FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
Contact:
Ashley Del Sole, Global Garden Public Charter School, Inc. ~ ggpcs@yahoo.com ~ (240) 498-2286
Montgomery
County Public Charter School Applicants Seek Judicial Review of Maryland State
Board of Education Appeal Decision
Montgomery
County, MD, February 28, 2011 – On Thursday, Feb 24, Global Garden Public
Charter School, Inc., filed a petition for judicial review in the Circuit Court
for Montgomery County of the Maryland State Board of Education Opinion 11-01,
released January 25. Global Garden had appealed the June denial of its
application to open Montgomery County’s first public charter school.
According to that
unanimous opinion, the Montgomery County local Board of Education erred in
denying Global Garden’s application. In a strongly worded
decision, the State Board of Education asserted that the Montgomery
Board's resolution to deny was inadequately articulated and that in several
ways the review process was ill-conducted and subject to bias.
However, despite
reversing and remanding the case “so that the local board may reconsider its
decision in light of the rulings we have made in this case,” the State Board
has declined to provide any more specific guidelines for this reconsideration.
Global Garden believes that the State Board’s rulings include a requirement for
charter school applicants to receive meaningful technical assistance,
substantive feedback, and the opportunity to cure deficiencies in the
application, and that it intended the Montgomery Board to use the 90 days
allotted to provide some of the procedural benefits it previously denied Global
Garden.
The Montgomery
Board, in contrast, has indicated that it intends merely to elaborate in
writing its reasons for its decision. To date, despite a letter to MCPS and the
Montgomery Board intended to initiate dialogue immediately following the
Opinion on January 28, Global Garden has not been contacted directly by any
member of MCPS staff or of the Montgomery County Board of Education.
Both groups
have written to the State Board in an attempt to gain some further direction on
what steps it intended would be taken. In each case, the President of the
State Board, James H. DeGraffenreidt, has responded briefly to state that
“[t]he purpose of the remand was to require the local board to provide a
legally supportable rationale for its decision or, alternatively, to grant the
charter if its review reveals that there is no legally supportable rationale
for denying the charter.” (Letter to Global Garden counsel, Feb. 24, 2011,
attached)
Meanwhile, MCPS has established a revised public
charter school application process which would require Global Garden to submit
a new application by April 1, 25 days in advance of the 90-day deadline for the
Montgomery Board to conclude its “reconsideration.” In his letter, Mr.
DeGraffenreidt suggests that “Global Garden may choose to submit an
application…in the next round of charter school application review in
Montgomery County.” Rather than
submit a new application for review under a flawed process that limits
technical assistance to the presubmission period and excludes any opportunity
to cure deficiencies, Global Garden has opted instead to seek judicial review
of the State Board’s decision.
It hopes to establish that in cases where the local
board fails to carry out its responsibility to provide a fair review, “The
secondary public chartering authority for the granting of a charter shall be
the State Board acting in its appeal review capacity” (§9–103 Maryland Public Charter School Law, 2003). Without judicial or legislative
intervention to strengthen both State Board authority and local board
accountability, charter school applicants are doomed to repeating a cycle
leading to endless appeals, not innovative educational options.
Coincidentally, a bill has been introduced in
the Maryland General Assembly (HB 1067) to
clarify that the Board can and should conduct a review of a denied application
on its merits and can order the local board to grant the charter if warranted.
“We were pleased that the State Board expressed such strong
support for a fair process in their unanimous Opinion, but in the end, Global
Garden has nothing to show for its win,” says Ashley Del Sole, Global Garden
Founding Board member. “So far our application has never received a thorough,
unbiased review on its merits, and that’s all we’ve ever asked for.”
