Although not named as the primary litigant, for all intents and purposes, this lawsuit will herein be referred as the “Newark Charter’s Lawsuit Against The Christina School District”, or “Newark Charter’s Lawsuit” for short….
Those who know,… know why. No further explanation required or will be given.
The lawsuit seeks to do several things.
First, it wants to freeze the $7 million of Christina’s Current Funding it disputes. This is to prevent it being spent before the court can deliver a verdict. Doing so would have a negative effect on Christina’s 22,000 children by depriving their district of funds needed for operation of specific tasks pending the court trial.
Second, it wants those funds to eventually go to charter schools because that was the certification as of September 1st. You may remember that certification was reversed when the public got outraged and …. well, basically after the DOE got caught with their pants down, and really, had no choice, other than change the certifications back to their original levels.
Third, it wants the Christina District to pay all of its legal fees.
Fourth, it wants to add other monetary damages it discovers during the trial, or makes up on its own…
That is basically it. The suit does include the DOE and the state superintendent for overriding the certification originally made which the court must now decide either was a legal correction, or one made outside the law. The lawsuit of course also includes the Christina District and its financial director.
ANALYSIS
The bone of contention is whether or not, a levy approved by voters in a referendum for one specific item, can be used for any other item later at anyone’s future discretion… The Christina District passed a levy still in effect for four specific things… That money is collected separately and is separately paid to the exact penny for that single group of items. Brandywine District just recently passed a levy to put artificial turf on its field… It was on the ballot specifically for that single item, and was approved by the voters of that district for that single item. Charter schools say they are entitled to part of that payment under per student funding. District schools say that is unconstitutional because the voters did not approve of that money for anything other than that single item… The DOE has always sided with Christina District since 2003, even during extreme pro-charter administrations. .All this attempted lawsuit appears to be,… is an ill-defined attempt to get charters’ fingers on funds they are not entitled to..since those moneys are not part of regular operations of the district, but are allotted instead for a specific function that was “over and beyond” the regular operations of the district. Expect the court to rule it to be unconstitutional to go against voter’s wishes….
As to the holding of the money, most of it is for a specific function… Holding the money would put that function in jeopardy. Switching funding from future use to augment those programs could be accomplished by the district, but it should be unnecessary because the voters themselves said this was their sole reason for voting to be taxed that amount. .. The proper court decision would be to NOT invoke an injunction upon using those funds, because that would be unconstitutionally violating voters’ directives; later, if the court decided to favor those charters making the lawsuit, the district would then pay the amount from different funds and the Charters could still get their money. There is no harm in denying the injunction, and there is harm to innocent parties for honoring it. Expect the court to rule not to allow the injunction.
The principle legal claim by those suing is that equity is not being provided to those students going to charter schools… Their claim is that since Christina is not allowing that specific funding to be split up and follow each Charter student to their school, those students going to Charters get less per student money than do those remaining in public schools and therefore it is not equal… The correct argument against that, is that these moneys are not going to Christina’s students either… Just as the turf money at Brandywine does not go to augment those public schools’ educational expenses, nor should it go to those fleeing to charters… Since none of that funding goes to either public or charter (private) school students, equity is preserved.
The plaintiffs counter argument will be that whereas grass is on the field, these payments are for programs in the classroom and therefore are part of the expense of running a school. The obvious counter to that, is to point out that since Newark Charter has a new school building, that too is an “extra” they can provide their students. That is also an external form of “non-equity” that enables Charter Students to have a better environment than those public school students in Christina’s older buildings. Should some form of equity revert back to Christina for that? Of course not, and neither should it go the other way… Some advantages are endemic to certain entities. and these programs supported by the Christina District’s voters, are a perk these voters of the Christina District insisted on paying for…
Furthermore the Charter Schools are alleging they were harmed by Godowsky’s reversal of their allotment. They were promised one thing, and given another… To some extent this is true. Two operatives (with or without Godowski’s knowledge) changed the allotments by raising them for Charters, then informing the Charters their allotments had been raised, but neglected to tell any of the Public Schools about the changes. The public schools got walloped by the surprise, and had this decision not been properly reversed on September 7th, the public schools most certainly would have sued the DOE on the exact same grounds these Charters now are…. The ineptness of the DOE and its leadership (done either with or against Godowski’s knowledge) may have caused some future funding shortages in some charters… If those claims are real (ie charters hiring additional staff) then the party responsible for repaying the damage should rest solely with the ineptly run DOE, and not with the Christina School District.
