Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
In a packed board room, after almost three hours of talk about one sticking point in the charter school contract between People Involved in Education and the District 55 School Board Monday night, the District 55 board extended its deadline for completing the contract to July 1.
The District 55 board wants a requirement in the contract that PIE establish a separate nonprofit corporation to operate the charter school to protect the district and the new charter school from potential liabilities in other PIE schools in other districts.
PIE is proposing that it operate Sand Ridge Charter School in Lebanon and Sweet Home Charter School as “PIE doing business as” or DBAs, which does not separate the operations into different financial and legal entities.
The board is operating under advice from two lawyers and its insurance carrier in insisting on this requirement. On May 8, the board passed a resolution 8-1 to require a new corporation be formed.
The resolution did not address the structure of the new corporation or its relationship with PIE.
Under the resolution, PIE could form a new subsidiary corporation, answering to the parent corporation, PIE, to operate the new school, according to board members and the district’s lawyer, Peter Dassow of the Oregon School Boards Association.
Dassow said that PIE’s proposal was possible, but it was not what he advised the district board to do. Using the DBA model does not provide the same separation as separate corporations. A plaintiff suing a PIE school in Scio, for example, would have a burden to prove a connection to a school in Sweet Home to join the Sweet Home school in a lawsuit.
“These are just options,” Dassow said. “The district has never said this is right or wrong. It’s just the safest way.”
He likened it to handrailings on stairs, a small expense that improves safey.
“The added protection of a separate entity is real, and it’s meaningful,” Dassow said.
On Saturday, May 13, Jay Jackson, president of the PIE Board of Directors and administrator for its Sand Ridge Charter School in Lebanon, issued a press release announcing that PIE had filed an appeal on May 12 with the state superindendent and the State Board of Education, asking the state board to sponsor PIE’s proposed charter school in Sweet Home.
“The district claims it wants a charter school,” Jackson said. “But eight months after approving our charter proposal, it unilaterally imposes a new condition that it knows is a poison pill. “PIE is the one who submitted the charter proposal the district approved, but now, a year later, the district refuses to enter into a contract with PIE.
“The charter school law says that a district must negotiate a charter contract in good faith.And that contract must contain the provisions of the charter proposal that the district board approved last May.
“Our proposal said that PIE would operate the Sweet Home Charter School. Now, a year, later, after getting us to delay opening the school for a year, the district insists on this poison pill and says, ‘take it or leave it.’ That’s not negotiating in good faith. They should have told us this a year ago, and we could have started our appeal then. At this point we have no choice but to appeal to the State Board of Education.”
That’s because the district board insisting that another organization operate the charter school is the same as denying PIE’s application, Jackson told the board Monday night.
“This board has decided, yhes, we want a charter school; but we want it operated by somebody else,” Jackson told the board. “I don’t have the authority to speak for another corporation, especially one that doesn’t exist yet.
“It would be like this board, on behalf of the district, to say to Larry Horton (District 55 superintendent), we’re going to give you a contract to be superintendent as long as you’re another person.
“You’re asking me to negotiate a contract on behalf of a corporation that doesn’t exist.”
“Right now,” Dassow said. “What you’re dealing with initially is PIE. I’m submitting to you right now, PIE, you are free to create an entity in charge of daily operations at the school.”
Jackson said he assumed he would get a response to his letter to the State Board of Education and he would meet with the PIE board. As far as what PIE would do now, he didn’t know; and forming a separate nonprofit to operate the school, “that’s up to the PIE board. I highly doubt it.”
“Will we agree to contract with someone else (another proposal for separate nonprofits suggested by Dassow), I’m not sure how you structure that,” Jackson said. “We’ve got a lot of details left to sort out.”
The PIE board was scheduled to meet in a work session on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Sand Ridge Charter School.
“The bottom line, they are my kids,” Sherrie Ingram told the School Board. “My kids are as important as any other kids. I want my kids to be taken care of. I’m asking you to stop this.”