School Lane Charter Files Application for High School

School Lane Charter School this week submitted an application to the Bensalem School District to open a new International Baccalaureate high school, within the Glenview Corporate Center off of Street Road being its prospective site.

The must now hold a hearing with 45 days. And judging by comments on both sides it appears any ill will related to the K-8 charter school's expansion to high school, which prompted a court filing this summer, may be a thing of the past.

“We've been talking to the new superintendent and board president and gotten very positive feedback,” School Lane CEO Karen Schade said Thursday.

“It seems like their next logical step,” Superintendent David Baugh commented after Wednesday's board meeting about the K-8 school opening a high school. “We have to decide whether it's an amendment (to the existing charter) or a new application. We'll have a hearing in December and should have a decision by January.”

The issue over whether School Lane had to file an application for an amendment to its existing charter or seek a new school charter is what prompted School Lane to go to court in August. That came after the district insisted on a new school charter, Schade has said.

“An amendment is what BEC (the Basic Education Circular from the state Department of Education) says we have to do,” she previously said.

More recently, she said Thursday, the district agreed to an amendment application but wanted all the information required for a new charter.

Schade said she decided to provide all the information required for a new charter – four binders worth –in order to take advantage of a 45-day limit for school districts to hold hearings on such applications.

But School Lane is still hoping the board views the application as seeking a charter amendment. That way, she and Baugh explained, current eighth-graders could simply matriculate into the new ninth grade. Otherwise, they said, a lottery would have to be held for ninth-grade enrollment.

“We are trying to avoid that happening,” said Schade.

The court filing may be rescinded, Schade indicated while saying it is up to School Lane's attorneys.

The CEO said School Lane is hoping to use a one-floor, approximate 30,000-square-foot building on Tillman Drive off of Street Road, across from . It is now used by ITT Technical Institute, which Schade said is moving out in the spring.

“We're in conversation with the owners of the building but nothing has been finalized … No one will talk seriously to me until I have approval,” she said.

The plan is to begin a ninth-grade class in August 2012, with tenth- through 12th-grade classes following in each of the three following years. There are now 50 eighth-graders who could matriculate into the new ninth-grade class if a charter amendment is approved, with hopes of eventually having 100 students in each of the high school grades, Schade said.

School Lane would hire at least three teachers and a principal to get things started in 2012, Schade said.

The high school would utilize the International Baccalaureate program, which focuses on developing the "intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world." The International Baccalaureate Organization website states the program is utilized in more than 3,100 schools and 140 countries worldwide.

“We know it is a world-renowned program. We know it is rigorous. And our model of teaching is very similar,” said Schade. “It brings more rigor to the classroom and it has a wonderful system of professional development and support.”

Schade said School Lane has already applied for IB certification, with their candidacy period expected to begin April 1. In addition to using the IB program at the high school, School Lane plans to institute it in sixth-grade next year, with seventh and eighth grade to follow.

Things may also be looking brighter in regard to another disagreement between School Lane and the public school district.

In June, the school board voted to sue the charter school over allegations it owes the district unpaid annual payments totaling $361,500.

The district claims the charter school failed to pay the district $177,500 for the 2009-2010 school year and $184,000 in 2010-2011. The annual payments, district attorney Tom Profy III has said, are part of a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) program the then-Mosaica Academy Charter School agreed to when it bought its land from the district in 1998.

The school opened in 1998 and changed its management company and namesake in 2001.

Profy has said School Lane justified its decision to stop making the payments by citing a 2009 state law that declares as null and void PILOT programs for charter schools entered into before Dec. 1, 2009. He said the district believes the PILOT program is integral to the 1998 contract of sale and the state act is unconstitutional.

On Thursday, Schade said the two sides recently began talking about a settlement.

“It's not rectified but we're in conversation, which is good,” she said.

Baugh could not be reached for comment Thursday.