Charter schools were supposed to redeem public education by introducing innovative outsiders into the school system.
But after a year of alleged scandal and corruption, even die-hard supporters of charter schools can be forgiven if their faith is wavering.
There are now at least two grand jury investigations of charter schools and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them.
Grand jurors are probing fraud allegations around two defunct charterschools: The New School for Enterprise and Development and the Jos-Arz Therapeutic Public Charter School. Both schools had their charters pulled after spending millions in public money.
New School officials allegedly doctored students’ transcripts to make it look as though they were meeting academic goals. There are also questions about the lavish pay for executives at New School. The school was given some $30 million in public dollars.
Jos-Arz was publicly funded, too, but its operators tried to take its building for themselves. Its name has also surfaced in the investigation surrounding former Board of Education charter schools executive Brenda L. Belton.
Belton is the target of a separate grand jury investigation. She is suspected of shuffling money to herself, her friends and her family through a series of companies. One of those suspect companies, Equal Access in Education, billed Jos-Arz for work that allegedly was never done.
The alleged Belton scandal has singed many around it. Board of Education Vice President Carolyn Graham supported Belton even after whistle-blower Steve Kapani came forward with allegations against her in mid-March.
Graham ran for president of the School Board and lost a close election to former City Administrator Robert Bobb.
“I do regret all of the things that happened last year with our charter school authority,” Graham told The Examiner last week. “I think I would have understood the staff that I was working with a lot better.”
The District of Columbia’s finance office also was criticized for not taking a stronger stance against Graham and Belton.
Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi told The Examiner last week that — despite his best efforts — his office simply doesn’t have the statutory authority to take a firmer line against waste, fraud and abuse in the city agency.
“I have repeatedly asked theBoard of Education to bring the district’s accounts into a unified audit, the same process that is applied to the District’s other agencies, only to be rebuffed,” Gandhi wrote in an e-mail.
Valencia Muhammad is a former School Board member and a columnist for the Washington Afro. She opposed the charter schools from the beginning and said that she has been proven right.
“The way the system was set up, it left the accountability and the monitoring of the schools to the board of the directors for each one of the charter schools,” Muhammad said. “You have individuals that are teaching children who do not have a college degree, you have uncertified teachers, you have violent incidents. And there’s nowhere to report it.”
Kapani, the man who exposed the alleged scandal, was put on administrative leave and has not been brought back to work. Through his lawyer, Kapani is now threatening to sue the District for violating the whistle-blower protection laws.
“It’s harmful to Steve and it’s costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars, for which they’re getting nothing,” said Kapani’s lawyer, Mona Lyons. “And it has a chilling effect on other workers who are going to turn the other way when they see wrongful conduct, because the price you pay is high.”
Anyone with information on D.C.’s school system can call 202-459-4956.
