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Academy Must Pay Pasco School District, Judge Rules

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By RONNIE BLAIR | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 12, 2008

LAND O' LAKES - A defunct charter school that filed a lawsuit seeking damages against the Pasco County School District instead must pay the district $93,499 that the school owed when it closed in 2003, a circuit judge has ruled.

In his ruling, Circuit Court Judge Stanley R. Mills wrote that Deerwood Academy was overpaid when the district gave the school its per-student funding. The school received $292,863, but didn't enroll enough students to earn that amount and should have been given $199,364, Mills wrote.

As a result, the Deerwood Educational Foundation must repay the difference, plus interest, Mills ruled.

It's not a certainty that the school district will receive the money, though, because it's unclear whether Deerwood has any assets.

"Based on everything I know up to this point, I would say the actual odds of recovery are probably pretty slim," said Elliott Dunn, one of the lawyers who represented the school district.

Meanwhile, the district doesn't have to pay Deerwood anything, despite the school's claim that the district took possession of computers that had been donated to the charter school and should have been returned to the foundation.

Mills ruled that poor recordkeeping made it unclear whether the computers the district took were those that were donated or were others that were paid for with public money. In addition, there was insufficient evidence to determine the value of the computers, Mills ruled.

Charles Gerdes, the lawyer representing Deerwood, said Thursday afternoon he had not yet seen a copy of the ruling and declined to comment.

Before the trial started, Deerwood dropped a claim for capital outlay money that the lawsuit had said the school was owed. In written closing arguments, Deerwood also dropped its claims about grant funds.

In testimony before Mills on April 14, Deerwood founder Henry Johnson said the school district stopped making timely payments of federal grant money to Deerwood in 2002, and that caused a financial strain that helped lead to the school's demise.

Dennis Alfonso, attorney for the school board, countered during the trial that Deerwood's financial problems had nothing to do with the school district, but were caused by a former employee who was charged with misappropriating about $80,000 of the school's money.

During the trial, Johnson and Gerdes also raised questions about what happened with a portion of the federal grant money that they said was never accounted for. The school district, though, countered that all the Deerwood grant money was spent.

Reporter Ronnie Blair can be reached at (813) 948-4218 or rblair@tampatrib.com.

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