Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
After a closed meeting to confer with its lawyer, the District 55 School Board abandoned plans to meet with the People Involved with Education Board of Directors, which is negotiating a contract to open a charter school in Sweet Home.
PIE operates Sand Ridge Charter School in Lebanon School District. PIE President Jay Jackson requested a meeting of the two boards at the February District 55 School Board meeting. He raised concerns that conditions had been imposed without notice on PIE and said that some deadlines were unrealistic.
“We’re not scheduling a meeting at this time,” District 55 Board Chairman Scott Proctor said. “We’re still open to meeting with these folks. We’re in contract negotiations, so it’s kind of hard to talk about the specifics.
“The district is interested in a charter school — but a school that is prudent and good for the district financially. We’ve got to make sure it’s a good deal for the whole district not just the charter school itself.”
The District 55 Board is talking about extending deadlines, he said. “We’re considering a lot of things, but, like I said, our main effort is something that retains the education process for the whole district.
“We feel there was more than adequate notice, and they’ve (PIE) done a nice job of attending (District 55 Board) meetings,” Proctor said. “We feel in reviewing the history of the process there was plenty of notice.”
Jackson has contended that PIE was never notified of four conditions imposed by resolution in June. Among those conditions was a March 15 deadline for identifying a suitable facility for the charter school.
He also said that District 55 added four more conditions, and PIE did not know about them until Jan. 4. The newer conditions required the creation of a new nonprofit corporation before Feb. 15.
Notification and New Conditions
District 55’s attorney, Peter Dassow, submitted copies of a rebuttal to Jackson’s claim to the School District. The rebuttal, which was dated Feb. 24 and sent to PIE’s consultant, John Liljegren, said that the district had sent notification to PIE on May 20 about the June resolution.
Dated May 20, Dassow sent a letter to Jackson: “The board will pass a formal resolution in June 2005 that contains specific conditions precedent before the conditional approve becomes fully effective.”
In the May 20 letter, the district expressed its desire to include Jackson in two community forums in the fall, Dassow said in his Feb. 24 letter. Jackson attended to make his case to citizens to convert Holley or Crawfordsville into a charter school.
Jackson also attended District 55 Board meetings where the March 15 deadline was discussed, Dassow said. District 55 gave notice in December that the district was prepared to send a final initial proposal to PIE. The district sent the proposal on Jan. 4.
Jackson said that’s when PIE learned about the additional conditions about forming a new corporation.
“In June 2005, however, Mr. Jackson chose neither to attend, as he regularly did when the charter school was a topic of discussion, nor send a PIE representative to that board meeting to provide input,” Dassow said in his letter to Liljegren. “You and your client were aware that the board conditionally approved the charter school proposal. Even if we were to assume that you or your client never received a letter of notification from the district of conditional approval, other documents indicate that your client was aware of the timeline for negotiating a written charter. Mr. Jackson regularly attended board meetings….
“The district sent a final initial proposal on Jan. 3, 2006. This provided adequate time to respond before the deadlines in March 2006. Conditions related to the facility had not changed. The additional conditions that PIE establish a separate nonprofit for PIE-Sweet Home could have been and still may be easily accomplished.”
“The May meeting is when they (made their decision) as far as I’m concerned,” Liljegren said. “After that is beyond the 30-day period that the law requires.”
Liljegren questions the district’s right to impose any new conditions after giving its approval in May, either in the June meeting or later in the Jan. 4 contract proposal from the district.
PIE agreed to hold off opening until September 2006 instead of September 2005, Liljegren said. That was the only condition imposed by the board at its May meeting, and then the board met in June and approved a resolution.
“They didn’t tell us about that meeting,” Liljegren said. “They didn’t tell us they would add any additional conditions.”
This would not be a big deal if the district had just formally approved a resolution that said the same thing as its decision in May, Liljegren said. Instead the district added conditions. The minutes of the May meeting list no basis for adding conditions in June.
If the district can add conditions after its original approval, Liljegren said, “why can’t they change everything?”
The district could change the school’s curriculum, board structure, funding, anything later, Liljegren said.
As far as he knows, PIE had not heard any discussion of the March 15 deadline for securing a facility, Liljegren said. In November, PIE learned that the district had a rough draft that would be a final draft by the December board meeting. In December, Supt. Larry Horton said the district was close to a final draft to be presented to PIE in January.
On Dec. 16, Liljegren received a letter from Dassow informing him that the contract was forthcoming and that it would have new conditions requiring the formation of a separate corporation for the Sweet Home charter school.
Separate Corporation
“It is in the district’s best interest to require a separate nonprofit entity and avoid commingling or entanglement of assets or business affairs with other current or potential PIE charter schools,” Dassow said in the letter. “Furthermore, with this particular applicant, the board is well within its right to ask for assurances and impose this requirement to reduce liability, given the Establishment Clause violation that previously occurred at a PIE charter school….”
The Establishment Clause refers to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits establishment of religion by the state.
Dassow told The New Era that while PIE would negotiate the contract, based on the district’s approval of a charter school, the new corporation would actually sign the document and operate the charter school.
“Here’s a big issue to us,” Liljegren said. “We raised it early on,” and it wasn’t in either the May approval or the June resolution. This condition came up seven months after the approval.
Liljegren is an employee of Arthur Academy, a corporation that operates four charter schools in four school districts. He noted that another organization operates two charter schools, one in Sherwood and one in Tigard.
“No other district has insisted or demanded we operate separate organizations,” Liljegren said. “By precedent and law, it’s not required.”
PIE’s objection is that “you’re going to want to have consistent management, the same board of directors,” Liljegren said. The issue is about “who hires and fires, the executive director, who is in control of curriculum — quality control.”
District 55’s concern about commingling of funds is no reason to require a separate company to run the Sweet Home charter school.
“They’re making a big deal out of something that is done by every organization in the world,” Liljegren said. While Liljegren served on the Portland School District budget committee, that district had some 800 grants and could not commingle those funds. District 55 does too.
“Can embezzlement still occur? Yes,” Liljegren said, and that can happen in any organization, even churches, with designated donations. If the new corporation were to have all of the same people involved, commingling could still take place, and a separate organization is pointless.
PIE provides insurance and indemnity in cases where liability might become an issue, Liljegren said. He asked under what scenario liability might become an issue for District 55.
Facility Deadline
The March 15 deadline for a facility will not work, according to Liljegren. The process requires the school to identify land for lease or sale and then go through government approval processes, including a conditional use permit and potentially zone changes and variances, followed by design review — typically, just a conditional use permit and design review.
With those approvals, the builder must apply for a building permit. Only when it is final can the school receive an occupancy permit, which is required by the school district’s proposal.
PIE would need an occupancy permit, a months-long process, by March 15 under the district’s proposal, Liljegren said, and PIE was only informed of that condition on Jan. 4. The condition would end up requiring PIE to pay for the facility six months before school opens, while PIE would not begin receiving funding until July of the year it will open the new school.
That condition was not negotiated, Liljegren said, but PIE has responded by deleting the deadline in its counter-proposal.
Say PIE found a church it could use for the school, Liljegren said. PIE would have no money to pay the lease, pay city land use fees or pay architects and engineers, more money as the process moves along.
“I’d want to be darn sure at the end of this process I can open a school,” Liljegren said.
According to board minutes from September, Proctor said the district would like to get the contract done by March 15 so staffing for the following year could be finalized.
Horton told the board that the district must notify probationary teachers of their hire status by April 1.
The district does not need to know if the charter school has a facility before the contract is signed, Liljegren said. The contract can include deadlines through June and July based on the process of acquiring a facility to postpone opening until the next year.
Typically, charter schools do not have facilities identified before contracts are signed, Liljegren said. “Districts, all the time, exaggerate the difficulty of dealing with the opening (of charter schools).”
Liljegren roughly calculated that the school may draw 50 students from the district, roughly working out to about one per classroom.
“If they know in July you’re going to take 50 kids, they can’t deal with that?” Liljegren said. “I think they can deal with that.”
The Contract
PIE submitted a counter-proposal on Feb. 13. In that counter-proposal, deadlines are deleted, and PIE is not required to form a separate corporation.
“I hope that you and your client will be able to give an adequate explanation to the board why you have rejected a reasonable contract and now appear likely to be unable to meet conditions in the board resolution that has existed for about nine months,” Dassow said in his letter.
“We want to sit down with the board and talk about these dates,” Liljegren said. “That’s why they had agreed to it. I’d be curious to know why the board members aren’t willing to sit down and talk with us after they committed to doing that.”
Liljegren would like to see the board or the committee working on the contract indicate what changes it finds acceptable and then go work with each other on the last five or six items and figure them out, he said.
“Negotiation of a written charter requires discussion, compromise and some ‘give and take’ in the process,” Dassow said in his Feb. 24 letter. “Usually a comparison of a charter proposal and a final agreement reveals some discrepancies, but this is not cause for alarm. This is simply part of the negotiation process. Although your client may be unfamiliar with this fact of negotiating, I know that you are well aware of it.…
“Your client’s comments and belief that conditions in the draft dated Jan. 4, 2006 are unreasonable might make it difficult or impossible for parties to find common ground on which to reach an agreement. The conditions requiring an applicant to have a facility, to have occupancy permits and insurance, and in this case to establish a nonprofit entity separate from any other PIE charter school are reasonable and necessary.”
The School Board supports the formation of a charter school, Proctor said. The district will be the school’s sponsor, and the school would be a part of the public school system.
“I think we look at it as a good alternative for folks that are looking for that type of educational process,” Proctor said. “We have a good education process here, a lot of dedicated employees, and they’re getting results too.
“We want to see something happen. We’ve just got to do it in a way that it doesn’t hurt the kids here in our district.”