Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Organizers of a proposed charter school in Sweet Home met last week to determine their next move after the District 55 School Board extended the deadline to complete a contract for the charter school proposed by People Involved in Education.
PIE President Jay Jackson said he had hoped to talk to the PIE board May 16 about what to do in response to School District 55’s extension of deadlines for completion of a contract to July 1, but some loose ends prevented them from going very far.
Jackson said he had not been able to talk to John Liljegren, PIE’s attorney working on the contract, and PIE had not heard back yet from the Oregon Department of Education beyond a confirmation that it had received an appeal to the state board filed last week by PIE, asking that it sponsor the proposed Sweet Home charter school.
The District 55 School Board approved a request by PIE last year to sponsor a charter school. The district and PIE have been negotiating a contract for the operation of the charter school.
District 55 is insisting that PIE form a separate corporation to operate the school, but that separate corporation could be a subsidiary of PIE. PIE will not agree to the district’s requirement, saying that such a move would be illegal. Based on that, PIE has asked the ODE to step in.
At the PIE work session on May 16, the night after a District 55 board meeting in which the District 55 board extended the deadline to complete the contract, Jackson told his board that he had no response from ODE yet except an e-mail confirming ODE had received his request. The state schools superintendent is charged with coming up with rules and process to handle the appeal or mediation with District 55.
He said that he had exchanged messages with Liljegren, but they had not had a chance to talk about developments yet.
“My feeling is I’m not really eager to make any definite decision until we have a chance to talk with John Liljegren,” Jackson said. “We don’t have sufficient information to make any decision at this point. Assuming we can get some information back from ODE, then we can set up a time to meet with John Liljegren.”
With the new extension, PIE has time to think about things, PIE board member Doug Miner said.
PIE Board Vice President Lloyd Braunberger noted that District 55 Supt. Larry Horton stated the district and PIE were close with the exception of the issue about forming a new corporation.
“I think they were resting on and hoping that we wouldn’t find a facility,” he said. “We found a facility.”
So then the district had to rest on its requirement that PIE form a separate corporation, Miner said. PIE needs to be able to lay out for the public what the risks are that PIE faces in forming a separate corporation.
Among them are potentially higher insurance costs and problems getting loans, Miner said. Also, the district would be dealing with the new entity instead of PIE, and it could add even more requirements.
“I look at it as it creates one additional barrier between us and running that school,” Miner said.
The district has insisted on the new corporation, according to district officials, to help protect the district and the charter school against liability for potential litigation against other schools operated by PIE in other districts.
That demand goes against state statute, Miner said, but it also “has risks we’re not willing to accept. John (Liljegren) has to give us some advice about what our options are at this point.”
Jackson said he not only saw the practical concerns over the district’s demand, “but to put it bluntly, why should we have to convince elected public officials they have to obey the law?”
The contract is supposed to incorporate the details outlined in the charter school application approved by the District 55 board, he said. The contract has additional details that need to be worked out, such as performance standards, renewal process and termination of the contract, items not spelled out in the application.
“We struck a deal,” Jackson said. “They had a chance to review it and tell us what they didn’t like.”
If PIE were to take that deal, Miner asked what assurances there would be that the district wouldn’t add something else, another hurdle to creating the charter school.
One comment by the district’s attorney, Peter Dassow, hinted at what could be the next barrier, a separate board with different people, Braunberger said.
PIE uses the Core Knowledge curriculum, Jackson said. He asked who’s to say the board tells PIE not to use it in the new school.
“As a charter school, we’re hit with, ‘You must comply with all state and federal laws,'” Jackson said. “So is it a one-way street?”