Judging by the weakness of the claims, and the huge mental stretches at the complaint’s beginning in trying to establish legal precedents for pushing the suit forward, it appears that the law firm Saul Ewing is simply taking Charters on an expensive ride…
kavips 
10 comments
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October 6, 2016 at 5:56 am
Kevin Ohlandt
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware.
October 6, 2016 at 8:47 am
Adam
Is the take away from this article that parents who send their kids to charter school should never vote for a referendum funding specific projects for the district that they live in? Good to know for the next time a referendum comes up for “specific” district projects.
October 6, 2016 at 12:04 pm
Kat
It sounds as though charter parents should never vote ‘yes’ in a referendum, again. All of these arguments show me that the ‘fairest’ and ‘most equal’ option is to give each kid their portion of the money pot and those families can choose where to spend them – public, charter, private or parochial. This endless squabbling over finances only wastes tax payer dollars in attorney’s fees. One of the overlooked facts, when districts complain that funds are lost as students flee their classrooms is that the districts no longer have the costs associated with those students.
October 6, 2016 at 3:08 pm
kavips
Being honest, what is best for charter parents, I would have to say that it is probably in their best interests not to vote yes in a referendum. They will pay out more than their child’s school will get. However if they wish to vote for the benefit of all those still residing in public schools, or to increase their property values by having a good district attached to their deed’s location, then go ahead and vote yes in the referendum.
But as with everything, there is quibble room, because in this case (2003) the specifics were set in stone not to include charters. General referendums would, if passed, follow the child under current law which at best is temporary, since it will soon change if enough votes can be found in the General Assembly to eliminate pay following students…
And as to Kat’s last point… there really are no individual “costs per student”… For example if one child exits a classroom by choicing out, all costs to that classroom remain the same, just without his income contributing towards the balancing of the books.. Choicing out hurts the other kids buy lowering the discretionary amount they will have available for their education….
Hence you hurt 19 students education to benefit 1’s….
October 6, 2016 at 3:48 pm
Patriot
While your blog posts are mostly entertaining and humorous, why not question why operating expenses in the CSD have grown exponentially over the past decade while student enrollment has dropped due to kids leaving via charter and choice. Also, maybe question why several millions of dollars in CSD exclusions from local funding were deemed invalid (i.e. “invalid” meaning not properly supported or eligible for exclusion from local funding under the current law) and inconsistent with the other districts by the DOE this year, AND these same items had been excluded from CSD local funding since 2008. It doesn’t make sense to connect a decade of CSD’s invalid exclusions to the current referendum. By the DOE reversing course and caving under political pressure by allowing these invalid exclusions to continue, they allowed CSD to “rob” charter and choice kids of their fair share of educational funding this year and most likely over the past decade. Finally, why not question why some schools in the CSD are half empty and consolidation of TPSs is desperately needed for a more efficient use of public funding instead of shaking down the taxpayers via multiple referendums. Cost in CSD would actually decrease if they consolidated instead of maintaining the same operating expenses for a reduced number of students. Before you start with the predictable “Well, if it wasn’t for charter schools we wouldn’t have these problems” nonsense, please consider the following:
1. Charter schools and choice are the result of TPS failure, not the cause. If TPS had delivered on the promise to taxpayers of a quality education, there more than likely would not be anywhere near the number of charter schools we currently have.
2. Taxpayers who send their kids to private schools receive no benefit for their tax dollars (i.e. voucher or rebate check). If you’re going to express mock outrage over charter schools creating a drain on TPS, express the same mock outrage that private school parents do not receive ANY educational benefit for their property tax dollars. Arguing that charter school parents benefit at the expense of TPS parents while advocating against school vouchers is the height of hypocrisy given TPS parents benefit from the tax dollars of private school parents.
