Palm Beach County schools OK plan to pay $54 million to charter schools

The Palm Beach County School Board unanimously voted Wednesday to approve paying 45 charter schools a combined $54.9 million.

The district planned for this outcome, Superintendent Michael J. Burke said after the meeting.

“We’ve put the money aside, so there’s no devastating impact,” he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The payout is the result of a lawsuit challenging a district decision to exclude the county’s charter schools from receiving funds that came from a 2018 referendum tax. For the four years that followed, the money was used for teacher salary increases, safety and security, and the funding of art and music teachers.

But because the law did not explicitly include charter schools, the county only gave the money to its district-run schools.

So, in 2019, two charter schools, Academy for Positive Learning and Palm Beach Maritime Academy, along with two parents, filed a lawsuit to challenge the district’s decision. The school district initially won in trial court, but then the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the charter schools in 2021, citing the district’s need to start sharing the funds with charter schools.

The district agreed to include all county charter schools in the referendum payments for the next two years, and has since provided $45 million, not including interest. What remained undetermined, though, was whether or not the district had to reimburse the charter schools for the first two years where they’d been excluded from the referendum payments, from 2019 when the property tax increase began to 2021 when the appeals court made its decision.

The school district ultimately decided to make the retroactive payments by voting on the item without any discussion on Wednesday.

“The Settlement Agreements included in this Board item are representative of the parties’ desire to resolve all disputes, including, without limitation, all claims raised or that could be raised in connection with the 2018 referendum principal payments or funding letters,” the School Board agenda item states.