Brenda L. Belton’s signature once dispatched millions of dollars and affected the education of thousands of children in District of Columbia charter schools. This afternoon, Belton is expected to put her signature on another government document — this time, a guilty plea.
Belton, 61, is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court at 3 p.m. today to admit that she used her position as Board of Education charter school director to bilk the D.C. and federal governments out of hundreds of thousands of dollars that went to her cronies, her daughter and herself.
It wraps up one string in an investigation that has stung the D.C. school system and the larger charter school movement.
Though not well-known inthe wider city, Belton was a D.C. insider with all the right connections, from her sorority to powerful friends on the school board, such as board members William Lockridge and Carolyn Graham.
A longtime consultant and minor official in the schools bureaucracy, Belton was appointed director of the school board’s charter school program in 2003, thanks in part to her friendship with Lockridge. It gave her responsibility to monitor 18 charter schools that enrolled up to 5,000 children.
It also gave her access to millions in local and federal dollars, including No Child Left Behind funds, that were pouring into D.C. charter schools.
Charter schools were supposed to save D.C.’s stricken public education system by bringing in private groups that wouldn’t be tied down with arduous regulations and union contracts.
Until last year, D.C. had more charter schools than any other city in the nation. Charter school fans such as Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., saw D.C. as a laboratory for their pet projects, and the money flowed with few questions asked.
According to federal charging documents, Belton and her friends saw opportunities in the charter program. They created a series of companies and rewarded themselves with no-bid contracts and exclusive school charters, according to charging documents.
The scandal became public in June 2006, after federal authorities raided Belton’s home, her office and the offices of another school agency, carting away thousands of documents. Belton was put on paid administrative leave and continued to draw her $98,500 salary until October, when the school board, after months of contentious debate, voted to fire her.
The school board would later vote to cede its authority over charter schools. Mayor Adrian Fenty campaigned on a promise to take over the schools, put the board — D.C.’s oldest democratically elected public body — out of business. He won popular acclaim for the proposal, in part because the public was weary of the scandals emanating from the school board.
Terms of Belton’s plea have been not been disclosed. She is scheduled to appear before Judge Ricardo Urbina at 3 p.m.
