OKLAHOMA CITY —A teacher at a charter school in Oklahoma City has been accused of molesting a 14-year-old student, according to court documents.Pascal Wayne Jones, 42, of Edmond, has been charged with 10 counts of forcible oral sodomy, five counts of rape by instrumentation and 10 counts of lewd acts with a child under 16 years old.
Old National Bank is suing the operator of a charter school that closed last summer in Indianapolis, claiming it failed to pay off the $1.8 million balance on its mortgage.
LAS CRUCES — Las Montañas Charter School again has accounting difficulties and faces revocation of its charter, a year after budget problems threatened to shut down the school.
A charter school in the Milo-Grogan neighborhood is giving up its legal fight to stay open and will hold its final day of classes today.ScholArts Preparatory and Career Center for Children dropped its appeal in Franklin County Common Pleas Court yesterday...The school has received “F” ratings for student performance from the state Department of Education for the past five years. The closing ends legal wrangling that began in October when ScholArts’ sponsor, Kids Count of Dayton, told the school that it would be terminating its sponsorship.
ADELANTO—The Adelanto School District has revoked the Adelanto Charter Academy’s charter, based on a laundry list of operational shortcomings...While charter schools are by law non-profit entities, it appears that those involved with the school in some cases formed for-profit companies that were devoted to providing the charter academy with materials, ranging from furniture to computers to visual aids to books to writing materials that were sold at inflated prices.
Parents, students and teachers are unexpectedly scrambling to find a new school.The abrupt end was punctuated by locked doors and silence at one school, and with a chaotic gathering of parents and students at another.But the story at three Broward charter schools was essentially the same on Friday: financial problems had led to closure, leaving parents and students to unexpectedly scramble to find a new place to enroll.“We should have had way more time to look for other schools for our kids,” said Nicole Williams, whose son Alfonso was a 10th-grader at Eagle Charter Academy in Lauderdale Lakes, one of the three schools now closed. Also closing this week were the nearby SMART Charter School (run by the same company as Eagle Charter), and Touchdowns4life Charter School in Tamarac, which was founded by former Miami Dolphins running back Terry Kirby.
As they move to close down a network of St. Louis charter schools over the next several weeks, state education officials face a task as monumental and complicated as dismantling an entire school district...In fact, the decision this week by Missouri's Board of Education to shutter six Imagine charter schools in St. Louis will likely result in the largest charter school closure of its kind nationwide, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools...
Spend first, ask permission later, and don’t bother with receipts.
The loose financial systems at some of Ohio’s charter schools have led to questionable spending in recent years. Some schools hired treasurers with spotty track records; others hired qualified treasurers but disregarded their advice when they insisted on better checks and balances.
The recent case of a charter-school treasurer who misspent more than $600,000 in public money over a decade at several schools has highlighted how common fiscal missteps have been in charters. Fifteen of the 20 entities with the most charges of misspending by the state auditor are charter schools...
State Auditor Dave Yost said he’s pushing for a law that would strengthen accountability for school treasurers and require more training about how to manage public dollars.
Officials at the Ohio Department of Education, which licenses school treasurers, said they plan to get tough on charter-school treasurers with a history of fiscal mismanagement...
A treasurer from Gahanna — Ed Dudley Sr. of LED Consulting — has 46 findings for recovery from the state auditor. The findings stem from work at seven charter schools and total more than $440,000.
Dudley says he worked tirelessly to try to persuade charter-school boards to follow the rules of spending public money, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Few were willing to rein in the school leader, often the founder, too, even when he or she was spending money without any oversight...
Temecula’s Context Middle School was billed as a small learning environment where teachers would emphasize how lessons related to the real world.When it opened in August, the charter school set out to focus on technology and the arts, with dozens of laptops for students and music lessons during and after school.Less than six months and more than $800,000 in taxpayer dollars later, Context was gone.It joins a list of 26 other Inland charter schools that have closed or had their charters revoked in the past 20 years. Charter schools, created to foster innovation and freed from some state rules, sometimes struggle with the administrative tasks and finances needed to run a campus, experts say...
