Judges: Look elsewhere for relief

Court won’t intervene in Duquesne-West Mifflin schools dispute

Last year the West Mifflin Area School District sued its counterpart in Duquesne, the state Department of Education and others in an effort to recoup more than $800,000 it claims it is owed for educating Duquesne’s students.

Tuesday, a three-member panel of Pennsylvania appellate judges told West Mifflin that it needed to look somewhere besides the courts for help.

Commonwealth Court dismissed various counts and directed the West Mifflin district to plead its case before the education department through an administrative hearing.

In May, the district and school director Phil Shar sued state Education Secretary Pedro Rivera, his department, the Duquesne City School District and Paul B. Long, who oversees the ailing district’s operations.

At issue were state reimbursements received by West Mifflin for educating students from the financially distressed Duquesne district.

West Mifflin said Duquesne had not been paying enough, and that had led to a debt of more than $800,000. The lawsuit claimed West Mifflin was subject to a too-low reimbursement rate and miscalculations in the funding formula established by the Legislature.

“They said that the proper parties that should decide it and argue it and have the proper authority to grant the relief would be the Department of Education and the secretary,” said William C. Andrews, a lawyer representing the Duquesne district. “It didn’t really resolve the substantive issues.”

West Mifflin’s suit also claimed that the district had been shortchanged for transportation costs and for teaching special education students and those enrolled in career and technical schools.

Allison Petersen, an attorney with Montgomery County-based Levin Legal Group, which represents the West Mifflin district and Mr. Shar, said she was analyzing the opinion.

“We are trying to fully make sense of it ourselves, and this is an extremely complicated matter,” Ms. Petersen said.

“We think that the court has kept alive certain aspects of the claims and West Mifflin will be evaluating how those aspects of the case will be pursued as well as what additional steps will be taken to address the court’s

ultimate rulings on some of the other claims.”

The education department said it does not comment on active litigation.

Mr. Andrews’ client fared well.

“Basically what the court did was to say that neither Duquesne nor Dr. Long had the ability to grant or make happen any of the relief that West Mifflin was seeking, so they dismissed Duquesne and Dr. Long from the suit,” Mr. Andrews said.

In 2007, Duquesne’s chronically low test scores and financial problems led the state to close Duquesne High School and move the majority of its students to West Mifflin. Five years later, West Mifflin started taking Duquesne’s seventhand eighth-grade students.

West Mifflin was reimbursed per Duquesne student. But it disagrees with how much it was being paid.

“West Mifflin contends that, since the 2007-2008 school year, it has been educating Duquesne students without adequate funding,” according to the Commonwealth Court opinion.

West Mifflin’s suit contained six counts. Among other things, it asked the court to order a recalculation of the amount of tuition owed; to transfer federal special education funding from Duquesne to West Mifflin; and to compel Duquesne and Mr. Long to pay damages for not paying for Duquesne students’ vocational education.