“Sentinel Watchdog: Failed charter school paid principal's husband $460K.” Orlando
Sentinel (FL), 12/1/2012
The failed Orange County charter school that gave its principal a payout of $519,000 in taxpayer dollars after closing in June also paid her husband more than $460,000 during a five-year period, audits show.
Young, husband of NorthStar High School Principal Kelly Young, helped establish the charter school 11 years ago and was its first board president. He resigned from the NorthStar board in August 2008, the same month he was arraigned on charges of soliciting prostitutes while on duty as an Orange County sheriff's commander. He was ultimately adjudicated guilty of three charges and lost his law-enforcement job. He is now a divorce attorney.The payments to Steven Young appear to violate state law prohibiting public officers and employees from doing business with family members, according to legal and charter-school experts. The law states that no employee or officer may purchase services "from any business entity of which the officer or employee or the officer's or employee's spouse or child is an officer, partner, director, or proprietor."...Between 2010 and 2012, the school also paid at least two of its five board members a total of $48,000 to do clerical and administrative work for the school. Those payments also appear to violate state law and conflict with NorthStar's contract with Orange County schools, district officials say...Under Florida law, charter schools are run by independent governing boards. Although the schools use public money, state and district officials have little to no control over how the money is spent. According to an August report by the state auditor general, a third of state charter schools had accounting problems, legal violations or other problems in their 2011 audits...According to former teachers, the school should have been shut down years ago.Some classes were taught by uncertified teachers, several former staffers said. Scott Simmons, who taught history and art at the school from 2002 to 2007, provided a document showing that the school submitted class schedules that made it appear that only certified teachers were being used. It showed Simmons teaching health, a class he never taught.The school had inadequate books, overcrowded classrooms, no library and a cafeteria without food service.Simmons also said the principal routinely forced out troublesome students after they were counted for funding purposes...Simmons said he reported problems, including cheating on a Stanford Achievement standardized test, to the administrator who oversaw charter schools for Orange County in 2006, but the complaints never led anywhere. The school's charter was renewed in 2007. The Orange County school district was poised to close down the school for poor academic performance and other issues when the NorthStar board voluntarily closed the school this year...
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“Principal's Golden Parachute Infuriates
Lawmakers.” Associated Press, 10/28/2012
A failed Florida charter school's principal is getting a $519,000 departure payment, and that has some state lawmakers outraged.An evaluation by the Orange County School District shows NorthStar High School's directors paid Principal Kelly Young more than twice as much as they spent on teachers and students in the 2011-12 school year.The Orlando Sentinel reported that Young received $824,000 in taxpayer funds. That includes the departure payment but not money she's still getting for winding down the school's operations. Meanwhile, the school spent $366,042 on instruction, including teacher salaries last year..."I have never seen an act that egregious in 15 years of working with charters," said Rep. John Legg, a Port Richey Republican who's a charter school business administrator.A recording on Friday said the phone number listed for the school had been disconnected.While Young was getting a handsome salary, the school, made up of concrete portables, lacked computers, a library or a cafeteria for some 180 mostly at-risk and underprivileged students...
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“$500,000 payout to charter principal sparks
outrage, call for probe.” Orlando
Sentinel (FL), 10/24/2012
The principal of a failed Orange County charter school took home a check for more than $500,000 as the school closed down in June and is still being paid thousands of dollars a month to wrap up the school's affairs.The check for $519,453.36 in taxpayer money was cut to Kelly Young, principal of NorthStar High School, two days after the Orange County School Board accepted the school's plan to close in lieu of being shut down for poor performance.The payment, which was authorized by the charter school's independent board, appears to be legal...Young's payout was based on a contract that called for her to be paid about $305,000 per year through 2014, even though the school's contract was up for renewal in 2012. She was paid 85 percent of her remaining contract.Her yearly pay and bonuses to run the school, which served about 180 largely at-risk students in east Orange County, was higher than that of Barbara Jenkins, superintendent of the 181,000-student Orange County Public Schools...Because charter schools do not have to report their principals' salaries in Florida, it is unclear how many might have contracts or salaries similar to Young's...
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“Struggling NorthStar charter in Orlando is
closing.” Orlando
Sentinel (FL), 3/2/2012
NorthStar High School in Orlando will close at the end of the school year, a move Orange County school administrators recommended because of declining student achievement.The charter school's principal said it has decided to shut down voluntarily.Orange staff recommended NorthStar not be renewed when its current contract ends this year because student test scores and graduation rates have dropped since 2008 and the school's grade has not been better than a D...
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