Frontier Virtual Charter High School

“Frontier cyber-school students: All we want is to learn.” Philadelphia Daily News (PA), 3/23/2012

CAREY STONE is living Ferris Bueller's life - just the complete opposite of it, actually.

Every morning, the high-school senior calls her school's administrators, trying to find out where they are, wondering when they'll have classes for her to attend or let her hand in a report on "The Great Gatsby."

And every day, her calls go unanswered. "I feel like they're just brushing me off," she said. Carey, 18, and her sisters, Rachel, 15, and Harmony, 14, are enrolled at the Philadelphia-based Frontier Virtual Charter High School.

The school laid off its teachers and principal on March 8 and hasn't held any classes since...

...The state Department of Education is finishing an investigation into Frontier over numerous questions about financial and academic problems that were detailed last week by the Daily News...

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“Cyber-school kids truant, failing, and teachers have been dumped.” Philadelphia Daily News (PA), 3/14/2012

It all sounded so good on paper: a "global high school of the 21st century," a cyber school that would teach about 300 students two languages and keep them constantly engaged in learning.

That was how John Craig pitched the Frontier Virtual Charter High School to state education officials two years ago...

Frontier opened in the fall. It fell apart before the spring...

The cyber school seems to have serious money woes and other problems:

* Frontier - which is receiving $435,520 from the Philadelphia School District this year to educate 54 city students - didn't pay its teachers or principal in August, September and most of October, according to several sources who have direct knowledge of the school's troubles.

Since then, teachers had been paid only half of their $40,000 salaries.

* Craig said on Thursday that he was working on a plan to get the staff back pay and address other financial problems before the end of the school year. The following day, he laid off all the school's teachers and the principal. He later posted part-time teaching jobs on Craigslist.

* Craig, also an associate pastor at the Philadelphia Revival Temple Church, said that Frontier doesn't "have really any students that are truant" and that many "are doing fine" academically.

But records viewed by the Daily News show that numerous students are habitually truant or failing their classes - or both.

* Bills have gone unpaid, including some in excess of $80,000 for K12, the company that created Frontier's curriculum, sources said.

* Staffers raised repeated concerns about whether Craig and the school's board of trustees - which includes former Municipal Court Judge Jimmie Moore - had violated the state's Sunshine Law by making decisions in private, sources said...

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Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow

STATE QUESTIONS ATTENDANCE RATES AT INTERNET CHARTER SCHOOLS; Sept. 23, 2006; Associated Press, via Akron Beacon Journal (OH) 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Attendance has been so good at some of Ohio's Internet charter schools that the state is wondering if the numbers are too good to be true.

The Ohio Department of Education plans to give attendance figures a second look after 20 of the schools - state-funded public schools where students do work online from home or other sites - reported perfect attendance for the last school year. Others had rates that were nearly perfect.

At least two schools, including Ohio's biggest, admit that they don't count students expelled for being absent for at least 21 days.

"This sounds like just another way that charter schools are gaming the system," said Lisa Zellner, spokeswoman for the Ohio Federation of Teachers. "What does this do for the student? The point is to be educating these kids, giving them what they need."…

The state's largest Internet charter school, the 6,664-student Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, has reported perfect attendance for the past three school years…

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ONLINE SCHOOLS UNDER SCRUTINY; May 3, 2002; Wired 

More than 30 publicly funded virtual charter schools have launched during the past five years, and parents have largely been pleased with the results.

But the alleged mismanagement of two academies run by for-profit companies is prompting states to request more regulatory authority.

Educators say the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) in Ohio and Einstein Academy in Pennsylvania, both of which are run by private companies, have ignored numerous academic guidelines while operating with questionable accounting practices…

[Ohio Federation of Teachers] president Tom Mooney said ECOT is "really being run by Bozo and Clarabell," claiming that management company Altair Learning Management had no background in education or technology. However, Mooney said they were "shrewd enough to smell a really good opportunity."…

The audit, which was released in April, showed that the company overcharged the state by $1.65 million for teaching hours it could not substantiate, and that $500,000 worth of computer equipment given to students who left the program were not recovered.

The auditor's office said ECOT's net loss of $3.8 million during the school year "causes substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."

ECOT recently agreed to pay back $1.6 million to Ohio's department of education over the next three years. ECOT superintendent Jeffrey P. Forster, who saw 30 percent of his students leave the program during its first year, said that because of cost cutting, the academy is on solid financial footing…

The federation also cites a recent charter granted directly to Akron "industrialist" David Brennan's White Hat Management company instead of to a nonprofit as required by state law.

Mooney said that when legislators passed the charter school law, they never envisioned cyber schools and "did not set up appropriate guidelines for oversight."…

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Sojourner Truth Learning Academy

SOJOURNER CHARTER SCHOOL CLOSES DOORS- TRUSTEES DENY RENEWAL REQUEST; June 12, 2004; San Diego Union-Tribune (CA) 

The Sojourner Truth Learning Academy, a charter school under scrutiny for alleged financial improprieties, closed for the school year yesterday and will not reopen.

The San Diego Unified School District board voted 4-1 this week to deny the school's application for a five-year charter renewal after being told by district staffers that Sojourner, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campus, faces a $200,000 deficit…

Located in St. Stephens Cathedral Church of God in Christ on Imperial Avenue in Encanto, Sojourner had an enrollment of 144 and served a predominantly black and Latino student base.