The Board of Regents officially decided to close Believe Southside Charter High School on Tuesday.
The State Department of Education announced in January it intended to revoke the charter of the school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn because of what it called "significant management and financial improprieties."...
The lawyer for a troubled Brooklyn charter school that the city’s Department of Education has flagged for closing made a forceful case at a hearing on Tuesday for keeping the school open.
The city announced in January that it planned to close the school, Williamsburg Charter High School. It had been placed on probation in September after an investigation by Eric T. Schneiderman, the state attorney general, raised questions about its management and finances.
The decision to revoke the school’s charter came less than a week after Williamburg Charter’s board of trustees voted to rehire the school’s controversial founder, Eddie Calderon-Melendez.
In a notice, Recy Dunn, the director of the city’s charter school office, wrote that Mr. Calderon-Melendez had run up the school’s debts while giving himself a hefty salary and consultant fees — $378,000 in 2010 — as well as $40,000 over two years in payroll advances...
Two Brooklyn charter high schools have been placed on probation by state education officials, putting them on a path that could lead to their being closed.
The two schools, Believe Northside Charter High School and Believe Southside Charter High School, which opened in 2009, are both managed by the Believe High School Network.
A third high school operated by the network, Williamsburg Charter, which opened in 2004, was placed on probation on Sept. 16 by city education officials.
All three schools, which were founded by Edward Calderon-Melendez, the network’s chief executive, have been under investigation by the office of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York for several months because of questions about their financial management. They face possible closing if they do not follow the city and state’s recommendations in the next year.
Cliff Chuang, director of the state’s charter school office, sent probation orders to Northside and Southside on Wednesday, charging that trustees at both schools had little knowledge of their own finances and appeared to have surrendered financial and operational control to the Believe network, which has left both schools in debt and almost unable to act independently.
Believe has also kept city education officials in the dark and has not shown them its annual budget for the 2010-11 school year or its projections for 2011-12, according to the probation orders.
According to the state, although the Northside and Southside schools share a city-owned building in Williamsburg and do not pay rent, they are $161,779 and $117,213 in debt, respectively. Yet the probation orders state that when the chairwomen of the schools’ boards of trustees, Candace Cobo of Northside and Marcenia Johnson of Southside, spoke with state officials, both demonstrated an “alarming lack of familiarity” with the fiscal issues facing their schools, including the schools’ current financial conditions.
“Given the negative working capital position of the school, and a networkwide pattern of significant expense-side budget variances, the long-term viability of this school” remains in question, Mr. Chuang wrote in both schools’ probation orders.
A lawyer for the Believe network schools, Sharon McCarthy, said the schools would work to correct their mistakes.
“Everyone is disappointed this has happened, but we are making a concerted effort to work directly with the State Department of Education to address the issues raised in the probation reports,” Ms. McCarthy said. “I think this is fixable, and they’re committed to fixing it.”
Mr. Chuang’s notices charge the schools with overstating their enrollments, saying each billed the city for 300 students. Southside has an enrollment of 246 this year and Northside has 267.
In addition, both schools have violated state law by having fewer than five voting board members, according to the state. The skeletal boards that do exist have met only four times in the last year, and several of their members have conflicts of interest that they have not disclosed, according to the state.
Information on the Believe network’s Web site suggests that its schools’ board members are, in some cases, also network employees. Jonna Caramico, for example, is listed as both a special education consultant to Williamsburg Charter and a board member for Southside.
The probation notices also said both schools were open for 180 days last year, instead of the required 186.
Two Brooklyn charter high schools have been placed on probation by state education officials, putting them on a path that could lead to their being closed.
The two schools, Believe Northside Charter High School and Believe Southside Charter High School, which opened in 2009, are both managed by the Believe High School Network.
A third high school operated by the network, Williamsburg Charter, which opened in 2004, was placed on probation on Sept. 16 by city education officials.
