In the latest chapter in a long-running legal battle, an appeals court Wednesday ruled that the Palm Beach County School Board is required to make retroactive payments to charter schools stemming from a 2018 referendum.
The referendum asked voters to approve a property-tax increase for issues such as school safety and teacher pay, saying the money would be “dedicated for operational needs of non-charter district schools.”
Charter schools are public schools that are typically operated by private entities.
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After voters approved the ballot measure, charter schools Academy for Positive Learning and Palm Beach Maritime Academy and two parents filed a lawsuit against the county school board, arguing that charter schools were entitled to a portion of the money.
The appeals court in 2021 agreed that the charter schools should get a cut of the tax dollars, and the Florida Supreme Court later declined to take up the issue.
Left undecided, however, was whether the charter schools should recoup money from the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years, a period when the legal issues remained unresolved.
The appeals-court panel Wednesday overturned a circuit judge’s ruling that sovereign immunity shielded the school board from having to make retroactive payments.
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