Supreme Court rejects Pearl Creek filing

The Alaska Supreme Court today rejected the effort by the state and advocates of the Pearl Creek charter school to overturn a lower court order and mandate reopening the school.

The court order said the request for an emergency review filed Thursday was denied.

This likely means the school will not open this fall, as the school district continues its challenge of the Dunleavy administration decision to override a unanimous ruling by the local school board.

The school district filed this document early Monday giving its objections.

Had the Supreme Court sided with the Dunleavy administration, there would have been chaos at three neighborhood schools in August—Anne Wien, Woodriver and University Park.

It would also have placed the district back where it was before—possibly faced with the need to close another neighborhood school. Charter schools have never been forced to close to deal with declining enrollment.

Dunleavy’s acting attorney general and Pearl Creek advocates claimed last week that Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Kirk Schwalm “rewarded the district’s blatant disregard of the legal rights of Fairbanks families wishing to enroll at Pearl Creek” and asked the court to order the district to permit the school to open in August.

The Dunleavy administration continues to claim that it is illegal to cite financial harm to the district as grounds for opposing the creation of a charter school.

The state said the district “erred” when it claimed that financial harm to the district justified rejection of a charter school.

But the source that the acting AG cites for the alleged error is this treatise from Dunleavy’s education excellence division, which is a dubious document. Author Courtney Preziosi simply declares on pages 27-28 that it is against the law for any school district to reject a charter school on grounds that the district will face significant harm financially and operationally.

I have asked for an explanation of where in state law it says that a locally elected school board must approve a charter school even if the locally elected officials are sure that it will harm the district and likely will not succeed.

No one has provided a clear answer.