All three schools, which were founded by Edward Calderon-Melendez, the network’s chief executive, have been under investigation by the office of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York for several months because of questions about their financial management. They face possible closing if they do not follow the city and state’s recommendations in the next year.
Cliff Chuang, director of the state’s charter school office, sent probation orders to Northside and Southside on Wednesday, charging that trustees at both schools had little knowledge of their own finances and appeared to have surrendered financial and operational control to the Believe network, which has left both schools in debt and almost unable to act independently.
Believe has also kept city education officials in the dark and has not shown them its annual budget for the 2010-11 school year or its projections for 2011-12, according to the probation orders.
According to the state, although the Northside and Southside schools share a city-owned building in Williamsburg and do not pay rent, they are $161,779 and $117,213 in debt, respectively. Yet the probation orders state that when the chairwomen of the schools’ boards of trustees, Candace Cobo of Northside and Marcenia Johnson of Southside, spoke with state officials, both demonstrated an “alarming lack of familiarity” with the fiscal issues facing their schools, including the schools’ current financial conditions.
“Given the negative working capital position of the school, and a networkwide pattern of significant expense-side budget variances, the long-term viability of this school” remains in question, Mr. Chuang wrote in both schools’ probation orders.
A lawyer for the Believe network schools, Sharon McCarthy, said the schools would work to correct their mistakes.
“Everyone is disappointed this has happened, but we are making a concerted effort to work directly with the State Department of Education to address the issues raised in the probation reports,” Ms. McCarthy said. “I think this is fixable, and they’re committed to fixing it.”
Mr. Chuang’s notices charge the schools with overstating their enrollments, saying each billed the city for 300 students. Southside has an enrollment of 246 this year and Northside has 267.
In addition, both schools have violated state law by having fewer than five voting board members, according to the state. The skeletal boards that do exist have met only four times in the last year, and several of their members have conflicts of interest that they have not disclosed, according to the state.
Information on the Believe network’s Web site suggests that its schools’ board members are, in some cases, also network employees. Jonna Caramico, for example, is listed as both a special education consultant to Williamsburg Charter and a board member for Southside.
The probation notices also said both schools were open for 180 days last year, instead of the required 186.
The former home of a shuttered charter school is set for auction after Great Florida Bank won a $2.24 million foreclosure judgment.The Miami-Dade County School Board voted in April to shut down the Balere Language Academy after parents complained of house parties with alcohol and distasteful promotions.The Miami Lakes-based bank (Pink Sheets: GFLB) won the judgment against nonprofit Balere and loan guarantors Rocka Malik and Nagib Malik over a $1.5 million mortgage, plus interest and fees. It was also awarded judgment against Strategic Empowerment for Economic Development Corp., which provided a $1.2 million second mortgage...
The “Push It To Da Limit: The Flossin Edition” late-night party is still scheduled to go off Saturday night — but it won’t be at a South Miami-Dade charter school, as previously advertised.Miami-Dade School District officials on Friday were still trying to determine whether the Balere Language Academy — a charter school already facing financial free-fall and increased school district scrutiny — has also been doubling as an after-hours nightclub.This week district officials learned of R-rated party fliers, featuring bikini-clad women and bottles of booze, promoting a bash at 10875 Quail Roost Dr. — the address of the South Miami Heights charter school. Older ads, Twitter posts, Facebook photos and a string of parent complaints about smoky smells and empty beer bottles on campus also indicated past parties were held at the school.Balere’s principal and founder, Rocka Malik, told The Miami Herald on Thursday that she knew nothing about any after-hours parties at her school. But records show the party promoter is tied to Malik’s husband: A phone number for the promoter comes back to a car-wash company managed by Malik’s husband, Clifton Smith, who is also a director of a pre-school at Balere. Malik and Smith did not return phone calls on Friday.This is not the first time the school has come under fire: Last fall, school inspectors discovered that nine seventh-graders were being taught in a wooden storage shed on campus, records show. “Students had difficulty putting their legs comfortably under the desks,” district inspectors wrote in one report. When interviewed by an inspector with Miami-Dade’s building department, Malik denied that the shed was being used as a classroom, records show...The controversy comes as Balere struggles to stay afloat amid a barrage of problems. Among them:• A lender filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the school in June for failing to make payments on a $1.5 million mortgage — one of four mortgages on the school’s six-acre property, records show.