... This week, Marian Lamb, 39, former director of a Cave Creek charter school, was given a year in jail and lifetime probation for two counts of attempted sexual contact with two 14-year-old boys. According to court records, Lamb regularly lured students onto the grounds of Ventana Academic School, where she plied them with alcohol, marijuana, pornography and expensive gifts...
Cincinnati's newest charter school will be managed by a national for-profit company that has faced lawsuits for allowing religious instruction and denying services to special education students.Grand Rapids, Mich.-based National Heritage Academies will manage Alliance Academy in Evanston, which is renting the former St. Mark's Catholic School and will open in late August…In 1998, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit on behalf of parents who alleged that NHA was violating the separation of church and state at its Vanguard Charter Academy in Grand Rapids. The suit was dismissed in 2000 after the school put policies in place to prevent the types of actions alleged…
DETROIT -- Acting on behalf of five parents, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan today challenged a Kent County charter school for violating the First Amendment's protections of separation of church and state.Vanguard Charter School Academy sanctioned prayer in the school, allowed the distribution of religious materials during class, allowed a nearby church to use its facilities rent-free to conduct worship, conducted a mandatory staff retreat with distinct religious overtones and taught creationism as an accepted scientific theory, according to the amended complaint filed today in United States District Court.Vanguard Charter School Academy teaches children from kindergarten through seventh grade. Like all other charter schools in Michigan, Vanguard is a public school and must follow Michigan's code for public school academies. It is managed by National Heritage Academy, one of the largest management companies in Michigan.The ACLU is suing on behalf of five parents of students at the school…
More than 400 D.C. students are scrambling to find a place to attend classes this fall after their year-old public charter school closed for good Friday, with the co-principals fired by the school's Board of Trustees for alleged financial mismanagement.
The chairman of the governing body of the Young Technocrats Math and Science Public Charter Laboratory School said the principals' actions left the school deeply in debt and unable to fight an attempt by the elected D.C. Board of Education to revoke its charter.
"We're not even sure" how much the school owes, Board of Trustees Chairman George R. Carruthers said. "We're still in the process of trying to figure it out." The co-principals, Wali Williams and Maisha Washington, who have defended their school and their own performance in past interviews, could not be reached for comment yesterday… Envisioned as a comprehensive science-and-technology curriculum for prekindergarten through grade 12, Young Technocrats struggled even before its opening in September. It was even unclear how many students attended, with estimates ranging from 400 to 460. The school leased the former Langley School just a month before opening day and found the building completed looted, without electricity, running water, a good roof or working restrooms. Money intended to pay salaries went for emergency repairs, and contractors were hired without going through the appropriate bidding process. Parents complained of lax security and poor academics. Teachers and staff members left because they hadn't been paid. In April, the school board placed Young Technocrats on probation and last month proposed revoking the school's charter.
Eighteen-year-old Resa Wynn has already overcome many obstacles. One of 15 children, she moved from her mother's home in Northwest Washington to her own apartment as a high school senior and worked in the principal's office after class to help pay the bills for herself and her toddler son.
Last month, Wynn was one of two students to graduate from the troubled Young Technocrats Math and Science Public Charter Laboratory School at First and T streets NE. But now the school has closed its doors, sunk by financial and administrative mismanagement the Board of Trustees said is so severe that it fired the school co-principals and decided not to try to reorganize it.
The closure has meant new troubles for Wynn. She, like many other employees of the school, is owed several paychecks. Also, Wynn says the school cannot find her diploma or transcript, which has hampered her efforts to apply to college…
Wynn said the other student she graduated with also hasn't been able to get his transcript. Some of the other 10 seniors, who were a few credits short of graduating, now fear they will have to repeat a full year or more because they have not received grades for the classes they took, she said.
George R. Carruthers, chairman of the Board of Trustees at Young Technocrats, said the skeletal staff left at the school is working to give Wynn and other former students what they need. He said the pay problems stem from a dispute between the board and the ousted principals about who controls school funds. "We're doing the best we can with the manpower that we have available," Carruthers said.
