School Lane Charter Asks Court For Help To Open New School

The School Lane Charter School has gone to court in an attempt to open a new 9-12 school in the fall of 2012.

It is the latest move in what appears to be a disintegrating relationship with the .

Principal and CEO Karen Schade says the charter school recently filed a petition in county court after submitting to the district a charter amendment application May 19. She said she received an e-mail from the district early this month containing an unsigned letter that insisted an entirely new application is needed for the new school.

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

“After a conversation with the school district, I had thought it would be OK to put in that in a amendment,” she added, while declining to say who she spoke to.

Schade said she was told the district sent her the letter earlier with its response but she didn't get the response until the Aug. 3 e-mail. Regardless, she said there now is some urgency.

“We want to open next year so we need to get moving, which is why we put in the amendment in May,” she said.

The charter school’s petition asks the court to reverse the district decision and grant the amendment.

School Lane has chosen a site for the new school but does not want to make that public and risk losing it, Schade said this week.

David Baugh, the new superintendent of Bensalem Schools, declined to comment Sunday on the court petition. School board attorney Thomas Profy III could not be reached for comment Monday.

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

At that time, Profy said School Lane had failed to pay the district $177,500 for the 2009-2010 school year and $184,000 in 2010-2011. The annual payments, he 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 further explained that School Lane justified its decision to stop making the annual 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.

Asked this week if she feels the latest flap is related to the lawsuit, Schade said: “I couldn't speculate what their thinking is since they haven't called to express their thoughts. But from our perspective it definitely doesn't look above board.”