Explorer Charter School

FORMER PRINCIPAL ARRESTED ON GRAND THEFT CHARGES; January 6, 2009; WFTV (FL) 

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. -- The former principal of Explorer Charter School, a Brevard County elementary and middle school, turned himself in at the Brevard County jail Tuesday. He's accused of stealing funds from the now-defunct school.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has also issued an arrest warrant for Jay Maer, the former finance director, who is also accused of stealing funds from the school. He was arrested Tuesday afternoon in Indian River County.

Eyewitness News was there when Ruben Rosario turned himself in to Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents at the Brevard County jail. The former principal is facing four counts of grand theft for stealing thousands of dollars from the charter school he ran in West Melbourne…

Rosario's finance director, Jay Maer, an ex-con, defended the school's bookkeeping as the district took over the school last spring. He is in even more trouble. He faces 46 charges, including grand theft and forgery. Investigators said he wrote checks to himself for all sorts of things, including coaching stipends, providing security at the school grounds and forging the principal's name.

"When in reality there was no work being done and no extra duties being performed," Ivey explained.

Investigators said they know as much as $100,000 was stolen, but there were so many financial records missing they may never know exactly how much was taken or whether the school would have survived if the money wasn't stolen.

The school's financial problems were disclosed last March and the Brevard County School District took over in April. The school was then shut down.

Maer's bond is set at $133,500. Rosario's bond is set at $12,000.

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Hoggetowne Middle School

FORMER CHARTER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED THEFT OF SCHOOL FUNDS; October 14, 2009; Gainsville Sun (FL)

The ex-principal of a local charter school faces felony charges for allegedly spending more than $18,000 in school funds for personal use.

On Tuesday, Gainesville police charged Kristine M. Santos, 38, formerly the principal and president of the board of directors at Hoggetowne Middle School, with grand theft and fraud. She turned herself in Tuesday and was released on her own recognizance.

Last September, Alachua County School District staff went to Hoggetowne to assist the school's new bookkeeper and reported spending irregularities involving a school debit card that Santos used…

A few of the purchases were listed in the complaint. They included approximately $1,500 at Gainesville Health and Fitness for personal training services, an approximately $380 bill at Hilton Hotels Disney and $139.72 at Victoria's Secret.

According to police, school funds were also used to pay off approximately $31,800 in charges on Santos' personal credit card. She reportedly identified approximately $19,593 of those charges as expenditures for the school but could not provide a school-related purpose for the remaining $12,221.11.

Santos told Hoggetowne school officials that she gave her entire credit card bill to the school's accountants and they mistakenly paid the whole bill instead of only the school-related expenses, according to the complaint.

In the complaint, Gainesville Police Detective William Quirk wrote that the standard procedure should be "to submit a request for reimbursement, not to have the bill paid directly by the school."…

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New York City charter schools (less qualified for city's specialized high schools)

CHARTER SCHOOLKIDS' ELITE STATUS SLIPPING; March 11, 2011; New York Post

The percentage of charter-school eighth-graders who performed well enough to qualify for one of the city's specialized high schools has declined by nearly half since 2009, according to data obtained by The Post.

Just over 5 percent of the 677 charter kids who sat for the Specialized High School Admissions Test in 2011 got offers from Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech or five other elite high schools.

A ninth specialized high school, La Guardia Performing Arts, requires an audition for entry.

The data show that while the number of charter kids qualifying for an elite seat has dipped only slightly since 2009 -- from 42 to 35 -- the number sitting for the exam has grown by more than 200.

Two years ago, 9.2 percent of the 459 charter applicants aced the rigorous entrance exam.

"It follows the same trend we saw last year where the public schools outperformed the charter schools," said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.

When state officials raised the passing bar on state tests in 2010, charters saw larger drops in pass rates overall than did traditional public schools -- although charters maintained a slim lead in performance in both math and reading.

Last year, for the first time, however, traditional public schools outperformed charters on the city's A-through-F report cards, which emphasize year-to-year progress…

The drop in charter-school success with the elite high schools was slightly steeper than but mirrored the drop in the percentage of black and Hispanic students citywide who qualified for the elite schools.

Just 11 percent of black and Hispanic test takers qualified for a specialized high school this year -- down from 13 percent in 2009.

The vast majority of students served by charter schools are black and Hispanic.

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Stone Creek Elementary

SCHOOL FOUNDER ARRESTED FOR THEFT; July 19, 2007; Vail Daily 

AVON — As Stone Creek Elementary opened its doors to Eagle County kids last fall, its founder was stealing money from the struggling charter school checking account, Avon police say.

Bill Hammer was arrested Thursday in Jefferson County, accused of stealing $68,539 from Stone Creek to help his two failing businesses and to pay off a lawsuit to the Vail Resorts Development Corporation, police say.

Police had issued an arrest warrant, but couldn’t find him locally. Soon after the news broke on the Vail Daily’s Web site, a reader called police with a tip on his whereabouts. Avon police then called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, who found him in Evergreen.

The theft is a class three felony and could put Hammer in prison for four to 12 years if convicted. His bond is set at $75,000, and he’ll be given a court date to appear in Eagle County.

