“Former charter-school leader must repay $10,000.” The Columbus Dispatch (OH) 29 Jun 2011
A gospel singer who helped start a Columbus charter school misused more than $10,000 in taxpayer money and has been told to repay it, a state audit says.Michael Stuckey, the former project manager at the Providence Academy for Student Success, wrote himself eight checks totaling $2,084 for "vending services," the audit released yesterday said.He also endorsed $8,750 in checks from a day-care center that leased part of the P.A.S.S. building off of S. Hamilton Road on the East Side. The audit says there weren't proper, board-approved contracts for vending or the day-care lease...The school opened for the 2009-10 school year. It attracted attention at the end of that year because its founder, Isaac Simpson, who also is a gospel singer, had built a $22,000 recording studio in the school with public money. One of the school's features was to be a music recording and engineering curriculum, but former school employees have said students were rarely, if ever, allowed to use the studio.Simpson's gospel group became so entwined with the school that the treasurer said he could not be certain whether public money was being spent to launch records and hold concerts. The state audit did not list other instances of illegal spending.At the end of its first year of operation, the school board voted to end its relationship with Simpson and Stuckey. A new director who had experience running a charter school was hired...In March, the school board voted to change the school's name to the Renaissance Academy - A School for the Multi-Media Arts.
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