The 400-student school for pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students was founded last fall by co-principals Wali Williams and Maisha Washington, who previously operated a much smaller private school.
Carruthers said he and other board members did not realize how badly the school was being run until the D.C. Board of Education, which awarded the school its operating charter, proposed revoking the charter last month because of financial and classroom problems. The school board plans to formally revoke the charter at a meeting tomorrow afternoon…
Despite being rebuffed by the State Supreme Court, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he would continue to go after public money from the failed Village Academy charter school. ''We are continuing as aggressively as possible to pursue recovery against Village Academy and Robin Barnes,'' Mr. Blumenthal said. Earlier this month, the high court ruled that Mr. Blumenthal did not have jurisdiction to sue Robin Barnes, the charter school's former president. The school got $1.2 million in state aid. But Mr. Blumenthal said he would pursue a separate 2000 lawsuit against the school's trustees filed on behalf of the State Department of Education.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced a lawsuit against Robin Barnes, the president and treasurer of Village Academy, for serious financial mismanagement of the New Haven-based charter school.
"Under the guise of educating these children, Ms. Barnes engaged in self-dealing and enriched herself -- and taught a sad lesson in fraud and mismanagement," Blumenthal said. "She exploited her position of trust by entering into property leases and employment agreements that compensated her excessively. Her misconduct was a disastrous disservice to the children, the charter school program and educational opportunity."
The lawsuit alleges that Barnes benefited financially by purchasing for $110,000 the building that houses the charter school -- then reaching a lease agreement with the school that would have paid her a rent of about $275,000 over five years. Although the lease agreement calls for Barnes to personally be financially responsible for any major repairs or capital improvements to the school, she instead used the proceeds of a loan from a quasi-public agency for renovations.
Barnes informed state education officials that a Board of Trustees would oversee operations of the school. However, Barnes told the trustees that they were to serve solely in an "advisory" capacity, while she and a Board of Directors controlled school operations. In reality, Barnes directed, dominated and controlled the Academy's operations.
Village Academy is a charitable organization that was granted a charter to operate a public school by the state Education Department in August 1997. It receives $6,500 for each child enrolled in the school. During the 1997-98 and 1998-99 school years, Village Academy received about $490,000 during each academic year in funding from the state Education Department. It also received in August 1997 a loan in the amount of $140,000 from the Connecticut Health and Education Facilities Authority.
"Ms. Barnes had a direct fiduciary duty to the school, its students, their parents and to the state," Blumenthal said. "Our lawsuit seeks to recover money misspent and serious damages resulting from the breach of her duty. The law clearly demands no less."
Records indicate that Barnes was paid roughly $55,000 for services rendered to the Academy between May 22, 1997 and May 29, 1998. Under an employment agreement executed in August 25, 1998, she was to receive a salary of $38,000 for her position as administrative director between September 1, 1998 and May 31, 1999; a salary of $39,900 between September 1, 1999 and May 31, 2000; and a salary of $41,895 between September 1, 2000 and May 31, 2001.
A second employment agreement also dated August 25, 1998, stipulated that Barnes was to be hired as a consultant to serve as "superintendent of schools" for Village Academy from August 1, 1998 through August 31, 1998; June 1, 1999 through August 31, 1999; and June 1, 2000 through August 31, 2000. As a consultant, Barnes was to be paid about $30,000 for each of those time frames, payable in monthly installments of $10,000.
Despite the substantial amount in grants, loans and salary paid to Barnes and Village Academy over the past several years, the original owners of the building that houses the school, who hold a mortgage on the premises, recently commenced foreclosure proceedings.
