Opinion ID: 2278866
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: City Neighbors and Patterson Park

Text: The city board petitioned for judicial review in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City in both the City Neighbors and Patterson Park cases. Although not parties to the SBE proceeding, the Baltimore Teachers Union and the Baltimore City Municipal Employees Union also petitioned for judicial review, and several other public charter schools filed responses to the city board's petition. The court consolidated all of the petitions. The city board complained that SBE had misconstrued ED § 9-109, that its funding formula violated Federal law, that its declaratory rulings constituted impermissible rulemaking, and that various procedural deficiencies violated its right to due process. The unions complained that SBE erred in determining that public charter schools could request waivers of employee rights protected by ED § 9-108. That issue was not, in fact, in the City Neighbors and Patterson Park cases then under judicial review. Patterson Park, along with several other public charter schools, had requested a waiver in a separate proceeding. See Patterson Park v. Teachers Union, 399 Md. 174, 923 A.2d 60 (2007). On July 12, 2005, while the judicial review action was pending, the city board granted City Neighbors a three-year charter. The parties reached agreement as to funding only for the first year (2005-06), however, leaving open and unresolved the level of funding for school years 2006-07 and 2007-08. On August 2, 2005, a similar agreement was reached with Patterson Park  the city board granted a three-year charter but agreed to funding for only the first year. Those agreements permitted the two schools to open as scheduled in September, 2005. On August 24, the court filed a memorandum opinion and order in which it (1) dismissed the city board's petition as moot in light of the partial agreements reached with City Neighbors and Patterson Park, (2) nonetheless opined that the procedure used by SBE was flawed, and (3) notwithstanding that the issue of waiver presented by the unions was not at issue in the SBE proceedings under judicial review in that court, nonetheless declared that SBE erred in determining that public charter schools could request waivers of the statutory requirement that their employees must be full-time public employees. The attached order dismissed the city board's petition as moot and reversed the SBE declaratory ruling governing the seeking of waivers. Both City Neighbors and Patterson Park filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment, arguing that the case was not moot. When their motions were summarily denied, without a hearing, they and the city board appealed. The Court of Special Appeals found each of the Circuit Court's rulings to be erroneous and therefore reversed its judgment. City Neighbors v. School Board, 169 Md. App. 609, 906 A.2d 388 (2006). The court held that the issue regarding the funding of the City Neighbors and Patterson Park schools was not moot, that SBE's declaratory rulings were not erroneous, either procedurally or substantively, and that the unions' complaint about waiver was not ripe for review.