We provide comprehensive legal services to Pennsylvania public and private school entities, and have extensive experience as school solicitor throughout the Commonwealth. We offer a variety of services to education clients, including aiding with governance; discipline and due process; labor and employment; real estate; construction; and financing issues.
Our experience representing education clients includes:
- Initial charter applications;
- Drafting board policies, codes of conduct, and employee manuals;
- Conducting board trainings;
- Attendance at expulsion and disciplinary hearings;
- Advising through the charter renewal process;
- Purchase and leasing of real estate, including handling zoning matters;
- Real estate construction and improvement projects;
- Financing options, including traditional bank loans and tax-exempt bond financing;
- Acting as school counsel and underwriter counsel in connection with tax-exempt bond offerings;
- Advising on employment matters, including handling claims filed with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission; and
- Relations with the School District of Philadelphia and other authorizing entities.
Examples of our attorneys’ recent successes in representing schools include:
- Representing a charter school in the acquisition of a building and completion of a $14 million construction project, which included acting as school counsel in connection with tax-exempt financing through PAID; successfully obtaining zoning variances; and negotiation of agreements with a construction manager, architect, and several subcontractors.
- Assisting Hardy Williams Academy Charter School and Mastery Charter High School in connection with the integration of Hardy Williams Academy into the Mastery Schools Network.
- Successfully representing Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia, the first all-boys charter school in Pennsylvania, in obtaining a charter from the Philadelphia School Reform Commission in the face of opposition from several law groups who had opposed the proposed school on the grounds that a single-sex charter school would violate the state and U.S. constitutions.
- Successfully representing a Philadelphia charter school in a hearing before the School Reform Commission challenging the School District’s decision not to renew its charter. The hearing resulted in the School Reform Commission granting the school a full, five-year charter renewal. This was the first successful challenge of the non-renewal of a charter in Philadelphia.
