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Tulsa School Board: Charter School's Contract Renewed for Three Years

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Kim Brown, Tulsa World, Okla.

Jun. 20--The Deborah Brown Community School's contract with Tulsa Public Schools was renewed for three years Monday.

Tulsa school board President Matt Livingood announced at the board's June 5 meeting that the district and the charter school had reached an agreement after months of negotiations.

The main issues of contention were the school's lease and enrollment practices.

The board voted in April to continue to sponsor the school for three more years, but Superintendent David Sawyer and Tulsa Public Schools attorney Doug Mann disapproved of the amount the charter school was paying to lease a downtown facility.

The building had been purchased recently by D-Bora Investments LLC, which is owned by Deborah Brown, the school's founder and executive director.

In January, the school left Lindsey Learning Academy, where it was paying a lease amount of $4,400 a month to Tulsa Public Schools. It then leased the downtown facility at 3 S. Cincinnati Ave. from D-Bora for $8,166.50 per month for the rest of the 2005-06 school year.

Livingood said Monday that the contract renewal would ensure that the terms of the lease would be negotiated not by Sawyer and Mann but by the charter school's board and D-Bora.

"The lease between the charter school and the landlord is the responsibility of the charter school itself rather than the district saying what it should be," Livingood said.

Member Cathy Newsome asked Livingood and Mann what the board's role would be if members believed that a charter school was "paying way too much for leasing a property with taxpayer money."

Mann replied that the board would have a right to act.

"If there is evidence to base or support that anything is inappropriate with that lease, that would be the basis of terminating the charter," he said.

The contract renewal also states that Deborah Brown Community School can continue to enroll students who live anywhere in the Tulsa school district, which it has been doing since it opened in 2000.

Board members had noted that the school originally proposed to enroll only students who lived in certain ZIP codes.

Harold Roberts, development director for the Deborah Brown Community School, thanked board members for their help in resolving the "major issues of contention" in the negotiations.

"Deborah Brown is pleased to make the best of this new contract," he said.

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Kim Brown 581-8474 kim.brown@tulsaworld.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Tulsa World, Okla.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Tulsa World

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