GREENE COUNTY
The Greene County Board of Education unanimously voted on Jan. 19 to approve a settlement with Lake Oconee Academy that ends the charter school’s 29-month-old lawsuit against the BOE.
“We’re really happy,” BOE Chairman Mike Lynch told the Lake Oconee News on Friday. “We got some things. We gave up some things. They got some things. They gave up some things. And that’s the way these things work.”
“I’m happy it’s over,” LOA Board of Governors Chairman Michael Tompkins said shortly after talking with Lynch. “The good news is that he was in a good mood and I’m in a reasonably good mood.”
The agreement resolves, for the moment, a dispute over the number of students that LOA can enroll and how many of them will be funded by BOE.
Currently, about 40 percent of the county’s approximately 2,600 students attend LOA.
The settlement covers only the remainder of the current charter, which expires in June 2024.
The key points:
• The Greene County School District will pay LOA $1,093,284 over six years. Installments will start this August and be made in August each year.
• LOA has a current enrollment of about 1,081 students but agrees to lower that number to 1,051 through attrition. However, children of LOA employees or applicants who have siblings already enrolled at LOA will be exempted from the count. This means that other children on the current waiting list or participating in the April lottery will likely face an even lesser chance of getting into the highly-rated charter school between now and June 2024.
• The will withdraw a complaint made to the state charging LOA with violating its charter by enrolling 1,081 students, which exceeds the 1,051 limits set in the current charter.
• BOE will fund 1,032 LOA students this year and 1,051 next year. LOA will absorb the cost of any remaining students.
• BOE and LOA will file a Joint Voluntary Dismissal with the court, which will end the lawsuit.
Pressure to settle
LOA filed its lawsuit in September 2020. Since then, each side has made public accusations as court filings and depositions in the lawsuit continued. Even after the two sides signed a “draft agreement” in October it took three months of arguing over legal wording before the settlement was resolved.
All the while, intense pressure has come from parents, community groups, and the county’s business and economic development leaders, who have said the dispute is distracting educators from their primary job of teaching children.
Roger Fields has been a vocal spokesperson for the Lake Country Conservatives at both LOA and BOE board meetings over the past year. This week he said he’s glad to finally see a resolution.
“We’re glad it’s done, although it’s way too late,” he said. “Way too much money and lost resources were spent between these two school boards.”
Tompkins recently estimated that legal fees paid by both sides totaled in the $500,000 range.
“Egos and bull-headedness,” Fields lamented. “They were so interested in their egos and their territory that they lost track of what they’re supposed to be doing with the kids.”
Real estate agent Todd Ciavola has also been a frequent voice pushing for a quicker settlement at LOA and BOE board meetings.
“It’s mega-important for the real estate market and for the health of the economy and the county in general,” he told the Lake Oconee News. “It’s one of the top three things that people look for when they want to move into the county or open a business in the county.”
Ciavola said that when asked by prospective families or businesses about the quality of education in Greene County, he chooses to be direct.
“I definitely try not to cover that up. I want people to go in with their eyes wide open because I know there have been some real hurt feelings with that in the past. Some people didn’t understand about the lottery or about the cap,” he said, and adds “Being able to either raise the (enrollment) cap at LOA or get rid of the cap would be the best thing that could happen.”
New charter coming
The test of whether the lawsuit settlement calmed the waters or set things up for a bigger storm comes as the BOE and LOA must now work together to renew LOA’s charter. The current charter expires in June 2024, and a renewal application agreed to by both boards must be filed with the state later this year.
LOA opened in the Fall of 2007 as a charter school kindergarten with 15 students and grew into a successful and highly rated K-12 school. At the same time, the other schools in the Greene County School District continued to struggle with low test scores.
Fields’ group and others think that the LOA charter renewal could be used as the cornerstone of a bigger picture.
“The thing that’s always bothered us,” he said, “is that nobody’s got a clear roadmap to what our school system will look like in 10 years and what are the building blocks to getting us there that are inclusive of LOA and the other education (institutions) of Greene County.”
Last year both the BOE and LOA worked separately on their own long-range plans. The school system is moving forward with the construction of a new elementary school. LOA continues to physically expand while hoping to increase enrollment.
“I look forward to having a normal, good relationship with LOA,” Lynch said after the BOE approved the settlement, “and we have to work on making the total school system in the county the best in the state. And that’s what we are going to work on.”
Add to the mix that 2024 is an election year.
“We’re going to be watching very closely from this point on,” Fields said, “to see how the two groups behave and work together or not work together. Then, we’re going to get very active in elections and replacing people and boards.”