit
The Palm Beach school district is mounting a rare legal battle against a powerhouse charter school company as it pushes to exert more control over which schools open their doors and claim public cash.
"The eyes around the state are on us and on what happens with this. It could certainly set the course for several years ahead," said school board member Karen Brill.
The planned lawsuit challenges a ruling by the state Board of Education and sets the stage for a contentious debate on how Florida's growing charter school industry should be regulated. There are more than 600 charter schools in Florida, each taxpayer-funded but independently managed. Such schools were designed to fill unmet needs in public education and foster innovation.
While the state's charter-friendly laws have prompted a rash of problem schools in recent years, the lawsuit is aimed at stopping a well-regarded chain from opening a seventh location in Palm Beach County. Fort Lauderdale-based Charter Schools USA already manages 48 schools statewide, 18 of which are A-rated.
But the district says the proposed school offers nothing new and would siphon as much as $7.3 million from district schools in five years.
"I don't think it's wise use of taxpayers' dollars for us to be offering a program and the charter to be offering the same program," said Palm Beach County schools superintendent Wayne Gent. "They were supposed to be schools of innovation and not just of duplication."
Rod Jurado, a representative of the proposed school, said the district's concern was about increased competition. In the last five years, the number of students enrolled in Palm Beach County charter schools doubled to about 19,000.
"They have resorted to trying to change the rule book and employ bullying tactics because they recognize what we have known for a very long time — when given a choice, parents send their children to the schools that best serve their needs," Jurado said. "In the case of Palm Beach, parents are choosing charters at what the school district deems an alarming rate and instead of looking inward to decide if change is needed, they are trying to take focus off what should be concerning to them — the reasons parents are leaving the district in droves."
Lynn Norman-Teck, a spokeswoman for the Florida Consortium of Public Charter Schools, said she's never seen a public attack against charter schools like this before.
"You have a charter application that meets the criteria as outlined in the state, goes through the process that was established, followed the rules and yet they are still being punished," she said. "That's what's frustrating."
Officials with the state Department of Education said it's not the first time a district has taken a charter school to court, but said they didn't keep a record of the few which had done so — or why. And they did not know whether the lawsuits had succeeded.
Local districts have long complained about being unable to prevent bad operators from opening schools. A Sun Sentinel investigation last year found loopholes in state laws that make it easy for charter schools to open but difficult for districts to intervene when cash is mismanaged or other problems arise.
The Palm Beach school district initially denied the application for Charter Schools USA last year, a decision one board member called an "act of civil disobedience." The school successfully appealed to the state, which said the school board did not have good cause to Charter school chain faces rare legal battle as district clamps down on industry - Sun Sentinel:
