School Commissioner v. City Neighbors
| Decision Date | 30 July 2007 |
| Docket Number | No. 100, Sept. Term, 2006.,No. 121, Sept. Term, 2006.,100, Sept. Term, 2006.,121, Sept. Term, 2006. |
| Citation | 929 A.2d 113,400 Md. 324 |
| Parties | BALTIMORE CITY BOARD OF SCHOOL COMMISSIONERS v. CITY NEIGHBORS CHARTER SCHOOL, et al. Board of Education of Prince George's County v. Lincoln Public Charter School, Inc. |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Warren N. Weaver (Ilana Subar of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston, L.L.P., Tammy L. Turner, General Counsel, Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for the Petitioner (No. 100).
F. William DuBois (DLA Piper U.S. L.L.P., Sedica Sawez of Rosenberg, Martin Funk & Greenberg, L.L.P., Paul A. Fenn and Anthony M. Conti of Conti, Fenn & Lawrence, L.L.C.), on brief, Baltimore, MD, Richard C. Daniels (Lani L. Daniels of Daniels & Green, L.L.C., College Park, MD), on brief, for Respondents (No. 100).
Andrew w. Nussbaum (Knight, Manzi, Nussbaum & LaPlaca, P.A., of Prince George's County, MD), on brief, for Petitioner (No. 121).
Richard C. Daniels (Lani L. Daniels of Daniels & Green, L.L.C., of College Park, MD), on brief, for Respondent (121).
Argued before BELL, C.J., and RAKER, CATHELL, HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, WILNER, ALAN M. (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.
At issue in these two appeals are three declaratory rulings by the State Board of Education (SBE). Those rulings established standards for determining the amount of funding that the three public charter schools involved in the appeals are entitled to receive from their respective county boards of education. The Court of Special Appeals, by reversing contrary decisions of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City in one case (No. 100) and the Circuit Court for Prince George's County in the other (No. 121), affirmed the SBE rulings. We shall affirm the judgments of the Court of Special Appeals.
Charter schools are in the nature of semi-autonomous public schools that operate under a contract with a State or local school board. The contract, or charter, defines how the school will be structured, staffed, managed, and funded, what programs will be offered, and how the school will operate and account for its activities. The movement to create charter schools, either by converting existing schools or by starting new ones, began in the 1990s from a growing concern that the public schools, at least in some areas, were not living up to legitimate public expectations, and the movement took root and spread quickly. By November, 2004, forty States and the District of Columbia had enacted charter school legislation, Congress had endorsed the movement and provided start-up funding for charter schools,1 and about 4,000 charter schools had been formed across the nation.
The principal objective of those who desired to create such schools — parents, educators, community groups, private entities — was to develop and implement innovative and more effective educational programs, and, to do that, they needed and demanded freedom from some of the structural, operational, fiscal, and pedagogical controls that governed the traditional public school system. That created obvious areas of conflict with various components of the existing public school system — school boards, administrators, teacher unions, and local fiscal authorities — which mostly and often vehemently opposed the effort, and it raised serious and complex questions regarding the organization, funding, accountability, and monitoring of these new schools.
These were questions that had deep public policy implications, questions that extended beyond the educational community, that soon resonated in the halls of Congress and State legislatures, and to which there seemed to be no universally accepted answers. There has yet to be any agreed-upon national model for either the schools themselves or a form of legislative authorization of them. The laws enacted by the various States vary considerably in a number of important respects, including the form and extent of public funding.
After wrestling with the issue in five previous Sessions, the General Assembly created the Maryland Public Charter School Program in 2003, by enacting a new title 9 to the Education Article of the Maryland Code (ED). See 2003 Md. Laws, ch. 358. ED § 9-101(b) states as the purpose of the program to "establish an alternative means within the existing public school system in order to provide innovative learning opportunities and creative educational approaches to improve the education of students." Section 9-102 defines a public charter school as a public school that meets the thirteen conditions and requirements set forth in that section. One of the requirements, § 9-102(11), is that the school operate in accordance with its charter. Section 9-103 makes the county boards of education the primary chartering authority and SBE, acting in an appellate capacity or as the public chartering authority for a restructured school, as the secondary chartering authority.