• Enrollment at the K-7 school has plummeted from 255 students last October to just 82 students today, records show.• The school’s revenue, which comes from public tax dollars directly tied to the number of students, has shrunk from more than $2 million in 2010 to just over $1 million today. As of February, the school owed more than $100,000 to the Internal Revenue Service for unpaid payroll taxes.• The school has lost two principals since January, and school district officials said they cannot identify the current members of the nonprofit school’s board.School district officials threatened to close the charter school last year, after it received an F grade from the state based on poor student test scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. But Balere appeared to make a dramatic turnaround when it raised its grade to an A this spring, winning the school a reprieve.Yet Balere remains under scrutiny by the school district over its finances. The school had to submit a financial recovery plan to the district after two years in the red. District officials have questioned whether the school has a realistic plan to stay afloat...District officials are now questioning how the school property is handled as well. The campus is owned by Balere, Inc., the nonprofit company that also holds the charter to operate the school. Yet Balere, Inc. leases the property to another school-related entity for $8,000 a month, according to a financial audit of the school...
POINT LOMA — The founding principal of Explorer Elementary Charter School spent thousands of dollars on business meals, wine and dog treats over the last two years, expenses on her credit card that were covered by taxpayers.
Faced with a Virginia State Police investigation into possible embezzlement at Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, the Richmond School Board wants an immediate audit of the school's finances for its first year of operation...
State police have not released details of their investigation, but a former Patrick Henry treasurer approached the law-enforcement agency through an intermediary in March with concerns about a student activity fund controlled by the school's principal under the school district's tax identification number.
Last week, an audit of the fund by the school system found no evidence of fraud but serious mismanagement of the money by the school's administration...
RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia State Police are investigating an allegation of embezzlement at Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, a charter school in South Richmond that is completing its first year of operation.
State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller confirmed Wednesday that the Bureau of Criminal Investigation's Richmond field office is conducting the investigation.
M. Susan Martin, former treasurer of the charter school, said she approached state police through an intermediary in March about her concerns over the management of student activity funds controlled by the school's principal and Richmond Public Schools. About the same time, Martin raised concerns about the funds in a letter on March 14 to Richmond Superintendent Yvonne W. Brandon and urged her to audit the two bank accounts opened by Principal Pamela L. Boyd.
The accounts were opened under the public school system's tax identification number and are not controlled by the charter school's board of directors, Martin said.
Martin, a certified public accountant who completed her term as treasurer at the end of August, first raised concerns about the funds in late January while assisting the charter school's audit and budget committee...
Capital Preparatory Charter High School has surrendered its charter and is under investigation for financial mismanagement and a range of violations by the New Jersey State Police, a state Department of Education spokesman said yesterday.
The Grand Street school had been placed on two consecutive 90-day probationary periods before it gave up its charter May 2. It will close at the end of the school year. Because Capital Prep chose to surrender its charter rather than have it revoked, it cannot appeal, DOE spokesman Alan Guenther said.
In addition to the financial problems, visits to the 329-student school by DOE staff “revealed a weak educational program, lacking in rigor and not meeting the goals set forth in the school’s charter,” Guenther said...
The DOE’s Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance (OFAC) had found problems including a $300,000 deficit, improper expenditure of funds, severe cash-flow problems, and violation of state travel policies, Guenther said.
The agency also found Capital Prep lacked a certified school business administrator and committed “gross mismanagement of public funds,” including bid violations, payments without adequate documentation, overpayment to consultants and employees being paid as vendors, Guenther said.
The investigation was spurred by an audit revealing the deficit, said Carly Bolger, director of the DOE’s Office of Charter Schools. Charter schools must have a balanced budget.
