Who Has Sovereignty Over Charter School's Location?

There are a few issues inherent to charter schools that have differing legal opinions. Sovereignty over school district boundaries is one of them.

Global Village Academy, unable to get a charter approved by Denver Public Schools this year, wants to open a second campus in the old Challenges, Choices and Images/Amandla building at I-70 and Peoria. The building is just inside the Denver borders. The Colorado Constitution and state law give a school district jurisdiction over K-12 education within their geographical borders.


But what happens when a charter school cannot find a facility within the boundaries of the district that authorized them? Historically in Colorado, this has been handled in a myriad of ways. Some charter schools have obtained a waiver from state charter school law saying the school should be within its authorizing district or a contiguous district, some have just located in the other district without anything being said by anyone, and others are told by their district, or the district they intend to locate in, that they must have Board of Education approval.

There is no right or wrong answer on how school districts should handle this since it's a gray area of the law. Each district receives its own legal counsel and is not bound by what other districts do.

However, it's interesting when a district wants to have it both ways and when convenient, locate one of their charter schools in a different district and then later say that same district cannot locate a charter school within their boundaries. This is what Denver Public Schools has done by chartering New America Schools-Lowry and Ridge View Academy which are in the Aurora Public School District. Now that Global Village Academy-2nd Campus wants to locate in DPS, there is a "different" legal opinion. DPS didn't ask permission of APS to establish two of their charter schools within APS boundaries. But now DPS says GVA must get the permission of DPS' board--and acknowledges that permission won't be granted.

Unfortunately, questions and issues such as these are not easily resolved. In the past when issues have been interpreted differently the issue has been driven to ligitation. Let's hope in this situation that isn't at the cost of the hundreds of students purportedly on the waiting list at Global Village Academy.