Franklin Towne Charter status remains in limbo as the Philadelphia school district appeals a judge’s order
The move further stalls a public airing of whether allegations of admissions lottery manipulation at Franklin Towne were a one-off, or whether possible improprieties persist.
The Philadelphia School District’s battle with Franklin Towne Charter High School is waging on.
The school system has appealed a judge’s ruling by asking Commonwealth Court to weigh in on whether the district must replace the person it hired to consider Franklin Towne’s revocation hearing.
The move further stalls a public airing of whether allegations of admissions lottery manipulation at Franklin Towne were a one-off and limited to a prior administration, or whether possible improprieties went deeper or persist. Franklin Towne has been admonished in the past for having a whiter student body than the city’s demographics would suggest it should have, and accused of discriminating against special education students.
School system lawyers filed the appeal Friday.
The latest twist comes 10 months after Franklin Towne’s charter revocation hearing was supposed to begin and more than a year after the school board initially voted to begin revocation proceedings following a whistle-blower’s testimony that Franklin Towne officials had rigged the school’s lottery to shut out students from certain zip codes and siblings of pupils with academic and behavioral issues, a violation of state law.
Franklin Towne administrators, who did not lead the school at the time of the alleged lottery fixing, have said they eradicated any improprieties. But school board officials have said that a revocation hearing is the only avenue they have under the law to force Franklin Towne to publicly produce evidence, and that closure of a top-performing school is not necessarily the end goal.
A source with firsthand knowledge of the situation, who was not allowed to discuss confidential matters and requested anonymity, said that the board moved for the revocation vote only after attempting to work with Franklin Towne to get information. Even after the revocation vote was taken, overtures were made to Franklin Towne.
District officials did not get the information they needed “to allay board concerns,” the source said.
Mark Seiberling, a lawyer representing Franklin Towne, disputed that assertion, saying in a statement that the school “fully cooperated and provided all requested information to the district and has continued to do so even after revocation proceedings commenced. FTCHS even produced additional information to the district in the context of settlement discussions with them with the hope of resolving the matter.”
Seiberling said Franklin Towne attempted to negotiate settlement terms with district lawyers and were ignored.
How did we get here?
Days before the revocation hearing was supposed to begin, Franklin Towne filed a lawsuit to attempt to stop the district from using Rudy Garcia as the hearing officer.
An independent report examining bias allegations in charter authorizations, which was released just before the legal challenge, found that the district engaged in no overt bias, but the report did recommend the board stop using Garcia for most charter 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, a former city solicitor, wrote in the report.
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.
Common Pleas Court Judge Anne Marie Coyle, who had previously sat on a board of a different charter school, held several hearings in the matter over nearly a year. At one hearing, she questioned school board president Reginald Streater on the witness stand, asking him, according to court records: If there had been lottery manipulation, “Why that would cause a concern?”
Streater told Coyle 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 last week 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 nonrenewal 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.”
Coyle did deny Franklin Towne’s constitutional challenges.
How has Franklin Towne responded?
Franklin Towne officials praised Coyle’s initial order.
Seiberling, after the judge handed Franklin Towne its victory, said that he hoped the board would “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.”
Brianna O’Donnell, the school’s CEO, said last week that it was “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.”