A South Florida school district fighting the state’s charter school appeals system, which it argues is unconstitutional.
The Palm Beach County School Board on Monday appealed a state Board of Education decision allowing the Florida Charter Educational Foundation — a nonprofit slated to contract with operator Charter Schools USA — to open a school in the southern part of the county.
The school board rejected the charter application last year, arguing it failed to show the school would be sufficiently “innovative.” The state’s charter school appeal commission, however, decided unanimously that the application met all the requirements in state law, and the state Board of Education agreed.
The school board’s lawyers are asking the Fourth District Court of Appeal to overturn the state decision. Among other things, they argue local “authority has been eviscerated” by the charter school law “delegating the power to the State Board of Education under an unconstitutional appeal scheme.”
When it rejected the charter application last year, one school board member described the vote as an “act of civil disobedience.” According to the Sun-Sentinel, lawyers for the charter school told the charter appeal commission that the school board’s standard of innovation was “self-serving” and created because “it didn’t want anymore competition from charter schools.”
In a press release announcing the appeal, Frank Barbieri, the school board’s vice chairman, alludes to a provision in the state constitution that gives local boards the authority to “operate, control and supervise all free public schools within the school district.”
The appeal system, he said, gives the state the power to “effectively force local boards to grant charter school applications unilaterally.”
