Charter schools’ self-dealing hurts kids and needs attention
Owen Gyles on March 5, 2012 in School Paragraph No Comments »
Fordham has worked in Dayton – as a funder, charter-school authorizer, and charter-school advocate – to push for the creation and growth of high quality charter schools since 1998. Over the last decade one of the highest performing charter school clusters in the city has been the Richard Allen (RA) Schools (RA has three schools in Dayton that serve about 800 children). Over the years I’ve spent time with the leaders of Richard Allen, visited their schools, and even helped judge their annual debate competition. In short, I have always been impressed by both the educators and the students I’ve met and worked with from the RA schools and believe the schools delivered quality education to students.
It is because of these personal connections to the schools over the years that I found the recent “Special Audit of the Richard Allen Academy Schools” such painful and disturbing reading. The Special Audit provided a litany of “missing money, missing records and self-dealing” that has led to $929,850 in findings for recovery. The audit descri
