Minutes - Council - 04/08/2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

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To give some background and context about the events preceding the dec. action herein, I was contacted by Mr. Look in approximately late December, 2007 or early January 2008 about what he believed was the circumventing of the law by PACT charter school in terms of the lack of preferences for Ramsey residents in kindergarten and grades 6-12. Although there were some "boxes" to check on the school application as to specific preferences, no such box indicated a "residency" preference was available. Since I was told by Mr. Look that there was some disagreement as to the use of the word "town" and the narrow construction of entity incorporation or non incorporation advocated by PACT, Mr. Look and I eventually formulated a query to the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) in conjunction with Senator Jungbauer regarding whether ''town'' and "city' were synonymous for the purposes of applying the law. (I spoke with our city attorney informally about the matter before submitting the query to the MDE.) The MDE responded to that query on about January 25,2008 indicating essentially, that based upon the legislative history, it believed Ramsey residents did have a "resident" preference for kindergarten and grades 6-12 as it applied to our city. Subsequently, Mr. Look and I met with Mr. De Bruyn on February 11,2008 to discuss the MDE opinion and to determine whether PACT would be honoring at least the MDE position on a "resident" preference. PACT school administrator De Bruyn was diplomatic and polite. Mr. De Bruyn told me of his vision that he sees students attending the school only based upon their desire to attend being in agreement with the school vision. This is in contrast to those students that attend because PACT is the closest school and in contrast to those students that attend PACT because PACT is a school within their community. At that time, it was my personal opinion that unfortunately Mr. De Bruyn's vision and desires were in contravention of state law and detrimental to the choices of Ramsey residents. In that meeting, Mr. De Bruyn indicated among other things, that he did not agree and like the position of the MDE and complained that he did not have input into the MDE's decision. He further indicated that he was weighing his options to reverse the MDE opinion, obtain another opinion from the attorney general's office and/or speak with PACT legal counsel, a Briggs and Morgan Law Firm attorney. (Note that Briggs and Morgan works on the other side of the fence for the City of Ramsey in its Town Center project.) In any event, Mr. De Bruyn reiterated that he thought the law applied to only "towns" of which Ramsey was not. He did not provide any documentation of his position at that time. He indicated that his legal counsel would be getting him some information regarding the specific issue within the next several days and would pass that onto us. We waited for this supposedly revealing information for over 3 weeks or until March 6,2008. We received no information from Mr. De Bruyn, no information from his counsel, no new information from the MDE, and no information from the attorney general. Likewise, we did not receive any information that PACT school or legal counsel was making efforts to contact the MDE or the attorney general. As of today, I am unaware that any contact with those agencies was ever attempted. I can say that I do not commence legal action as a first option. Based upon my professional opinion that the PACT charter school was entrenched in a position contrary to law and was unwilling to follow that law for the upcoming school year, it was my 3