BAKER — The Baker School District says the state board that oversees public education took too long to review plans to improve academic performance among its younger students and cannot now let the Recovery School District lay claim to a facility where children from kindergarten to fifth grade go to school.

The district says it submitted improvement plans to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education last fall, but that by Feb. 12 it had heard nothing back. The system's board then voted to close Baker Heights Elementary and Baker Middle and move students to the campus of the Park Ridge Academic Magnet School on Groom Road.

A month later, BESE's School Innovation and Turnaround Committee voted to place Baker Heights and Baker Middle in the Recovery School District, and two weeks after that RSD wrote to the Baker board saying that, as of May 27, it wanted control of the Parkridge campus housing K-5 students.

State law gives BESE a right to intervene at schools deemed "academically unacceptable" for an extended period of time, but Baker said it didn't act in a timely manner. Baker went to court and on Monday a judge issued a temporary order preventing the state Department of Education from taking further action.

"I just wanted to update you and let you know that we prevailed in our request for a preliminary injunction," Superintendent J.T. Stroder wrote to school patrons on Facebook. "This puts a halt to efforts to take over the facility at 5903 Groom Road." Students in grades 6-8 are at the address next door.

A full trial will follow, Stroder said.

The state Education Department said Judge Tarvald Smith's ruling was just part of the process.

“Our actions are rooted in statute and the best interests of students," the Education Department said in a statement. "(The) ruling is one step in the legal process, and we look forward to continuing this effort on appeal.”

Baker said there had been an informal agreement among the RSD, the Baker district and GEO, which operates charter schools. The purported agreement said RSD and GEO would operate the school but Baker would own the facility. An April 1 letter from the Recovery district directed Baker to hand over the facility.

The lawsuit, initially filed April 11 against BESE, said that since Baker had voted in February to close Baker Heights, BESE had no authority to assign it to the RSD. In turn, RSD has no valid claim to the building at 5903 Groom Road. The lawsuit was later modified to target the state Department of Education.

The state says it maintains a right to address persistent academic failure. Declaring schools "closed" doesn't take away the state's authority, it said.

"The Legislature did not provide local school boards with a unilateral escape hatch from accountability," lawyers for the state wrote in response to the Baker district lawsuit.