NEW HAVEN -- — Young, confident and a tenured law school professor, Robin D. Barnes had an idea: open a school for poor children emphasizing small, intensive classes with a rigorous curriculum to give city parents an option often denied them…
What has emerged at Village Academy instead is more nightmare than visionary: a mutinous staff, a revolving-door board of trustees with questionable authority, financial mismanagement, a privately owned building being paid for and remodeled at taxpayer expense, uncertified teachers and a failure to provide enough class time, books and, at times, even a proper lunch for students…
CHARTER SCHOOL FAILS THE TEST, SHUTS DOORS, January 17, 1999, Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Chicago Preparatory Charter School was conceived with lofty goals, by an official with Mayor Daley's Office of Substance Abuse Policy, for a needy student population - recovering drug and alcohol abusers.
And yet, marijuana smoking was common in washrooms, students were allowed "therapeutic" cigarette breaks, and reading scores were the worst in the city, former students and Chicago public school officials say.
After 1 1/2 years, Chicago Prep has become the first city charter school to shut its doors. Left in its wake are unpaid bills, dozens of displaced students and angry parents. As students scramble to find new high schools in midyear, some of their parents question whether Chicago's experiment in charter schools needs more supervision. Others wonder how the school could have ever hired a former Chicago public school principal who had been fired for alleged ghost payrolling...
As one of 11 city charter schools operating this school year, Chicago Prep received $290,000 in taxpayer funds and functioned free of most state and union rules in exchange for a "charter" promising certain results. However, the school still has not produced an audit due Nov. 1 under its charter, never paid into the teacher pension fund as required by law, has not paid its teachers since November, and never secured its planned location, said Greg Richmond, the Chicago Board of Education's charter school point man.Record keeping for some programs ranged from a "confusing mess" to "non-existent," Richmond said...
Even Chicago Prep board member and spokesman Jim Fair did not know the amount of the school's debt, but said the school hopes to reopen this fall. Fair said he was unaware that the principal, Judith Riggins, had been fired from the Chicago Board of Education in 1995 following allegations that, while principal of Fuller Elementary, she placed her son on the payroll even though he did no work.
Although Riggins said she had merely paid her son for work several months after he did it, a state hearing officer ruled there was "no valid documentation" that the son had ever performed the work. The hearing officer found Riggins had twice submitted falsified records - including once under subpoena - that stated the work had been done at a time when her son had actually been away at college. The hearing officer called Fuller's record keeping "substandard" and Riggin's offense "irremediable."
Since Chicago Prep's closure, Riggins has become director of Chicago College Preparatory High School, 2314 E. 83rd St., school material indicates. She did not return phone calls for comment. Last year, Chicago Prep's high school reading scores tied for worst in the city. On a typical day, a third of its students failed to show up, board records reveal...
[Nicole] Montalvo said her daughter was among at least three students without substance problems who were recruited and told the school was expanding beyond recovering substance abusers. Montalvo said Riggins promised a "gifted" setting in which Destini would advance at her own pace in small classes. Instead, Destini said she took a chemistry class in a school with no science lab, did jumping jacks and skipped rope in the cafeteria for physical education and never saw a gym, library or student computer. Such amenities were expected in a different location that never materialized, one teacher said.In a recent letter to other charter schools, Richmond said he "lost all confidence in the school's educational program." He wrote that "very rarely did I observe adults instructing students. Classrooms had numerous students napping, listening to music through headphones or reading the paper. . . . Students would enter and leave classrooms at will."...
AUSTIN The State Board of Education on Friday revoked the charter of a financially troubled charter school in Waco and tentatively approved new rules that are expected to speed up revocations in the future.
The Emma L. Harrison Charter School is the first operating charter school to lose its license. Last year, the board revoked the license of a charter school that failed to open in East Texas despite receiving $250,000 in public funds that have never been repaid to the state…
An administrative law judge cited a number of problems at the Waco school including an insurmountable budget deficit, failure to pay employees and missed payments to the Internal Revenue Service and Teacher Retirement System. School officials Friday filed for a rehearing on the revocation.
Pringle said TEA has recommended revocation of a charter held by a San Antonio school and is studying results of audits on several other schools for possible action…
