Broward wrongly closed charter school over armed guard, judge rules
Broward Schools overstepped its authority when it terminated the contract of a Davie charter school — and then took it over — because the school didn’t have an approved armed guardian, a judge ruled.
Championship Academy of Distinction in Davie will now be able to reopen as an independent charter school, after a July 31 decision by Administrative Law Judge Cathy Sellers.
“No evidence was presented showing that Championship’s failure to have a fully-executed contract for a safe-school officer constituted any danger — much less an immediate and serious danger — to its students,” Sellers wrote.
The School Board took the unprecedented step of taking over the school last August after it started the school year without approved armed security.
The board’s action was in response to a law passed by the state Legislature in 2018, in the wake of the Parkland school shooting, requiring schools to have a police officer or armed security guard trained by the Sheriff’s Office at every public school.
State leaders pressured the district to ensure charter schools, which have contracts with school districts, complied with the law.
State law allows districts to close charter schools if there is an immediate danger to students’ health and safety.
The school had an armed security guard on campus the first two days of school last year, but he had not been trained by the Sheriff’s Office as required by state law. After being told the school was out of compliance, Championship paid an off-duty Davie police officer to guard the school for the next three days.
While that met state law, the School Board argued it wasn’t a long-term solution because the school had no contract and no commitments to cover the remaining days of school.
Sellers didn’t buy the district’s argument.
“The fact that some type of danger or threat potentially may come into existence at some point in the future does not meet the statute’s clear requirement that the danger to the charter school’s students must be occurring here and now — i.e., be in existence — to warrant immediate termination of the charter,” she wrote.
Championship plans to reopen virtually on Aug. 19 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so no armed security guard will be needed right away, a representative for the school said.
District spokeswoman Kathy Koch did not respond to a request for comment.