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.