On a 4-1 vote Thursday, the Acton-Agua Dulce school board approved a new charter petition that calls for the Acton-Agua Dulce District to oversee and receive tax money from a school within the boundaries of the Newhall School District. The Newhall school board is fighting the move.

There was some disagreement among Acton-Agua Dulce officials on the governing board over the staff’s contention about space for a charter school, but a judge is set to make the final decision in February.

The move is still subject to a judicial review due to the terms of recent litigation between AADUSD, the Newhall School District, which has sued to stop AADUSD from approving Albert Einstein Academy for the Letters, Arts and Sciences outside of AADUSD boundaries.

AADUSD officials once again gave both the Albert Einstein Academy for the Letters, Arts and Sciences, as well as the Newhall School District, time to state their respective cases at the public hearing in front of several dozen community members and parents at Meadowlark School in Acton.

Einstein Academy operates a charter high school in Valencia through the William S. Hart Union High School District, and AADUSD granted the school a charter for an elementary school in 2013.

The charter was set aside after a judge — prompted by an NSD lawsuit — ruled AADUSD officials didn’t properly document their fact-finding efforts for a school site within their own boundaries before approving a charter school site within NSD boundaries back in December 2013.

A school district must make every attempt to find a suitable site within its own boundaries before it can approve a charter school outside of AADUSD boundaries, — and document those attempts, according to the judge’s ruling, which was among the contentions discussed Thursday night.

“In the ruling from the court,” said Mark Distaso, vice president of the AADUSD governing board, “(Judge James Chalfant)  directed us to hold a re-hearing, and we held the hearing and there was a staff report that was prepared by district administration.”

The staff report addressed all 16 elements necessary for a charter school approval, even though the judge’s concern was really focused on the location element, Distaso said.

The merits of AADUSD staffers’ claim there was no valid space was disputed by Newhall School District officials and Larry Layton, the lone nay vote on the AADUSD governing board.

“Part of the reason I voted no is, I don’t think that’s fair and just for everybody,” Layton said, referring to one district’s ability to “poach” students from another district. “Whether or not it’s legal, that’s still being determined by the courts.”

However, Layton, a law professor, said if that were his only objection, he would have still voted to approve the charter, because that’s not a legally permissible reason to deny the charter.

But he considered AADUSD’s Acton campus a suitable site, noting it’s currently being used for “auxiliary” purposes, such as housing the district’s administrative offices, and other temporary uses for community organizations.

He also mentioned the district’s Agua Dulce elementary, or sharing both sites, as another possible site to accommodate the demand for the popular charter.

“(The Acton campus) is a good school, it’s a good campus — that’s why I can’t jump right in and say out of the whole campus there’s only one room available — and that’s what the staff report said,” he added.

The other four board members, Distaso, a retired Glendale PD captain, and Ed Porter, Michael Fox and Matt Ridenour, felt the school district wasn’t able to accommodate the school at a site within it boundaries.

Speaking in general terms about the district’s support of charter schools, Distaso said the district was trying to build a collaborative partnership, and the goal was to create more offerings for parents.

“If you want to have parents flee your school district, reduce the programs available, reduce the number of specialized education programs, and parents will leave and it becomes a vicious cycle,” Distaso said, noting his district, like many others in California, is experience historic decline in enrollment. “And this is where, in some circumstances, charters schools can flourish.”

However, the competition for ADA, the term for attendance that is the basis for school funding, can create an adversarial system, which also is occurring statewide, he said.

“(Charter schools) come in with a different specialized program, they come in with different learning models and when parents feel the normal school system has failed them,” Distaso said. “They’ll start to look at alternatives, and now it becomes very competitive.”

For its part, Newhall School District officials who would normally have oversight for any public school located within their boundaries — which includes the Orchard Village Road site used by the Einstein Academy elementary school that AADUSD OK’ed in 2013 — said they plan to appeal the judge’s decision, even though NSD was deemed the prevailing party.

“The district believes the Superior Court erred by allowing the charter school to continue operations despite finding that it did not have a valid charter,” according to a district statement.

“Every member of the Newhall School District board is committed to serving the community for the benefit of its students and seeing that the law is upheld,” the statement continued. “We have no opposition to charter schools; but we are opposed to the actions of organizations that twist the law and its purpose in an effort to make money rather than to serve children.”

Chalfant ordered the parties to appear Feb. 5 with a new and properly vetted AADUSD board-approved charter agreement to avoid permanent revocation of AADUSD out of district boundary Einstein Elementary site.