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Litigation Update

Dear Friends,

In October 2006, a Trustee of The Schuylkill Center filed a court petition seeking to reverse many years of decisions by the Board.  Other than this individual, the Board is united in its opposition of the petition and sees it as an ill-informed and unproductive drain on the dedicated staff and volunteers who have worked to make The Center the area’s premiere environmental education center.  

You should know that the Board has elected to fund The Center’s defense from unrestricted portions of the endowment.  Therefore, individual donations to The Schuylkill Center and membership dues will not be used for the litigation.  While it is easier to denigrate with a few false words than it is to communicate the complexities of the truth, I hope that your care and concern for the Center will give you the patience to review the extensive information offered below.

If, after reading the materials below, you would like more information about any of these issues, please do not hesitate to contact Dennis Burton, Executive Director, at 215-482-7300 ext.118, George Wood, Development Director, at ext.125, or write to me, John Howard, Chair of the Board of Trustees, care of The Center.  Of course the best way to learn about the Center is to visit us and get involved.  Please check out our upcoming events and volunteer opportunities here: http://www.schuylkillcenter.org/events/calendar.html

EDUCATION & OUTREACH
Each year, The Schuylkill Center’s educational programs continue to serve tens of thousands of people ranging in age from preschoolers to adults.  These programs have evolved over time in a healthy response to changes in the field of environmental education, the opening of opportunities, and the availability of funding.  They include:

• Guided Groups – These are educational programs facilitated by our educators on our grounds.  Programs are provided to public, independent and alternative schools (pre K-graduate), and the home-schooling community.  More than 180 schools and groups throughout the Greater Philadelphia benefit from this program annually.  Attendance peaked in the early 1990’s.  School District budget cuts, particularly in the City of Philadelphia, and a dramatic increase in field trip choices throughout the Delaware Valley, have prompted a decrease in the number of local school visits to The Center. To combat this trend, the Center has sought out other sources of funding to provide travel funds to bring groups to the Center and increased its marketing of programs to teachers and principals. 

• Green Woods Charter School—In 2002, Green Woods Charter School opened its doors at The Schuylkill Center.  The school is a K-8 public charter school open to Philadelphia School District children.  The Schuylkill Center partners with the School in the development of a unique K-8 curriculum that actively engages 186 children in a cutting edge environmental education model.  Analysis by the Science Education Research Department of Arcadia University shows half the School’s students scored in the top quartile on national science tests.  Fourteen of last year’s twenty-two eighth graders sought admission to the Science Leadership High School.  All were accepted.  The Center is proud of its innovative partnership with Green Woods and considers that an important component of its overall environmental education mission. 

• Nature Ramblers Summer Camp – This is an eight-week long camp for children from 4 to 15 years of age. The Camp gives more than 280 children the opportunity to explore the natural world through hands-on discoveries, hiking excursions, art experiences and field trips.
  
  
• Philadelphia Envirothon – For the 10th year, our educators are prepping ten teams of Philadelphia high school students—85 individuals—to compete at the local level for scholarships and to qualify for state and national Envirothon competitions.

• Junior Environmental Corps- This program is in its 3rd year and helps Philadelphia schools create student water monitoring groups.  Each year, one hundred teachers and students gain the tools to collect water quality data utilized by local water treatment plants.  Our JEC groups are helping increase the health of the Wissahickon and Schuylkill watersheds.
  
  
• Preschool Programming- Through our Seasonal Art Workshops for Children and Nature Tots Programs, children are led into the natural world within a context of exploration and observation. They are encouraged to interact with and react to nature as it presents itself during each season through nature walks geared especially for them. More than 200 children benefit from these programs annually.

• Professional Education – These programs are a variety of formal (for credit) and informal programs, including Restoration Ecology Symposia, Composting Workshops, Deer Management training, and Invasive Plant Management.  Each year, several Act 48 professional development workshops are held for teachers.  Last year these programs benefited more than 300 individuals.

• Adult Education – Adult education has grown to service more than 150 people in the past year, with the addition of a six-part “Greening your Home” seminar series, Native Plant Container Gardening workshops, Citizen Science Program, Evening Hikes and more.

• Library- After much deliberation, the staff and board agreed to reduce the size of the Library.  With the advent of the internet, use had been in decline for several years. Materials were carefully de-accessioned.  Items not kept for the current library in the new Dick James Room were donated to area schools and offered to local collectors.  Books of particular value were moved to a locked case in the Dick James Room. 

LAND STEWARDSHIP
The Schuylkill Center is completely dedicated to the responsible care of its 360 acre grounds.  Claims that The Center is considering commercial or residential development are absurd.  In fact, The Center is in the process of placing conservation easements on its land so that the vast majority of the land will be forever preserved as native habitat.  This work is being done in partnership with the highly respected Natural Lands Trust, and The Department of Conservation of Natural Resources.  Small sections of the land will be held outside of the most restrictive covenants to allow for realization of the Center’s2000 Facilities Masterplan.
 
From 1998 to 2000, The Center conducted an extensive public process to prepare itself for the next millennium.  The result was a visionary document that has served to guide program and facility planning. 

Land restoration was a central goal of the Masterplan, and as a result, The Center is a national leader in the land restoration movement.  If you have yet to see Penn’s Native Acres, please visit this living museum: the deer population has been excluded now for six years; native species have been actively planted while invasive species have been removed by hundreds of volunteers; the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is funding a ten-acre expansion; and the land’s regeneration continues to be studied in conjunction with Philadelphia University and Penn State. 

Another goal of the Masterplan was to develop Brolo Farm at the corner of Hagey’s Mill Road and Port Royal Avenue into a more public venue that might host a bookstore and a café.  More recent ideas include a small farmer’s market featuring local sustainably grown fruits and vegetables as well as native plants grown at the Center by the Restoration Department. 

