Embattled schools executive Brenda Belton hid hundreds of thousands of federal dollars from the school board, altered an e-mail to inflate a cost estimate and gave no-bid contracts to friends and family, a whistle-blower has told investigators.
Steve Kapani, 36, a financial analyst who worked for Belton, has told the D.C. Inspector General’s Office Belton was so “friendly” with several school contractors — one of whom used school computers and attended meetings in Belton’s stead — that she once changed one of Kapani’s e-mails to inflate a cost estimate from $5,000 to $55,000, sent payments to multiple vendors that were using the same federal tax identification number and that Belton concealed $307,000 in No Child Left Behind Act money from her bosses on the D.C. school board by parking it at a separate school agency.
A grand jury is now poring over bank records, witness statements and seized documents to check Kapani’s testimony and to make sure that all of Belton’s contractors actually did the work for which they were paid, sources tell The Examiner.
The investigation has widened to include members of the school board. If there was something wrong in Belton’s office, what did the board members know and when did they know it?
Through her attorney, Belton has denied wrongdoing. Her lawyer has declined numerous requests for further comment and has not made her available for an interview.
But she told staff at her offices that she gave money to people who were qualified for the job and that she will be vindicated by the investigation.
Some board members are saying that the board should dissolve Belton’s office and cede control to the D.C. Public Charter School Board.
Congress has already made its displeasure known by refusing to fund the D.C. school board directly.
Kapani, who had worked for Belton for three years in the charter school office, came forward earlier this year with the testimony and the documents that make up the center of the four investigations.
As a result of his whistle-blowing, he has been placed on administrative leave.
What follows is the story of the investigation.
CRUNCHING NUMBERS
A financial analyst, Kapani was hired in 2002, the year before Belton was appointed as executive director of D.C.’s charter school office.
He worked for several years for the state of Maryland before joining the D.C. public schools.
As an analyst, part of his job was to track spending in the schools’ charter offices.
There are more charter schools in D.C. than any other major U.S. city, but authority over them has been split: The D.C. public school board supervises 17 charter schools and the 4,000 students who attend them.
The D.C. Public Charter School Board supervises the other three dozen charter schools.
Belton was a veteran of the D.C. public schools. She had once supervised the District’s Vocational Education Program.
She was appointed to run the charter schools office in early 2003.
But Kapani told investigators that she was rarely in the office, didn’t follow up on assignments and often missed meetings.
LONG-TERM ABSENCES
Sources familiar with the investigation give the following account:
Last November, Kapani told newly elected Board Member JoAnne Ginsberg that Belton wouldn’t be seen for weeks at a time.
Kapani also told Ginsberg that Belton was very friendly with the contractors who were supposed to work for her.
One contractor-friend, Pearl Sandifer — whose picture was on Belton’s desk — actually attended school meetings in Belton’s place and used school computers.
Attempts to reach Sandifer for this story were unsuccessful.
A former staffer of District Council member Kathy Patterson, Ginsberg had taken office in June 2005 and was an outspoken advocate of the charter school program.
She sat on an ad hoc committee of the board that was charged with supervising Belton’s office.
Soon after taking office, Ginsberg asked for a meeting with Belton and her staff. Belton did not show up.
“I don’t want to meet with you guys,” Ginsburg told Kapani and Bunn, “I want to meet with your executive director.”
Ginsberg had alsobeen critical of Belton’s work. Ginsberg told other board members that Belton’s reports were often sloppy, and they had to be rewritten before they could be made public.
Frustrated, Ginsberg asked Kapani what was going on.
Kapani was stand-offish at first, but later told Ginsberg that he was afraid of criticizing Belton in front of other school board members. He said he had noticed that Belton seemed to be on friendly terms with many school officials and vendors.
Ginsberg began making mental notes of Belton’s attendance.
By the early part of this year, Ginsberg had enough. In a meeting of the ad hoc charter schools committee, she moved to have Belton fired.
But she met resistance from D.C. school board colleagues William Lockridge, Jeff Smith and board Vice President Carolyn Graham.
When Ginsberg complained that Belton was rarely in her office, Graham said, “Nobody works a 9-to-5 job anymore.”
Ginsberg’s motion would be defeated, 3-1.
PRESSURE FOR OPENNESS
Months before Ginsberg made her failed motion, Belton told Kapani to prepare a cost estimate for scanning some documents to put on a Web site.
Board member Vincent Reinoso was pressuring staff in the schools to be more open to the public about their doings.
D.C.’s schools were notoriously poor performers and Reinoso — who had also criticized the quality of Belton’s work — wanted “transparency” in the school system.
He asked Belton to scan financial records for her office’s contractors, copies of expenditures and the backgrounds on the groups who were running charter schools for the board.
In early January, Kapani e-mailed Belton an estimate of $5,000 for the scanning.
Belton then forwarded the e-mail on. When it reached Reinoso, the cost estimate was $55,000.
Reinoso told staff he was flabbergasted. He called a Kinko’s office and got a quote for a similar job.
With the Kinko’s estimate in hand, he asked a secretary to get explanation for the cost estimate. The secretary went to Kapani.
But Kapani told the secretary he had not sent the $55,000 estimate. The secretary went to talk with Belton.
Moments later, Belton called Kapani. He told investigators that she said, “don’t do anything, don’t talk to anyone, refer everything to me, I’ll take care of it.”
Belton then called Reinoso and told him that it had all been “a mistake.”
“We misplaced a decimal,” Belton told Reinoso.
REASON TO WORRY
The matter might have ended there, but a few weeks later, Mary Bunn got a phone call from an official at the Public Charter School Board, a separate board that supervises 38 other schools.
A veteran of the school system, Bunn was Belton’s secretary.
The Charter School Board official told Bunn that they were preparing their budget request for the next fiscal year and needed copies of invoices and contracts to account for the $307,000 in No Child Left Behind Act money that Belton had given out. It was part of a fund shared by the two agencies and kept in the Public Charter School account, the official told Bunn.
The official added that Belton had been promising documentation for her expenses but hadn’t delivered.
Bunn went to Kapani for advice.
But he had never heard about the joint fund.
It was then, Kapani told investigators, that he began to worry.