Bolger said the school violated travel policies last year and this year by spending $46,000 to stay at The Chelsea Hotel in Atlantic City for several meetings and retreats without obtaining a waiver from the DOE...
An administrative law judge recommended Friday afternoon the Texas Education Agency revoke Outreach Word Academy's charter school status.
The decision comes after what the TEA alleged was nearly a decade-long mismanagement of state and federal funds.
The school maintains no wrong-doing, blaming their financial problems on faulty software, lack of assistance from TEA and its conservator and issues with auditors.
"Do we have fault in anything? Yeah, trusting people to do what they're supposed to do, especially when we're paying them," Outreach's business manager and founder, Elaine Phillips said after being told of the judge's decision.
She founded the charter school in 2002 with her husband, Samuel Phillips...
Administrative Court Judge Pratibha Shenoy wrote the following, among other things, in her 37-page findings of fact:
The academy withheld payments from employee paychecks for federal taxes, but those payments were never sent as required by the IRS.
The school was routinely late on submitting required financial reports to various agencies
In 2006, the IRS issued a Notice of Levy against the school for $184,719.37 in unpaid payroll taxes, interest and penalties. That number now reaches more than $200,000.
A month later, Outreach Academy filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
For six years, the school reported a deficit of net assets. The latest audit in 2010 showed the school to have a deficit of net assets of $996,942.
Outreach Academy was unable to adequately document how federal funds were spent, which led to the school being required to pay back $783,093. The school has not paid or reduced the debt...
The Ohio auditor’s office found “extensive mismanagement” at Eagle Heights Academy, Youngstown’s largest charter school, including the failure of the school to pay more than $450,000 in federal taxes.
The audit, released today, also shows the school illegally paid $33,900 to 29 of its employees from a federal grant.
The auditor’s office provided the IRS with information about Eagle Heights’ failure to pay $333,722.34 in federal income tax withholdings and $120,658.92 in Medicare withholdings.
The audit found $707,507 in questionable costs or errors that caused costs to be overstated or understated on federal reports.
“The lack of proper financial oversight at this school allowed for the misspending of tax dollars intended to educate Ohio’s school children,” said Auditor Mary Taylor.
The state Department of Education has ordered the school at 1833 Market St. on the city’s South Side to close by June because it received a rating of academic emergency on each of its last two annual state report cards. An effort is being made to open another charter school at the same location.
The founder and former CEO of the Public Safety Academy in San Bernardino, who was fired last year over allegations of fiscal mismanagement, is attempting to start another charter school in Apple Valley...
===================================================================The Pennsylvania Charter School Appeals Board unanimously voted Tuesday to deny the appeal of Graystone Academy Charter School in South Coatesville to keep its charter.The board reaffirmed the decision by the Coatesville Area School Board to revoke the charter, ordered in November 2011.“Initiating the process of revoking Graystone’s charter was a difficult decision for our (school) board,” said Neil Campbell, Coatesville area school board president. “But once the hearings regarding Graystone commenced and concluded, and the board reviewed evidence and testimony regarding multiple major charter violations committed by Graystone, it was clear to us that Graystone students were suffering academically and their educational interests were best served by us revoking its charter. Clearly the Charter School Appeals Board agrees with us.”...Graystone’s Board of Trustees, however, said it plans to file an appeal with the Commonwealth Court in response to Tuesday’s ruling. It will also request a stay of the revocation and said it still plans to open the school on time, on Aug. 26...In its ruling, the Charter School Appeals Board noted every major violation the school board raised as a basis for revoking Graystone’s charter was meritorious and in accordance with the law. The ruling, officials said, confirms that the decision of the school board to revoke Graystone’s charter was appropriate and lawful...
The Coatesville Area School District has begun hearings on whether to close the 430-student Graystone Academy Charter School, citing alleged violations involving academic and financial matters.Graystone said financial reasons were behind the challenge.The allegations - set out in a March 16 letter from Coatesville Board President J. Neil Campbell - state that Graystone had failed to carry out several promised academic programs and policies. The school was also accused of not meeting certain academic benchmarks and fiscal-management standards…