3. The current charter school law is the prevailing law. Just because you don’t agree with that law does not make it less valid. As a taxpaying citizen, would you be comfortable with a fellow taxpayer breaking laws they don’t agree with? If not, you should have an issue with CSD’s practices with regard to exclusions from local funding which on it’s face appear not to be in accordance with the current law and has not been for almost a decade.
Please feel free to hold NCS accountable under the law but try to at least give the appearance of being fair and impartial, otherwise your rants have zero credibility.
October 6, 2016 at 8:58 pm
mediawatch
One factual error here: Brandywine voters rejected their first referendum this year, which included turf fields. The referendum passed on its second try, without turf fields.
On the legal fees: the charter schools’ lawyer is Bill Manning, who has been advancing the charter cause since he was on the Red Clay board some 20 years ago. The petition includes a request for legal fees. My guess is that Manning is taking this case on a pro bono/contingency basis — no fee if the charters lose but another raid on Christina’s treasury if they win.
October 6, 2016 at 10:17 pm
kavips
Patriot, there are multiple errors in your comment. Allow me to point them out. First, thank you for the compliment.
Second, we will briefly cover why we don’t cover the modest increase in Christina’s budget from $203 mil in 2008 to $238 mil projected for 2016. That 17% increase spread across 8 years barely amounts to a 2% increase per year… it is irrelevant. Mentioning It’s equivalence would be like in the middle of a discussion of armed insurrections taking place by the Bundys on US soil, to interject…. “hey, how come you don’t talk about the armed insurrection in Angola!”… Like that, it has no relevance to the discussion at hand.
The funds in question were deemed invalid, not because they are, but because the person who made that judgment this year, changed. The new people, who were basically underlings of an underling, have always supported erroneously that these exclusions were invalid, their arguments not based on reason or fact but solely on wanting the money themselves, These three made the decision, alone, with no openness, no discussion, no transparency… They were wrong, and it had to be walked back and now charter schools who foolishly spent money they wouldn’t have, are on the hook. As mentioned above, the coup was all Blowman’s fault and they should at least attempt to sue his personal assets to cover the cost of those teachers allegedly hired, because there, they would actually have a case.
As for why some schools are half empty, no one seems to know what you are talking about….so perhaps there is nothing to your claim. Please be specific with the names of these Christina District schools and why you think they are … “half empty”…. Otherwise, this too, is irrelevant.
Now on to your erroneous assumptions coupled with the unvarnished truth.
The demand for charters today is low. They barely can keep enough seats filled. The only ones who do have a demand for placement are those two who don’t allow “too many” blacks, Hispanics, low income, disabled, or ELL’s. .. The demand is purely racial. Get my children away from those ^%#$^%$# blacks…
Just as people still say they will vote for Trump despite the racist he is, there are still people who will want to put their child in a school where “those other people” can’t go…
And again… your argument about private schools is like the insurrection in Angola… We are talking about charters (private schools) and public schools. Those who want to segregate their children on their own dime, certainly can… but that whole argument is irrelevant to the one at hand… Bottom line, who cares if rich people pay taxes for schools and pay boarding cost for private schools… Isn’t that why they wanted to be rich in the first place? lol.
As for prevailing law…. there is a word in that which should interest you… It is “law”… Laws change. All it takes is a bill in the General Assembly to move a few words around, perhaps eliminate a line or paragraph, and the law suddenly becomes more friendly to public schools. So saying it is set in stone, is temporary, at best. There are also courts, who if hearing just one case, rule on the unconstitutionality of charter schools as was done in the state of Washington, they disappear…
Who can say what the future will bring?… We can only guess based on past examples. But, for us a good bet is on those receiving a Doctors Gruel “guaranteed to cure all ails” and then retching continuously for 25 years, to sooner or later figure out it is the Doctor’s Gruel making them sick, and not the plague we feared….
