SVRCS Appeal Status One Year Later
SVRCS appeal status is at one year and counting
BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP — It was a year ago this Friday that the Keystone Central School Board voted 7-2 to deny the Sugar Valley Rural Charter School a renewal of its charter to operate. That turndown set in motion a lengthy hearing process precipitated by an appeal from the charter school located in Loganton.
After a series of eight hearings from last March through last September, there had been a school of thought that the school board would at its February 2016 meeting be ready to take a second and final vote on the Loganton-based school’s future. But that won’t be happening at the Feb. 4 meeting.
School district superintendent Kelly Hastings this week told therecord-online attorneys for the district and the charter school had agreed to a time extension for the filing of briefs to hearing mediator Scott Etter; they also had been awaiting some direction from Etter relative to some procedural issues. She said the school board will then need some time to “read and internalize the information in the documents.”
It was Jan. 29, 2015 the school board voted to deny the charter renewal after a presentation from two outside consultants hired by the district; their report detailed what they said were a series of shortcomings in the charter school’s operations, noting student testing results were “lower than any of the schools” in the Keystone district.
Board members Roger Elling and Debra Smith were the two board members who voted unsuccessfully to renew the Sugar Valley charter at the board meeting a year ago.
The vote a year ago was the first step in the process to determine the results of the charter school’s renewal effort. After eight hearings and 12 months, the time is approaching for school board reconsideration if it so chooses. If the board again votes down the charter renewal request, charter school officials have the option of appealing the district turndown; this has been done twice in the past and each time a state charter appeals board ultimately approved another 5-year renewal for the school.
The Keystone Central School District has no day-to-day control over the charter school, but must provide funding on a per student basis. It is costing the district an estimated $3 million towards charter operations this year. The kindergarten through grade 12 school has an enrollment of over 400 and includes students from the Keystone Central, Jersey Shore and Penns Valley attendance areas, most of them from Keystone Central. The school has continued to function while the appeal process is ongoing.
The charter school had opened in 1999, established by valley residents unhappy with the district’s closure of Sugar Valley High School a few years earlier, preparatory to the establishment of the consolidated Central Mountain High School.
The appeal process carries a price tag. One SVRCS supporter had estimated last summer that more than $70,000 had been expended to that point.