The Center is also engaged with the Roxborough Green Space Conservancy to assist surrounding landowners in placing conservation easements on their land in an effort to create a green corridor from the Schuylkill River to the neighborhood around the Center.  This and other efforts like it have renewed and strengthened the Center’s relationship with its neighbors. 

GOVERNANCE
At its January 2008 Annual Stated Meeting, the Board updated its Bylaws for the first time since 1993.  This is a perfectly normal occurrence with any responsible Board.  The Board adopted the changes with one dissension.  Clarifications were made where there was confusion and new provisions were made to increase the effectiveness of the Board.  If you would like to review a copy of the amended bylaws, you may do so here: 2008 SCEE Bylaw revisions -- annotated version. Here are some highlights of the changes made:

--The maximum number of positions on the Board was increased from 21 to 24, to allow for greater inclusiveness of the many talents needed by a successful Board. 
--Formerly, Board members were required to rotate off after two three-year terms, unless they were on the Executive Committee.  The Bylaws were amended to allow a productive and dedicated Board member to stay on for up to four three-year terms. 
--The number of required annual meetings was increased from one to three. 
--The Board has always been self-selecting (i.e. it was not elected by the general membership) and this practice was more clearly articulated. 
--A Board performance self-evaluation requirement and a conflict of interest policy were also added. 

LITIGATION
Eleanor Morris, a Board member since 2003, being unable to persuade her fellow Board members of the correctness of her views, chose to file a court petition to settle her differences of opinion with the other Trustees about the management of The Center.  Primarily, she seeks to void The Schuylkill Center’s lease with its educational partner of six years, the Green Woods Charter School.  She claims that the School does not fit within The Center’s purpose.  The rest of the Board, as well as the staff, feel strongly that the School advances The Center’s mission and augments its wide variety of educational programs. 

The Board carefully considered the legality and appropriateness of the relationship in 2002 before the first lease with the Charter School was approved by a unanimous vote of the Board.  Before the Board voted, it determined that the School had been formed to provide a particular emphasis on environmental education.  Moreover, as the School’s lease stipulated the Center’s staff provide the School with environmental education services, the Board believed that both the spirit and the letter of The Center’s Mission as contained in its Articles of Incorporation would be fulfilled.  Finally, the Board believed that hosting a school chartered by the State and the Philadelphia School District would further The Center’s tradition of providing environmental education to the City’s schoolchildren.

To give you full and open access to all the details of the petition, we are providing links to the original court documents. As we all know, such documents can be challenging to navigate, so what follows is a description of the documents and how they relate to one another.  The Schuylkill Center encourages all who are interested to review these documents, but we recognize that busy schedules may preclude such an investment of time. 

So, if your interest is long but your time is short, I encourage you to read at least both the Memorandum of Law contained in Mrs. Morris' Motion for Partial Judgment on the Pleadings, and the corresponding Memorandum contained in The Schuylkill Center's Answer to Motion for Partial Judgment on the Pleadings, as they present the arguments raised by the parties in a narrative and less “legalese” format.

Description of the Documents

1. Mrs. Morris filed an Amended Petition for Declaratory Judgment in the Orphans' Court Division of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, in which she raised various issues related to the operation of the Schuylkill Center, including a challenge to the decision of the Board to lease a portion of the Schuylkill Center's buildings to the Green Woods Charter School.
   
   
2. The Schuylkill Center filed an Answer to Amended Petition with New Matter, which responds in detail.  The Petition and the Answer set forth their information in numbered paragraphs, so in order to make the most sense of them you will need to read the documents in tandem (i.e. read paragraph 1 of the Petition and then read paragraph 1 of the Answer, and so on).
   
   
3. The Answer filed by the Schuylkill Center contained an erroneous response to one of the paragraphs, so the Schuylkill Center (with the consent of all counsel), filed a Stipulation to Amend Paragraph 72. 
   
   
4. Mrs. Morris filed a Reply to the New Matter of the Schuylkill Center.
   
   
5. Mrs. Morris then filed a Motion for Partial Judgment on the Pleadings, which addresses the issue of whether the 1988 amendment of the Schuylkill Center's Articles of Incorporation constituted a "fundamental change of purpose" that would require Orphans' Court approval. 
   
   
6. The Schuylkill Center opposed this Motion in its Answer to Motion for Partial Judgment on the Pleadings, on the grounds that the Motion for Partial Judgment would only delay resolution of the case.  The Motion and Answer contain two elements:  (1) numbered paragraphs that should be read together similar to the Amended Petition and Answer; and (2) Memoranda of Law that tell the competing "stories" of each party in a narrative fashion. 
   
   
7. Mrs. Morris responds to The Center’s Answer in the Reply Memorandum of Mrs. Morris.
   
   
8. On May 30, 2008 the judge in the case issued a Decree Denying Mrs. Morris’ Motion for Partial Judgment and authorized The Center and Mrs. Morris to begin the discovery phase of the litigation.  This is where the parties exchange documents and take depositions (oral testimony) about the issues presented by the case. The Center is looking forward to the opportunity to air the facts of the case before the judge so that it can put this episode to rest in as timely manner as possible.

It is extremely unfortunate that Mrs. Morris has chosen this course of action to advance her opinions, as everyone’s energies and finances could be put to better purpose.  The Center’s Board, however, is confident that it has made solid decisions in its stewardship of this wonderful organization, and trusts that upon review of the facts, both you and the justice system will agree with the collective wisdom of its dedicated, informed and involved Trustees.

Thank you for your time, your interest, your support, and your concern.

Sincerely,

John Howard
Chair, Board of Trustees
October 28, 2008