2011 Louisiana Laws
Revised Statutes
TITLE 17 — Education
RS 17:3982 — Local school boards; duties

§3982. Local school boards; duties

A.(1)(a)(i) Local school boards shall comply with R.S. 17:3983 and shall review and formally act upon each proposed charter within ninety days of its submission and in the order in which submitted. In doing such review, the local school board shall determine whether each proposed charter complies with the law and rules, whether the proposal is valid, complete, financially well-structured, and educationally sound, whether it provides for a master plan for improving behavior and discipline in accordance with R.S. 17:252, whether it provides a plan for collecting data in accordance with R.S. 17:3911, and whether it offers potential for fulfilling the purposes of this Chapter. The local board shall engage in a transparent application review process that complies with the latest Principles and Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing, as promulgated by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and shall provide for an independent evaluation of the charter proposal by a third party with educational, organizational, legal, and financial expertise.

(ii) A local school board may accept charter proposals until February twenty-eighth of each year and shall provide written notification of its final decision to the chartering group. Notifications of charter proposals denied shall include written explanation of the reasons for such denial.

(b) Notwithstanding the provisions of Subparagraph (a) of this Paragraph, school boards which govern a local system that has been declared to be in academic crisis, as defined in R.S. 17:10.6, shall not consider, review, or act upon charter applications for a Type 1 charter school and shall notify the proponents of any pending Type 1 charter proposal or any newly submitted Type 1 charter proposal that the board is ineligible to act on such applications and that each such application may, therefore, be submitted to the state board as a Type 2 proposal pursuant to R.S. 17:3983(A)(2)(a)(ii).

(2) The local school board shall make public through its website, and in printed form upon request, the guidelines for submitting a charter proposal, all forms required for submission of a charter proposal, the timelines established for accepting and reviewing charter proposals, the process that will be used to review charter proposals submitted to the board, and the name and contact information for a primary point of contact for charter proposals. If no final decision is received within ninety days after the submission of the proposal, then the chartering group may submit its proposal to the state board for its review.

B. Local school boards shall make available to chartering groups any vacant school facilities or any facility slated to be vacant for lease or purchase up to fair market value. In the case of a Type 2 charter school created as a result of a conversion, the facility and all property within the existing school shall be made available to that chartering group. In return for the use of the facility and its contents, the chartering group shall pay a proportionate share of the local school board's bonded indebtedness to be calculated in the same manner as set forth in R.S. 17:1990(C)(2)(a)(i). If such facilities were constructed at no cost to the local school board, then such facilities including all equipment, books, instructional materials, and furniture within such facilities shall be provided to the charter school at no cost.

Acts 1995, No. 192, §1, eff. June 14, 1995; Acts 1997, No. 447, §1, eff. June 30, 1997; Acts 1999, No. 14, §1; Acts 1999, No. 757, §1, eff. July 2, 1999; Acts 2005, 1st Ex. Sess., No. 35, §1, eff. Nov. 30, 2005; Acts 2009, No. 123, §1, eff. June 26, 2009; Acts 2010, No. 334, §1; Acts 2010, No. 722, §1; Acts 2010, No. 756, §2, eff. Jan. 1, 2011.