A career that began on Sesame Street will end in prison early next year, as disgraced former school executive Brenda Belton was sentenced to 35 months in jail and an additional two years of probation for pilfering hundreds of thousands of dollars from the schools she was supposed to help.
“What you did was to further damage an already crippled system,” federal Judge Ricardo M. Urbina told Belton, 61, as she wiped away tears and squeezed a tissue. “This city deserves better.”
In June, Belton agreed to plead guilty to charges that she used her position as the Board of Education’s charter school executive director to enrich herself, her friends and her family.
Belton, who was working for the children’s television show Sesame Street when she won a grant that took her to graduate school and eventually back to her native Washington, called on dozens of witnesses, including some school officials, to write letters in her support, but Urbina said he was “unimpressed.”
Authorities raided Belton’s homes and two charter school offices in late spring 2006. The Examiner reported extensively on the dummy companies and cronies that Belton was using before the raid.
Under the plea agreement, the two sides agreed to a sentencing range of between 30 and 37 months, but Assistant U.S. Atty. Timothy Lynch urged Urbina toward the high end, saying that it was necessary to deter other public officials “tempted, on the bubble” who were thinking of stealing.
Lynch, who is also prosecuting two city tax office workers in what he has called the largest corruption scandal in D.C. history, said a tougher sentence would encourage the “vast, vast” number of honest, hardworking D.C. employees.
“They deserve to be vindicated,” he said.
The Belton scandal embarrassed the school board and helped make it easier for Mayor Adrian Fenty to take over the city’s schools. It also exposed problems with the city finance office, which approved each one of the phony payments Belton was sending out. When school comptroller Abinet Belachew tried to stop the payments, he was overruled by his bosses in the city finance office.
As Urbina pronounced his 35-month prison sentence, Belton’s daughter, Lindsay Holmes, burst out, “Can I please testify for my mother, please?”
Urbina had a deputy escort her out. Before being sentenced, Belton had a message for The Examiner.
“You’ve made my life something else this past year,” she said. “But bless you, anyway.”
