ST. LOUIS— The Missouri Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court’s decision that dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Board of Education of the City of Saint Louis ruling that it does have standing to challenge the approval of a charter school in its district.
The appellate court’s decision sends the case back to the trial court for further proceedings and focuses solely on the issue of standing, without addressing the merits of the SLPS Board’s claims, according to an April 22 opinion in the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District.
The legal dispute began when BELIEVE STL, an organization seeking to establish a charter school, submitted a charter school application to the Missouri Charter Public School Commission on July 9, 2023.
Under Missouri law, charter school applicants are required to notify local school boards when applying to sponsors who are not school boards themselves. BELIEVE STL attempted to email the application to the Associate Superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools, but a typographical error in the email address cast doubt on whether the application was ever received.
On July 18, 2023, the commission held a public hearing on BELIEVE STL’s application, and the following day it voted to approve the application and sponsor the charter school.
In September, the commission learned that the SLPS Board had not received a copy of the application as required. BELIEVE STL then sent the application to the SLPS Board, which responded by formally objecting to the proposal.
On Nov. 16, 2023, BELIEVE STL withdrew its original application and submitted a revised one.
This second application was delivered in both hard copy and electronic form to the SLPS Board. Four days later, the commission again voted to approve the charter school, and BELIEVE STL submitted the approved application to the Missouri State Board of Education, which gave its final approval on Dec. 5, 2023.
In February 2024, the SLPS Board filed a petition in court seeking declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.
The petition alleged that both the commission and the Missouri school board had acted “unlawfully, unreasonably, arbitrarily, and capriciously” in approving BELIEVE STL’s application and requested that the court prevent the school from opening until all statutory procedures had been followed.
In April 2024, after both parties agreed on a set of facts and presented arguments in court, the trial court dismissed the petition, ruling that the SLPS Board lacked standing to bring the lawsuit. The court did not evaluate the SLPS Board’s actual claims.
The SLPS Board appealed, arguing that Missouri law grants it specific rights and responsibilities in the charter application process—rights that had been infringed.
The Court of Appeals agreed, citing sections 160.405.1 and 160.405.2(1) of Missouri statutes, which require that the school board of the district where a charter school intends to locate must receive the application and be given the opportunity to file objections.
The appellate court held that these provisions confer “legally protectable interests” upon the SLPS Board.
As such, the SLPS Board was directly and adversely affected by the alleged failures of both the Commission and the Missouri Board to follow statutory procedures.
Because of this, the court ruled that the SLPS Board has standing to pursue its legal challenge.
With this ruling, the case returns to the trial court, where the SLPS Board’s claims against the Commission and Missouri Board will now be considered on their merits.
Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District case number: ED112985