October 6, 2016 at 10:26 pm
kavips
@ mediawatch
Thank you for the correction… I totally had it backwards and in checking its veracity after you pointed it out, I ingested a lot of soup. It wasn’t easy to find…
Keep up the good work…
(As for Manning, I try hard not to deal in speculation but only discuss what I know. I have far too little time covering just all that, much less adding speculation to the mix. Therefore I won’t comment on that until I’ve seen the contract in front of me) 🙂
October 7, 2016 at 7:59 am
Patriot
I appreciate the thorough response, and I’ll concede the point on the increases in CSD’s budget even though the numbers I’ve seen tell a different story. But how is it you can assume that the funds in question were ever valid for exclusion? How do you know that to be true? Just because the DOE turned a blind eye to invalid exclusions for a decade doesn’t make it right, and the “prior practice of the old regime” is not a valid defense.
If the demand for charter schools is so low, why are we having this discussion? If a charter school cannot produce the appropriate enrollment numbers, they are not approved. If they cannot maintain appropriate enrollment, they go away. Most of the kids entering the “high demand” charters come in as kindergarteners, so where’s the skimming taking place? The NCS lottery is open to the public, so I’m not sure how you sandbag an open lottery where literally every name is called out individually. You’re entitled to your own opinion, just not your own facts.
I disagree with your point on private schools. They absolutely are relevant if you are going to make the point that charters are a drain on TPS. Nobody likes being told “they can afford it” no matter how much money they have. Every taxpayer with school age children has a right to receive some educational value for their taxes including the rich. “Education value” is open to interpretation, and I’m open to a debate on how you measure it. I’m sure reasonable minds could come up with something, but we can’t start with the premise of “they can afford it, so they don’t deserve anything”.
Obviously laws change, but the current law IS the law. Once again, as citizens we can’t just arbitrarily decide which laws we will or won’t follow. That’s called anarchy. Once again, if we can’t agree on this basic principle we can’t have a debate.
October 7, 2016 at 1:36 pm
kavips
@ Patriot…who questions how one can assume the funds in question were ever valid for exclusion..
How does one know it to be true? Like everything in life, there are differences in opinion, which is all this is… Let’s skim through life’s examples to show how that is…
As you know, tax rates change for example. One year one can pay 6.2% towards their Social Security future, and the next year it can be 5.2% and two years later it goes back up to 6.2%… Why did that happen? Because those people we elect to run things, decided both were a good idea… What you seem to be trying to do is say… “wait, one of those must be good, and the other one evil.” That stretch of imagination if allowed, would pit both sides against each other, with each side seeing the good in their favorite, and the evil in the opposite… That is what you are trying to accomplish with saying how can this be right? The answer is: it was right. It always has been right to exclude that money from charters. And when it was changed in the dark room of DOE by Blowman & Co, it failed to merit muster in the bright light of public scrutiny and therefore got overturned… It is right to honor the voter’s specific guidelines in a referendum… It is wrong to take the money they voted for one thing, and apply it to something else… How would you feel if you paid your power bill (to whichever entity you use) and they billed you again because they used it to prevent a possible future power outage when they had to cut down a tree that was about to cause line damage? Would you be upset? I would hope so.. Voters are no different then you when they pay money for one thing, and it gets used for something else, so they eventually will have pay more…
Bottom line, like it or not, it was the law and “as citizens we can’t just arbitrarily decide which laws we will or won’t follow. That’s called anarchy.”
How one sandbags a lottery? One controls who gets in the pool and who doesn’t… All applications have to be reviewed and approved by the director before they are allowed to go into the pool from which the winners will be drawn…. Not sure if you are familiar of the 6 year old kicked out of the lottery because of a disability… but the rest of us are…
Again, you will somehow need to go in depth as to how private schools which do not affect public money, have the same direct influence on money per student in the public school system for your argument about private schools to have any bearing at all.
Charter schools are private schools that take public money… Which wouldn’t be so bad if that money came from wealthy taxpayers asked to cough up more.. But to take it from the already starved educational resources of America’s most needy, and give it to the investors of a charter school, is simply not right… You may say it’s the law, but it is not right to rob the poor to pay for the rich… Which is all a charter school does… In which case, the law needs changed…..