Franklin Towne Charter High School just won a victory in its legal battle over charter revocation. Here are 6 things to know.

A judge has handed Franklin Towne Charter High School a victory in the battle over its charter revocation hearing, ruling that the Philadelphia School District must replace the officer it had appointed to preside over the rest of the proceeding.

The ruling represents a milestone in a lengthy and unusual case, but it’s not necessarily the end of the case. Here are six things to know:

Just over a year ago, Philadelphia’s school board voted to begin revocation proceedings for Franklin Towne.

Though the Northeast Philadelphia school is a top academic performer — it won a national Blue Ribbon Award, a marker of excellence — the board was responding to allegations that the school had rigged its lottery to shut out students from certain zip codes and siblings of pupils with academic and behavioral issues, a violation of state law.

The revocation hearing’s goal was not necessarily to close the school, but to effect change; board officials said the only tool they possess under Pennsylvania law to trigger a public accounting of serious allegations of impropriety is a revocation hearing, which includes witnesses and evidence before an independent hearing officer.

Days before the charter revocation proceedings were scheduled to begin in October 2023, Franklin Towne asked a judge to intervene, saying that the hearing officer hired by the school board, Rudy Garcia, should not preside.

An independent report examining bias allegations in charter authorizing had been released just before the legal challenge. And though the investigator found that the district engaged in no overt bias, the report recommended the school board stop using Garcia for most hearings “as this practice has created the appearance of an improper bias toward the Board of Education and has resulted in a lack of trust in the system from the charter school sector,” Ballard Spahr lawyer Marcel Pratt, the former city solicitor, wrote in the report.

The case dragged on for nearly a year. Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Anne Marie Coyle was initially asked to rule on whether Garcia could be the hearing officer; Franklin Towne later added more charges to its claim, challenging as unconstitutional the portion of Pennsylvania law under which the district sought to revoke the Franklin Towne charter.

Coyle, herself a former board member at a different charter school, held several hearings in the matter. At one hearing, she questioned school board president Reginald Streater on the witness stand, asking him: If there had been lottery manipulation, “why that would cause a concern?” the judge said, according to court records.

Streater responded that would be a problem because the board takes inequitable treatment of students seriously, and because “if a school was breaking or seen as breaking the law, not acting within the spirit of charter law, it’s our duty as the authorizers in Philadelphia to get to the bottom of it.”

Coyle initially said she would rule at the last hearing, Aug. 9, but instead issued a written order weeks later, on Tuesday.

The school board, frustrated by the slow pace of the Common Pleas hearing, in June appealed the case to Commonwealth Court. Franklin Towne said the district was attempting to appeal the unappealable and asked for Coyle to impose sanctions, which she declined to do.

Coyle, in her Tuesday order, granted Franklin Towne injunctive relief and said the district “is prohibited from utilizing Rudolph Garcia, Esquire or Allison Peterson, Esquire as its designated Hearing Officer or in any similar capacity as arbitrator in any charter non-renewal or revocation proceedings against Franklin Towne.”

Coyle, who described Garcia and Peterson as “non-neutral” in court documents, also said the district “must immediately replace Rudolph Garcia, Esquire as designated Hearing Officer in the announced operating charter revocation proceedings that have yet to commence against Franklin Towne”.

The judge did, however, deny Franklin Towne’s constitutional challenges to the section of Pennsylvania law that the board used to begin revocation proceedings.

Even if the board, which had no immediate comment about what its next move was, chose a new hearing officer immediately, revocation hearings won’t begin soon. Coyle ordered a 30-day stay of the revocation hearings.

Coyle also ordered a hearing conducted in her courtroom within 30 days “to address any future stay of proceedings pending the school board’s appeal and of compliance with the terms and conditions of instant order of court.”

If the stay lasts longer than a month, Coyle wrote, “Franklin Towne shall demonstrate to this court’s satisfaction, complete ongoing compliance with the lottery-based student admission requirements in accordance with its operating charter.”

Despite only being charged with deciding the legal questions Franklin Towne raised, Coyle weighed in on what a closure might mean to Franklin Towne.

“Realistically, should this successful high school be forced to close its doors, not only would the attending children, their parents, teachers, and administrators be adversely affected, so too would the entire community,” Coyle wrote. “This would permanently deprive all future students from the zip code(s) that the school board believes had been disregarded by Franklin Towne’s former administrators.”

Brianna O’Donnell, Franklin Towne’s current CEO — who worked at but did not lead the school when the alleged lottery rigging occurred — told the court that the district’s notice of revocation “had caused an immediate harmful impact upon the children, parents, teachers and administrators working at Franklin Towne.”

Coyle also wrote that the testimony of Streater, Garcia, and Peterson, who had been appointed as prosecutor in the revocation hearing, “provided this court with insight into the structural deficiences with the revocation procedures themselves, as well as a comprehension of the critical need for impartiality from their inception. The collective evidence also glaringly demonstrated that the school board’s attempts to sidestep their inherent problems caused not only a bullying and biased appearance, but they also implanted a harmful pretermination of Frankin Towne’s guilt into the individual mind of their selected Hearing Officer.”

School board officials said that only three people were available to serve as hearing officer; Coyle said that “failure to cultivate other capable candidates is a self-made flaw that can easily be corrected.”

Coyle wrote that her order “aligns with the public interest of promoting trust in the legal system and the integrity of our public institutions and preventing overreaching of governmental functions.”

Mark Seiberling, a lawyer representing Franklin Towne, said school officials were “pleased with Judge Coyle’s thorough and well-reasoned decision” and were optimistic that the district and board “will finally take the advice of Judge Coyle by engaging in meaningful, alternative resolution of this matter for the benefit of the students involved instead of continuing to waste public money and further litigate this matter in the courts.”

O’Donnell, in a statement, also said she was pleased with the order, which “represents a significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to ensure the best educational environment for FTCHS students and families.”

O’Donnell noted that Franklin Towne’s incoming freshman and sophomore classes were enrolled after the alleged enrollment-fixing occurred. The school now uses the centralized lottery system that the majority of Philadelphia charters use.

“It is unjustifiable for the School District of Philadelphia to persist in its efforts to close Franklin Towne denying educational opportunities to 1,300 students, hundreds of families, and 130 dedicated employees, based on the alleged actions of a former administrator who is no longer affiliated with the school,” O’Donnell said.