The D.C. charter schools scandal took a new twist with the revelation that an employee of charter schools executive Brenda Belton altered a memo directing the schools finance office to pay questionable contractors.
Mary Bunn admitted to her supervisors Friday and to The Examiner on Monday that she cut and pasted Board of Education Vice President Carolyn Graham’s signature on a May 17 memo to Abinet Belachew, comptroller of the schools’ finance office.
The memo asks Belachew to approve nearly $45,000 in payments to several contractors, including Equal Access in Education, Habari Gani and the Foston Institute.
“I’m not denying anything,” Bunn told The Examiner Monday. She refused to say whether she was ordered to alter the memo.
The contractors are among several that have been linked to Belton.
Fired by the Board of Education last week, Belton is the target of a grand jury investigation. Authorities want to know whether she funneled money to herself, her friends and her family through a series of companies. Belton once denied any wrongdoing. Her lawyer has not responded to calls seeking comment.
Graham is a Baptist minister who is running for board president. She has vehemently — and repeatedly — denied helping Belton obtain payments for the companies.
On Sunday, Board of Education President Peggy Cooper Cafritz defended Graham.
She said that Graham’s signature was lifted from an identical memo that had been addressed to schools’ then-chief finance officer John Musso. It was the same account that Graham offered to The Washington Post on Saturday.
Cafritz said Graham wrote the memo to Musso on Cafritz’s authority.
“They were vendors,” she said, “and they had to be paid.”
Why was the board paying contractors two months after whistle-blower Steve Kapani warned the school board about them?
“We had no idea of the range of alleged felonies,” Cafritz said.
Cafritz also lashed out at Kapani.
“Steve would not show me anything. He would not meet with the board because he thought certain members might not meet with him,” Cafritz said.
“He had knowledge of this long before he came forward,” she said. “That’s my beef with Steve.”
Kapani has been on administrative leave since June.
Cafritz also said that she had raised concerns about Equal Access at least two years before the FBI raided Belton’s office and home on May 31. She was outvoted by the board, Cafritz said.
“When their first monitoring report came out, it was really crappy,” Cafritz said. “I protested again and said that the contract could not go to them.”
A friend of Cafritz was then made a subcontractor to Equal Access. That friend, Shelia Handy, said she couldn’t recall who her contact at Equal Access was.
Sources familiar with the investigation said that Bunn and Kapani have told investigators that Belton was collecting checks for Equal Access.
This does not resolve all questions for Graham. Her statement to The Post on the Musso memo contradicts her earlier denials. In the Sept. 11 edition of The Examiner, Graham was asked if she had intervened with Musso to obtain funding for the contractors.
She denied it emphatically.
“You are at risk, really, of affecting a bigger issue here,” she said at the time. “And it needs to stop.”
Graham has not responded to requests for comment.
The memo controversy also raises questions for the city finance office. In April, District Council Member Kathy Patterson, D-Ward 3, sent a letter to Chief Finance Officer Natwar Gandhi, voicing concerns about how Belton was spending her money.
Why, then, was the school finance office cutting checks to the contractors — with or without Graham’s memo?
Spokesman Eric Balliet said the matter “is currently under review by our Office of Integrity and Oversight.”
On Monday, Bunn acknowledged that she and Graham met behind closed doors late last week to discuss the memo.
Afterwards, Graham sent out an e-mail to members of the board saying that Bunn should be fired immediately, a top school official said.
Board Member Tommy Wells, said Monday he wants to hear from Bunn before any decision is made.
“She has more than 30 years of service,” Wells said of Bunn. “We should look very closely at what Mary Bunn was required to do.”
Did Belton order Bunn to alter the memo?
“That’s what I want to know,” Wells said.
