Lawsuit against school dismissed

By Denise Dick

denise_dick@vindy.com

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The Mahoning County Educational Service Center has dismissed its lawsuit against a former charter school, saying it wasn’t cost effective.

“We talked when we originally went into this situation that we were going to have to spend some money to file the complaint,” said Ronald Iarussi, MCESC superintendent. “We talked about reviewing the case and making sure the attorneys kept us up to date with what the attorney fees were. We knew we had to chase bad money with good money and we wanted to limit the amount.”

The center’s governing board filed a lawsuit last November in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court against the former Eagle Heights Academy; its receiver, Barry Savage; the Ohio Council of Community Schools of Toledo; South Side Academy; and BHA South Side and White Hat Management, both of Akron.

The suit sought from these defendants $93,600 for special-education services provided by MCESC to Eagle Heights in the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years as well as unspecified damages.

The Ohio Department of Education ordered Eagle Heights shut down at the end of the 2009-10 school year because of poor academic performance. South Side Academy opened in August in the same building.

Iarussi said the board set $10,000 as the cap it wanted to spend in pursuing the case. The fees had approached that figure.

When the board filed the suit, it not only wanted to recoup money but to send a message too.

“We hoped to educate folks by the lawsuit about the disparity in fiscal oversight of many of the charter schools that exist out there,” the superintendent said. “We feel we accomplished that.”

The lawsuit had contended that OCCS, Eagle Heights and South Side Academy “collaborated in establishing defendant South Side Academy Inc. as a community school with the unlawful purpose and/or the effect of fraudulently attempting to escape liability for the debts” of Eagle Heights.

Savage said that the amount MCESC said it was owed was in dispute. In looking over the records provided, he found that Eagle Heights had been billed on days the school was closed, he said.

“They said they’d get back to us, and we never heard from them,” Savage said.

There had been a disbursement to teachers and faculty who continued to work at the school for about 65 percent of gross pay owed to them, he said.

“We’re hoping to make them whole,” he said.