The news is upsetting — but not necessarily shocking — to the people still running Stone Creek. Earlier this year, the school board disclosed a series of financial problems that had gone unchecked since the school opened and put the school behind in bills. Expenses outpaced the money coming in, and the school board was soon looking a giant debt in the eye…

Police were approached by newly elected members of the Stone Creek Board of Directors in February who were concerned about discrepancies they discovered in the school’s financial records.

Treasurer Kevin Randel said he and other board members weren’t prepared for the mess they found in the books. The records were scattered, incomplete and didn’t quite add up.

They also found a slew of unaccounted for funds — checks written without matching receipts or invoices adding up to more than $68,000…

Checks written directly from Stone Creek’s account were found deposited in Hammer’s personal business accounts for Noel, a Christmas shop in Beaver Creek, and the Oregon Country Tree Farm, a business in Oregon, Arnold said.

Both those businesses were failing, Arnold said. “The books showed he had $182,000 in losses in his businesses. He was losing money in both.”

Hammer was also behind on rent at his shop in Beaver Creek, and Vail Resorts Development Corporation sued him. Hammer paid them off, but with Stone Creek money, Arnold said.

“He wrote a check to Wells Fargo, then they made it a cashier’s check, and when he paid off Vail Resorts, they never knew where the money was coming from,” Arnold said. “The school didn’t realize where the money went because the check was made to Wells Fargo.” …

The school overestimated its enrollment numbers, which means it received more state funding per student than it should have, according to Randy DeHoff, executive director for the Colorado Charter School Institute.

At first, Stone Creek received money for 250 kids, while only 151 were actually enrolled. Stone Creek was denied state funding for December and had its funding severely cut through May to make up the money…

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Good Schools for All Leadership Academy

LOW ENROLLMENT CAUSES CHARTER SCHOOL TO CLOSE; September 12, 2007; Palm Beach Post (FL)

A week before classes were set to begin, Good Schools for All Leadership Academy chose to close its doors.

The K-5 charter school, which operated out of the second floor of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Delray Beach for the past three years, was supposed to open last month at its new location at the Wayne Barton Study Center in Boca Raton.

Gerard Consuegra, educational program director for Ed Futures, -- the San Diego-based company that managed the school -- said the decision to close came down to low enrollment and poor timing…

Student enrollment numbers over the past three years ranged from the mid-40s to the low 70s. Consuegra said he hoped to open in the 70 range at Wayne Barton, but a day before Ed Futures decided to close the school, only 46 students were enrolled…

"It was the whole uncertainty of the situation," he said…

"It was for parents looking for a different school environment, where their children could get more individual attention," Consuegra said. Some classes had as few as 10 students…

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Montessori Academy of Northern Palm Beach

CLASSES DISMISSED: 2 CHARTER SCHOOLS TO REMAIN CLOSED; August 22, 2007; Palm Beach Post 

Two Palm Beach County elementary charter schools will remain empty today when classes resume across the district, officials said Tuesday.

Montessori Academy of Northern Palm Beach in Palm Beach Gardens and Good Schools for All Leadership Academy, located last year in Delray Beach, have both closed, according to administrators at the two schools.

Montessori Academy's location in the former media center for H.L. Watkins Middle, 9482 MacArthur Blvd., was too small for the number of students school administrators hoped to serve, said Joseph Orr, the school's founder and former chief academic officer for the school district…

An audit earlier this year found that the charter school, which opened in 2005, was in a state of "financial emergency," a term defined by the state to mean failure to pay creditors and loans for 90 days or more.

An investigation of the charter school last year by The Palm Beach Post found many examples of financial and procedural mismanagement. The school was forced to send back $114,000 of a $300,000 federal start-up grant after failing to submit proper financial reports and, at that time, had no teachers or administrators trained to be Montessori educators and no functioning board of governors…

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New Voyage Academy

STORMY END FOR CHARTER SCHOOL: NEW VOYAGE ACADEMY HAD FINANCIAL, STAFFING PROBLEMS; March 18, 2006: Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN) 

A St. Paul charter school plagued by management and financial problems was dissolved Friday, leaving about 50 children without a school.

A week in which classes were cancelled for three days so school leaders could resolve their differences culminated Friday in a series of stormy meetings between parents, the school's recently fired director and the board of New Voyage Academy. All but one board member wound up resigning, and the 10-year-old school was shut down…

Representatives from the state Department of Education, St. Paul Public Schools, the Center for School Change and the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools were on hand Friday along with school officials at New Voyage's University Avenue site for a series of meetings, which included consultations with the commissioner of education and the attorney general's office. In the end, the decision was made that the school needed to dissolve immediately.

"(The Minnesota Department of Education) says it is bankrupt," said Mary Chorewycz, executive director of research and development for St. Paul Public Schools, which sponsored New Voyage…

Chorewycz said that recommendation was based on the school's financial problems, unlicensed and inadequate staff, inadequate discipline, poor student performance and unstable leadership.

The school has had seven directors in five years, Chorewycz said. "How can you offer a consistent program for children with that much change?"

The most recent strife among school leaders centered on the frequency of elections for board seats and concerns about potential conflict of interest involving a board member who also was employed by a firm that consults with charter schools…

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