The controversial former leader of a St. Paul charter school has sued the Minnesota Department of Education, accusing it of taking too long to decide a disciplinary action against her.
Mo Chang, former executive director of the Community School of Excellence in St. Paul, filed the lawsuit last week in Ramsey County District Court, asking for a final ruling on whether she neglected her duty to supervise students on a 2013 school trip to Thailand.
Chang was found guilty of student neglect in 2014 and appealed the ruling more than a year ago.
The wait means Chang’s “credentials and reputation as a school administrator and executive director hang in limbo,” the lawsuit said.
Chang did not respond to a message seeking comment. She is asking the court to order a final ruling from education commissioner Brenda Cassellius and for $2,500 in attorney’s fees.
State education officials declined to comment on the pending lawsuit.
Chang had a controversial tenure at the Community School of Excellence, which she founded in 2007 and resigned from in 2015. Under her leadership, the school was investigated for the Thailand trip, failing to properly report suspected child abuse, and problems with claiming federal funds for subsidized student meals.
Officials from Concordia University in St. Paul, which oversaw the school’s operation as its authorizer, unsuccessfully tried to have Chang fired in 2014. Concordia eventually decided to stop authorizing charter schools altogether, saying the oversight role no longer fit its mission.
The Community School of Excellence is under new leadership and has a new authorizer, the Minnesota Guild of Charter Schools. It enrolls nearly 1,000 students, almost all them Hmong; 77 percent are English learners and 89 percent qualify for federally subsidized meals, an indicator of poverty.