Dauphin County Judge William Tully has granted a request by the Harrisburg School District solicitor to delay a planned court hearing on whether the state should take over the school district.
The hearing originally was scheduled for Friday, just four days after the state Department of Education filed a petition asking the court to appoint a receiver for the district.
School District Solicitor James Ellison filed a motion Tuesday asking for four more days so the district could prepare a defense against 18-pages of allegations made in the petition.
Ellison argued in his motion that the short delay until June 11 would not be unduly and would only be fair to the district since the state “invested a significant amount of time,” gathering materials in the petition.
Tully agreed to continue the hearing but extended it until June 17, because of “scheduling conflicts. The hearing was set for 8:30 a.m. in Courtroom 7.
Under Pennsylvania law, a judge must hold a hearing within seven days after the filing of such petition, which would be June 11. Tully noted in his order that counsel had agreed to extend the statutory timeframe.
The ten-day delay pushes back the deadlines of the legal proceedings. Under Pennsylvania law, the judge has ten days from the date of the hearing to issue a ruling and potentially name a receiver.
With the continuance granted, that means Tully faces a deadline of June 27 for his final ruling instead of June 17, as it was previously.
The school board’s next regularly scheduled meeting is June 17.
Shortly after the state filed for a takeover of the district, School Board President Danielle Robinson called for a special meeting this Thursday to “vote on personnel and any other business matters.”
That means school board members potentially could take action and vote on contracts at two separate meetings before a decision is made on receivership.
The petition filed Monday by Education Secretary Pedro Rivera outlined about a dozen separate bases for petitioning the court for a receiver, including a series of costly human resources mistakes by the district and the failure to fill the long-vacant position of chief financial officer. The district’s interim business manager also doesn’t possess the qualifications or experience for the job, but the district has not replaced him despite repeated requests from the state.
The district has been under state supervision since 2012 when it entered the state’s program for financially distressed school districts. A chief recovery officer has been overseeing a state-sponsored recovery plan, but Rivera said in his petition that district officials are failing, and even refusing, to meet the goals.
If Tully eventually appoints a receiver, the receiver would take over operations of the district from the current school board and superintendent.
The petition recommended that the court appoint the district’s current Chief Recovery Officer Janet Samuels as receiver and she has agreed to accept the position. She’s a retired superintendent from Norristown with 40 years of experience in education.
Under Pennsylvania law, the judge must grant a petition for receivership filed by the Department of Education unless the court finds “clear and convincing evidence that the petition for the appointment of a receiver is arbitrary, capricious or wholly irrelevant to restoring the school district to financial responsibility.”