The chartering process is set forth in ED § 9-104. Section 9-104(a) lists the persons and entities authorized to apply for a charter and specifies that the application is to be filed with the appropriate county board of education. Subsection (a)(4)(i) directs the county board to review the application and render a decision on it within 120 days after receipt of the application. If the county board denies the application, the applicant may appeal to SBE in accordance with ED § 4-205(c).2 If SBE reverses the county board's denial, it may order the county board to grant a charter, in which event SBE is directed to mediate with the county board and the applicant to implement the charter. ED. § 9-104(b)(3).
Section 9-105 requires the professional staff of a public charter school to hold the appropriate Maryland certification. Section 9-106 requires public charter schools to comply with the laws and regulations governing other public schools, but, with certain exceptions, permits SBE to waive those requirements. Section 9-108 provides that the employees of a public charter school are public school employees, that they are employees of the public school employer in the county where the charter school is located, and that they have the collective bargaining rights set forth in title 6, subtitles 4 and 5 of the Education Article. Section 9-110 requires the county boards to develop and submit to SBE public charter school policies that must include certain guidelines and procedures. Finally, § 9-109, which lies at the heart of these appeals, provides a mandate for public funding of the public charter schools. Section 9-109(a) provides:
"A county board shall disburse to a public charter school an amount of county, State, and federal money for elementary, middle, and secondary students that is commensurate with the amount disbursed to other public schools in the local jurisdiction."
As noted, two separate appeals are before us. They were not consolidated, but we have chosen to deal with both of them in this Opinion. No. 100, which emanates from Baltimore City, involves two public charter schools — City Neighbors Charter School and Patterson Park Public Charter School. No 121 comes from Prince George's County and involves Lincoln Public Charter School.
City Neighbors, a non-profit community group in northeast Baltimore City, applied to the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners in March 2004 to open a public charter school in September, 2005. For purposes of the public charter school law, the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners constitutes a county board of education; for convenience, however, we shall refer to it as the city board. The application anticipated public funding from the city board at the rate of $7,500 per pupil. When the city board failed to act upon the application within 120 days, as required by ED § 9-104(a)(4)(i), City Neighbors filed an appeal to SBE. The city board moved to dismiss the appeal on the ground that, because it had deliberately made no decision, there was nothing to appeal. SBE rejected that argument found the city board to be non-compliant with § 9-104(a)(4), and directed that it act upon the application by November 9, 2004.3
On November 9, the city board conditionally approved the application, contingent upon a subsequent agreement as to a charter. The conditional approval made no commitment of any public funds that would be required under ED § 9-109. Discussions continued between City Neighbors and officials of the city board, without success. The city board insisted on excluding certain categories of its system-wide spending when calculating the charter school allocation and on requiring the charter schools to accept other categories of expense in the form of services rather than cash, both of which were unacceptable to City Neighbors. Perceiving that the dispute centered on a disagreement over what was required under ED § 9-109(a), City Neighbors, on February 28, 2005, filed a petition with SBE for a declaratory ruling on the proper interpretation and application of that provision. The petition was filed pursuant to COMAR 13A.01.05.02D, a SBE regulation that permits any party to "file a petition for declaratory ruling by the State Board on the interpretation of a public school law or regulation of the State Board that is material to an existing case or controversy." See also Maryland Code, §§ 10-304 and 10-305 of the State Government Article, which expressly authorize administrative agencies to issue declaratory rulings. The petition complained that the dispute over funding had delayed negotiations toward a charter agreement and that, without a determination of the method and amount of funding, new public charter schools such as City Neighbors were unable to make plans for a Fall 2005 opening.
The city board moved to dismiss the petition, raising a number of defenses, including mootness. It attached to its motion a "funding model" for public...
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