Supreme Court wipes out SRC's powers to waive provisions of Pa. school code
The ruling has huge implications for both charter schools and the union contract.
In a decision that could have massive repercussions for Philadelphia schools, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday declared unconstitutional the provision in state law granting the School Reform Commission extraordinary powers to cancel provisions of the state school code.
The decision came in a case involving West Philadelphia Achievement Charter School, which since 2011 has been challenging the District's efforts to limit its enrollment to 400 students. Charter schools are not subject to District-imposed enrollment caps, absent the charter school's consent, according to the school code.
But the potential impact of the court's action extends far beyond caps on charter enrollment.
The ruling is a severe blow to the SRC, which has frequently sought to suspend the school code in an effort to limit charter expansion, expedite school closings, and cancel provisions in the teachers' contract –including built-in raises for years of service and seniority protections in calling back laid-off employees.
In essence, the court said that the General Assembly overstepped its bounds and was too open-ended in granting the SRC these powers in 2001.
"The Legislature gave the SRC what amounts to carte blanche powers to suspend virtually any combination of provisions of the School Code – a statute covering a broad range of topics," the ruling said. It said that prior court decisions "have never deemed such an unconstrained grant of authority to be constitutionally valid."
In the words of the ruling, any actions taken under the provision – Section 696(i)(3) of the School code – are "null and void, and Respondents [the District and SRC] are permanently enjoined from taking further action under the authority it confers."
The vote was 4-2, with bipartisan support for the majority opinion. One of the court's seven justices did not participate. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor, a Republican. Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, wrote a dissenting opinion.
Baer argued that the General Assembly did not unconstitutionally delegate its own legislative power to the SRC, as the majority held, but "rather delegates the authority to Supreme Court wipes out SRC's powers to waive provisions of Pa. school code: