January 2016 Status Report

A summary of our charter school application status as of the end of January 2016 is as follows:

1. All submissions and correspondence have been in writing for purposes of thorough documentation and are publicly available for review on this blogsite Northfield Charter School Petition.
2. We contacted KSDE to confirm the proper online forms required to apply for approval to open a charter school in Wichita.
3. We thoroughly completed all the required KSDE forms and submitted them to USD 259 prior to the December 1, 2015 deadline.
4. USD 259 General Counsel responded with a letter in early January 2016 indicating that he considered our petition to be de jure incomplete, because the KSDE application form "unfortunately" did not [in his opinion] comply with the requirements of Kansas law.
5. Due to this alleged procedural defect, USD 259 declined to consider the substantive merits set forth in our petition and advised us to review the Kansas law to make certain our application conformed with the full legal requirements for charter schools [the official KSDE charter school application form notwithstanding ... "unfortunately"].
6. We sent USD 259 General Counsel an immediate response requesting clarification before we proceeded and we copied KSDE [which USD 259 did not do when it denied our application based on its allegation that the KSDE application form did not meet Kansas legal requirements].
7. We have, to my knowledge, received no further communications on this matter from either USD 259 or KSDE as of this date Jan 29, 2016.