Board of Education Vice President Carolyn Graham ordered the school finance office to pay tens of thousands of dollars to contractors two months after being warned that several of the contractors were suspect, a memo obtained by The Examiner shows.
Thememo, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, contradicts Graham’s previous denials that she had helped charter school executive Brenda Belton obtain funding for the contractors. Dated May 17, it came two months after whistle-blower Steve Kapani told Graham and other board members that he suspected Belton was funneling money to herself and her friends through a series of companies.
Meanwhile, high-ranking school sources told The Examiner late Thursday that the board had voted to fire Belton from her $98,500 per year job. The vote was held behind closed doors Monday. It was passed unanimously, with member William Lockridge abstaining, the sources said.
Lockridge earlier defended Belton from attempts to have her fired. His uncle, Calvin Lockridge, was one of several people Belton paid to monitor the charter schools.
The firing wraps up one of several loose ends from a story that began unraveling in mid-March, when Kapani went to the inspector general’s office with his allegations. Those allegations now make up the backbone of a grand jury investigation.
Before he went to the inspector general, Kapani told board members about his suspicions. He said he had concerns about several contractors, including Equal Access in Education and Habari Gani.
Yet, two months later, Graham was asking schools comptroller Abinet Belachew to pay those very vendors, according to the memo.
“This office is requesting your assistance in providing payments to the vendors listed below,” the memo states.
The memo is written on Graham’s Board of Education stationery. It appears to have her signature on it. Among the several payments authorized by the memo are more than $15,000 to Equal Access and $450 to Habari Gani. It also asks Belachew to pay more than $12,000 to the Foston Institute. The Foston Institute is Rebera Foston, a “holistic mentor” who addressed staff from Graham’s private ministry for two days at Sumner School. Graham is a Baptist minister and is running for school board president. She has claimed repeatedly that school funds covered her ministry’s seminar with Foston by mistake. She later wrote a check to the Board of Education for $3,000 and said that it would reimburse the schools for the mistake.
Last week, Graham denied having intervened to obtain the funds for the suspect contractors.
“Your paper should not, and I hope would not, write any such allegation,” Graham said. “It is absolutely not true.”
Graham did not respond to calls or an e-mail seeking comment for this story. Belton is now the target of a grand jury investigation.
She has denied any wrongdoing. Her lawyer, Vincent Cohen Jr., refused comment for this story.
He also refused to say whether he was being paid by the Board of Education to defend Belton.
According to invoices from Equal Access, the group was headquartered at 26 Underwood Place NW. City records show that the building is co-owned by Belton’s daughter.
A neighbor said the building has been vacant for three years and that Belton used to own it.
Kapani had told board members in mid-March that Belton herself was personally collecting payment checks made out to Equal Access.
Habari Gani was paid under the same tax identification number as Wanda Gordon, a friend of Belton’s, and a group calling itself WRG Specialty. School sources say that the Graham memo was written at Belton’s urging. Belton’s requests to obtain the payments had been rejected by Belachew — in part because Belachew didn’t see how the payments would help the 4,000 children in the charter schools Belton supervised.
At the time the memo was written, Graham was the de facto board president. Current President Peggy Cooper Cafritz was — and remains — gravely ill.
