Wilmington sues to keep Moyer open

Wilmington officials are taking the rare step of suing the state Department of Education in an attempt to keep it from closing the Maurice J. Moyer Academic Institute charter school.

"The economic viability of the city and the safety of its residents depends in large measure on the availability, within the city, of a high-quality public education," Mayor Dennis P. Williams said in a statement. "We cannot idly sit by as another city high school is put on the chopping block to be closed."

The city filed its lawsuit in Chancery Court on Tuesday, asking the court to force the state to reverse its decision to revoke the school's charter. Moyer, which serves almost entirely black, low-income students, is filing a separate lawsuit.

Secretary of Education Mark Murphy and the state Board of Education voted last month to revoke the school's charter, citing test scores among the lowest in the state and sliding. Only 10 percent of students scored proficient in math and only 23 percent scored proficient in reading on the state standardized test last year.

State officials pointed to problems with attendance and discipline, a curriculum they say is out of line with state rules and insufficient services for special-needs students.

Department of Education officials would not comment on the city's lawsuit because they had not been served with it by Tuesday afternoon, spokeswoman Alison May said.

Moyer leaders have acknowledged their scores are not where they should be but say they are serving an extremely challenging student population and have struggled with major turnover in teachers and administrators.

The school's board says Keenan Dorsey, its new leader who started in the summer, is turning Moyer around and the staff just needs more time to prove it is on the right track.

Because there is no traditional public high school in Wilmington, city officials say current Moyer students would likely be forced to take buses to outside high schools. They have long criticized that system, a legacy of Wilmington's messy desegregation saga that split the city into four different school districts joined to its suburbs.

"Our city has faced the closure of general, public high [and other] schools and the busing of our kids to schools far from their homes," Williams' statement reads, "and as a result, parents have been precluded from participating fully in their children's education due to a lack of transportation."

Williams also called for the department to "devote the energy, commitment and financial resources necessary to develop Moyer Academy and other public education facilities in the city into high-quality public schools."

Moyer and state regulators have been at odds for months.

Moyer had been out of compliance with its charter for more than a year before the state's decision. Before that, a previous incarnation of the school was closed in 2010 for poor performance. State and Wilmington officials backed the opening of a new school on the same site with a similar name.

The school changed its name to the Moyer Academic Institute this year to signal the major changes its leaders are making.

Moyer is not the first charter to put up a fight when told to close.

Reach Academy for Girls lost its charter last year, but a judge forced the state to leave it open after a lawsuit argued it was discriminatory to close the state's only public all-girls' school while leaving an all-boys' school (Prestige Academy) open.

In court filings responding to that lawsuit, department attorneys argued that courts ordering charters to stay open could seriously diminish the state's power to regulate charters, which are supposed to have tougher accountability in exchange for more flexibility from state rules.

Reach and the state Department of Education agreed to leave the school open until its next review. A state panel has recommended that Reach's charter not be renewed; that school, along with Gateway Lab School, will learn their fates at the state board's meeting next month.

The state also revoked the charter of Pencader Business and Finance Charter High School in early 2013.

Pencader closed that summer, but only after the state provided $350,000 to help it cover its closing costs.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.