Rocky Killion, superintendent of the West Lafayette, Indiana, public school district, is a fighter for public schools. A few years ago, he helped to launch an outstanding film about the extremist assault on the public schools by privatizers; it is called Rise Above the Mark, and it showcases the good work done in Indiana’s public schools.
Now Rocky Killion is suing the state of Indiana for permitting an “unconstitutional land grab.” The legislature passed a law in 2011 declaring that any unused schools must be sold to charter operators for $1. Rocky Killion says this is wrong. The schools were paid for by the taxpayers, and they belong to the district, not to charter operators.
WEST LAFAYETTE – West Lafayette schools, defending against any effort to takeover the former Happy Hollow Elementary, filed a lawsuit Thursday, is challenging the constitutionality of a 2011 state law that says public school districts must lease unused classroom space to charter schools for $1.
Rocky Killion, West Lafayette Community School Corp. superintendent, said no charter schools or anyone else has approached the district about Happy Hollow, built at 1200 N. Salisbury St. in the 1950s, since the building closed as a school in 2019.
But Killion said the district didn’t plan to wait to save what he called a community asset in West Lafayette.
“We believe that there is a constitutional right for taxpayers and for property owners that they own property that the state cannot come in and do a land grab without some due process,” Killion said.
“We think there’s a constitutional argument to be had here: The state can’t just go into your place and take your land or give it to a private company for a buck,” Killion said. “As the charter-privatization movement broadens in Indiana, the greater capacity this has for these private companies to come in and do this. If you think about it, public schools can’t do this. So, I think someone needs to stand up and say, ‘Is this constitutional? Should this be legal?’ I personally believe it is not.”
The legislature under Mitch Daniels, then under Mike Pence, catered to private and religious institutions and scorned the state’s public schools.
It is time that someone put their foot down and refused to go along with a blatant giveaway of public assets.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hooray! The tax payers should be plaintiffs as well. Public schools are public, not private, assets.
We need more of these lawsuits!
I mentioned this a while ago. The City of Hobart discovered this law when they built a new school because the old school was all but falling down. Not only would they have had to sell the old school to a charter for $1, but they would have been on the hook to fix up the old school too, which is why they built the new school in the first place. They tore down the old school in a hurry.
Indiana is out of control. Check out the latest debacle that is ILEARN. The stare assessment created to set passing rates aligned with
NAEP scores. It is unbelievable, but since it is Indiana, not so much.
and so exactly the same in more and more states: the virus keeps spreading
It’s up at OpEd News https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Indiana-W-Lafayette-Publ-in-General_News-Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Property-Rights_Public-Disclosure-190915-135.html
This is the reverse of “The Government’s Power of Eminent Domain,”
and selling this public land for private use should follow the same laws. The 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution also has something to say about the power of Eminent Domain.
“When the government does take private property for public use, it must fairly compensate the owner for the deprivation”
That means the closed public school cannot be sold to a private party for $1. The public must be fairly compensated.
“Fair compensation is typically determined using the market value of the land, that is, the price for which the landowner could reasonably expect to sell the land to some other buyer. What the land is worth depends on many things, including the size of the property and the buildings, crops, or timber upon the land. For permanent takings, courts use one of several methods to determine market value.”
https://realestate.findlaw.com/land-use-laws/the-taking-of-property-for-public-use.html
Location is also a big part of determining value. Many of the public school buildings that have been taken over by private charters are in older parts of the cities near the CBD. The proximity to transportation and the business district makes them valuable parcels.
I understand that, but even in those areas, I think a large plot of land with buildings on nit is worth a lot more than one dollar.
People need to stop using euphemisms for this stuff.
It’s not a “giveaway” because you can only give away what is rightfully yours to begin with.
It’s stealing.
The legislature is stealing property that belongs to school districts.
The district should be managing its properties, not the state. Before we even address the ludicrous mandate to lease to outsiders @$1/yr, local taxpayers should decide if it makes more sense to lease a closed sch to a privsch or other biz, or sell it if pop seems in permanent decline. In my NJ town, the ‘40’s former hisch bldg became the sch admin bldg in ‘60’s; the older orig hisch was long leased to private schools, finally re-purposed in 2010 for all the town’s K classes, avoiding multiple elemsch additions.
Our town was long a well-funded but tightwad Rep anomaly in a liberal state; many other districts poor or wealthy sold off such properties to developers. Our decisions have helped keep the town’s excellent school system delivering per-pupil cost well below state ave [currently we spend $13,634, vs ave NJ $19,075]. Like IN, NJ redistributes state aid acc to need. We get only 4% state aid, & have often upped local RE taxes to compensate over the decades. But REtax increase has been capped at 2% cap for a decade, & we’ve kept it under that for 3 yrs [last yr’s increase -0-].
Of course OTOH, NJ has terrible inequality of housing, SES-wise. Much of our “success” is simply due to a small % of SpEd/ ESL students upon whom we can afford to lavish local school programs.
But IN has gone the route of majority sch funding by the state for decades; state now funds 85% of sch cost. Those changes were made in the attempt to fund districts w/low RE-prop tax base equitably. But once the tail is wagging the dog, IN gets laws like this one, mandating state political “school-choice” whims that limit local choices w/o their input.
The law might make sense if one buys that charter schools are “public.” Hopefully that point will be made by the state, thus allowing the claim to be argued. But even if that point fails, the cost of the district’s sch bldgs was almost certainly borne by locals, before the funding changes.
This seems an important case to watch, challenging assumptions about the wisdom of state providing 50+% of school costs, which allows state actors to run roughshod over local interests. For those who assume prop taxes drive [inequitable] school funding, check out the map at this link: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-state-and-local-property-taxes-work There are 15 states where proptax carries only 25% of the load, 13 only 20%, 8 only 15%.
Sorry, I see that 85% state funding was from early 2000’s. IN had raised sales taxes from 6 to 7%, and funded most day-to-day school op expenses w/state taxes. Then recession hit, lowering revenues for sales & state income taxes. They slashed state school funding; as of 2012 it was 51%.
The law under challenge by Killion is post-recession, dated 2011. I called it a “political school-choice whim,” but it’s probably more accurate to say it’s just part of IN’s ongoing legislation underfunding ed & pawning it off on privatization. During Pence’s govrship, corp taxes were lowered, state inc tax was cut by 5%, & inheritance tax was eliminated – according to this assessment 5 yrs later, resulting in no change to wage growth, disposable income, poverty. https://www.marketplace.org/2018/05/11/tax-cuts-have-they-benefited-indianas-economy/