No. 386 M.D. 2002 (Pa. Commonwealth, 2002)

Facts of the Case

The Village Charter School (Village) was established in December of 1997. The Village is a nonprofit, independent school located in the Chester Upland School District (Chester). The Board of Control has responsibility of operating the school district. As set forth by law, the school district is required to provide funding for a charter school’s operations in twelve monthly payments.

In June of 2002, Village only received payment in the amount of $173,512.18, half of what was allocated. A letter was sent to Charles B. Zogby (Secretary of Education) requesting that the remaining amount of allocated funds be deducted from the state subsidies for the school district and be directly paid to the charter school, as set forth in law.

The full monthly payment was due from the school district on June 5, 2002. Village notified the Secretary of the district’s failure to pay on June 6th. The Secretary informed Village that the request would have to be processed before payment could be made and the earliest date of payment would be June 27th. Village began the suit on June 13th.

Village filed suit to (1) declare that the school district, the Board of Control, and the Secretary have an obligation to provide funding to Village, (2) gain injunctive relief to compel them to provide funding to Village, and (3) declare that funding must be provided to Village in the current and following school years.

The Secretary filed a motion asserting that the Village suit should be dismissed because of (1) the court’s lack of original jurisdiction and (2) Village’s failure to exhaust all administrative remedies available under Section 1725-A(a)(5) of the Charter School Law..

Decision of the Court

The court found that it did have original jurisdiction but it dismissed the claim because Village had not exhausted all available administrative remedies.

Basis of the Decision

The court found proof of original jurisdiction under Section 761(a) and (b) of the Judicial Code. Basically, this says that the court has exclusive original jurisdiction over officers of the Commonwealth, and thus the Secretary. By extension, since the other defendants were intertwined to the extent that a judgment against one would affect the others, the court established original jurisdiction over the other defendants.

The second issue of this case was whether or not Village had exhausted all administrative remedies before petitioning the court. The court found in favor of the Secretary. Village argued that the administrative remedies were inadequate because they did not allow for adjudication of the issue in a timely manor, and thus irreparable harm would be done before the Secretary remitted the funds on June 27th, instead of June 6th as sought by Village. The court ruled that Section 1725A (a)(5) did not set forth any time limitation and therefore did not render the administrative remedies inadequate.

Written by Matthew Herbert, July 10 2003