Parents said many of the students who attend the school come from broken homes and have a history of academic and disciplinary troubles, but that at Sojourner they have found a nurturing environment…

According to district reports, the school fared poorly both financially and academically, failing to meet the goals of its charter…

An internal audit the district completed in February said Sojourner paid employees' salaries with money orders and cash in violation of state law and district procedures.

The school wrote checks totaling more than $22,000 to the principal and former and current employees without documenting why the payments were made.

When examining invoices for services rendered to the school, district officials who conducted the review were unable to locate some of the vendors. Out of 25 vendors contacted, 11 could not be reached because their telephone numbers had changed, were incorrect or were answering machines.

The review also said the school received $37,464 in state funding last school year that was not supported by its attendance records. The school's monthly attendance reports failed to account for 1,002 absences marked by teachers.

The review also found that gains third-graders at Sojourner made on standardized language, spelling and reading tests in recent years are suspect. A former school employee declared in two sworn statements that there were unusual erasure marks found on test answer sheets, but that the principal took no action…

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All Tribes American Indian Charter School

INDIAN SCHOOL UNDER SCRUTINY TO REORGANIZE: DESPITE DECISION, BOARD PULLS CHARTER; July 17, 2008; San Diego Union-Tribune (CA)

VALLEY CENTER – Facing revocation of its charter over accusations of financial mismanagement, a school for students living on North County Indian reservations has decided to close and reopen under a different structure.

A lawyer for the All Tribes American Indian Charter School announced the move last night just as a local school board was about to vote to pull the school's charter.

The Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District board went ahead with the revocation anyway,
but the two dozen school supporters, who included staff members, Indian leaders and students, laughed...

School officials and their lawyer said the district is motivated by money. Indian students who live on reservations generate about twice as much funding as other students.

District Superintendent Lou Obermeyer said funding isn't the issue. Instead, she pointed to a long list of problems the district found, including issues keeping track of attendance and how money is spent.

Donohue said she believes the school would have prevailed had it challenged those findings, but didn't want to spend the $60,000 in legal fees that would have entailed…

This isn't the first time the school has run afoul of the district, which pointed out problems several years ago…

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Lynacre Academy

FOUNDER, BOARD BLAME EACH OTHER FOR LYNACRE ACADEMY'S DEMISE; February 17, 2008; Dallas Morning News (TX)

Everyone knew something was amiss at Lynacre Academy – its school board members, its accountant and Texas Education Agency regulators charged with monitoring charter schools.

But nobody fixed it, and the school that was supposed to help poor, struggling students in South Dallas ran out of money and closed on Feb. 1.

What happened, and why did $750,000 in state funding disappear?

"The money went somewhere; where it went, I don't know," said Shari Bruce, the board's president.

Ms. Bruce, other Lynacre school board members and the school's former accountant say former superintendent Delores Beall misspent funds and destroyed records between the school's opening day in 1999 and her dismissal in 2006.

Ms. Beall could not be reached for comment. No one has officially charged her with criminal wrongdoing in connection with missing money at the school, and one relative who worked at the school said Ms. Beall never asked her to do anything improper.

The Lynacre school case raises serious questions about Ms. Beall's stewardship, her school board's oversight and TEA procedures for safeguarding taxpayer money.

Lynacre's closing cast 73 students adrift in the middle of the school year. Also left amid the shambles is an ongoing lawsuit between Ms. Beall and the school board that sheds light on their accusations against each other…

In fall 1999, many of the students who enrolled in the new I Am That I Am charter school had flunked out or been kicked out of other schools.

The school's name would later be changed to Lynacre Academy.

Along the way, Ms. Beall continued to run the I Am That I Am Training Center for after-school homework help. The training center's board also served as the charter school's governing board.

During the school's eight years, Ms. Beall hired three of her four children to work at the school.

The first signs of trouble emerged in 2002 when Ms. Beall's daughter, Denise Jones, was acting as school attendance clerk. She reported inflated attendance figures to TEA, which funnels state money to schools based on attendance. Ms. Beall admitted the error and Lynacre was forced to pay back $200,000, court records show.

The record-keeping debacle led the board to fire Ms. Jones in 2003, according to court records. Then, Ms. Beall hired her daughter-in-law, Melody White, to keep the attendance records. In their response to Ms. Beall's wrongful termination lawsuit, school board members accused her of concealing her relationship with Ms. White.

At the time, the school's outside auditor noted that Lynacre officials were not properly recording cash payments, but board members say they didn't suspect trouble. They reviewed budgets at their quarterly meetings but didn't compare those plans with what school officials were actually spending.

"We never ever had the feeling anything was being hidden from us," said Patricia Crocker, the board's vice president.

The state received an unusual complaint in May 2005.

The aunt of a graduating Lynacre senior called Rep. Helen Giddings, D-Dallas, to complain about the school charging her nephew $900 for 30 days of absences before he could graduate.

"These people said they didn't have this kind of money," Ms. Giddings said. "I didn't think it would be true: Nobody would be asking a student to pay $900 to graduate."

But it was true.

The school had been charging seniors $30 for every day they were absent and an additional $260 for graduation expenses. The state prohibits both kinds of charges…

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