The director of a charter school in Lee County, South Carolina, was sentenced to jail for 3 1/2 years after she was convicted of diverting $1.56 million to sham accounts.
“A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a former charter public school director to 31/2 years in prison for stealing $1.56 million in federal money that should have gone to help educate low-income children in poverty-stricken areas of Lee County.
“She was supposed to help children who were needy children, who had a lot to gain from a good education,” U.S. Judge Terry Wooten said just before pronouncing sentence on Benita Dinkins-Robinson shortly after 6 p.m., near the end of a nine-hour hearing at the federal courthouse in Columbia….
“During her investigation, Dinkins-Robinson had refused repeated FBI requests to produce invoices to show how she spent money, telling the FBI that her companies were private businesses and she didn’t have to tell federal investigators what she did with the money, Bitzel told Wooten.”
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article32398251.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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The charter district had tried to shut this school down some time ago. The Feds got her.
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“The hearing also focused attention on the lack of financial scrutiny and oversight at the state’s charter schools, which were established as a way to give parents more choice. Dinkins-Robinson was apparently able to move millions of public money around with little accountability. Her school in Bishopville, the Mary Dinkins Academy, which later moved to Sumter County, was set up to help disadvantaged children.”
And federal and state lawmakers could of course fix that problem easily by making charter schools subject to the same financial reporting rules as the public school system, so if they haven’t we can assume they don’t want to for some other reason.
Maybe they could come forward and explain why there are two sets of rules.
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The state had tried to shut them down because they were so bad academically. State courts let them live.
In SC charters actually are held to the same accountability standards. What this woman did is not unique to charters.
This is in no way a defense of charters.
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Thanks. I know there’s fraud and theft with public schools- we just had one here last year- but it’s picked up quickly because it’s regulated at the county level. She committed the theft in June and she was gone by August because it went to the county prosecutor.
I don’t think they can regulate hundreds of schools from the state level, and certainly not at the federal level. I can’t think of any other “public” entity that works like that- where there are hundreds of locations and “charters” and then another set of contracts between private parties but no local regulation. I think it’s unprecedented, as far as governance.
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Does she have to pay the money back? From what I’ve seen, charters are closed for various reasons or their leaders flee or whatever and it’s after the money is already gone. I wish I knew the total money lost to children through the charter churn and theft.
Funny how you pass the blame to the state courts when things don’t go the charter way.
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The state courts probably allowed the school to stay open because that case was about academic failure. Money seems to get people’s attention.
I haven’t read where the money went – there were shell companies involved. Don’t know if it was tracked down, but these were greedy, but semi-sophisticated crooks.
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How ironic.
The director of a corporate Charter school steals $1.56 million that was meant to improve education for children living in poverty, and she’s sentenced to 3.5 years in prison—probably one of those white-collar country club prisons.
Compared to public school teachers and administrators in Atlanta who didn’t steal any money but changed the answers on high stakes tests linked to the Common Core Crap Agenda to destroy the public schools. The educators from the public schools were each sentenced to 20 years in prison to be locked up for seven years with the balance on probation and also must perform 2,000 hours of community service and pay a $25,000 fine.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/14/atlanta-educators-sentenced/25759985/
It really pays to be a crook in the private, for-profit, corporate sector.
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The Atlanta teachers that cheated on bubble tests got stiffer sentences for “racketeering.”
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Private charters want independent spending of public funds. This is them literally having it both ways. Who wouldn’t want in on this monetary free for all.
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Paula, this wasn’t a private charter school. Those don’t exist in SC.
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“Peter Smyth
August 26, 2015 at 11:44 am
The state courts probably allowed the school to stay open because that case was about academic failure.”
Right, but that’s really the question to me. Even if one believes that charter schools should be “free” as to staffing and instructional issues, why would that extend to financial reporting? That doesn’t make sense to me even under the ed reform argument, which should have nothing to do with finances.
An Ohio charter management company made the same argument as the principal is making here (their lawyers did, when they were sued). They said they are a private entity so not subject to disclosure on how they spend money. It’s hard for me to believe this problem has not come to the attention of the people in government promoting these schools. It went to the Ohio supreme court. It never should have gotten to a court. Why are lawmakers allowing this to happen, where a court will decide if these are public or private entities? That’s crazy.
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Chiara, the charter lobby gets the legislators to refer to them as “public charter schools,” but when it comes to finances, they turn private.
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The opportunity for rip-off is built into the federal funding programs for charters and in the state regulations that exempt them from sunshine laws, public accounting for funds and performance, and the rest.
The charter industry thrives by not being fully public and by management schemes that eliminate any role for elected school boards other than “approving” charters. I do not understand why school boards outsource education to charters.
The Office of Inspector General for USDE has slammed officials there for the lack of accountability on charter performance, including openings, closings, frauds. The USDE officials even had the audacity to suggest that the most reliable information was probably available from the major lobbies for the the charter schools and charter school authorizers.
And Obama/Duncan have requested a 48% increase in funding for charters in the next budget. So the fraud begins at the highest level of a Democratic administration eager to resurrect the separate and unequal system of education from the last century while pretending that they are doing the work of the civil rights movement.
The hypocrisy is mind-blowing. It is made worse by the restoration of testing as the tool for labeling students, literally branding students as “college and career ready” (or not) and as early as pre-school and kindergarten.
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The waste watchers should expose the president’s irresponsible handling of tax dollars. http://populardemocracy.org/news/report-millions-dollars-fraud-waste-found-charter-school-sector
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Meanwhile, we’re now on Month Seven of our charter school regulation drama in Ohio. They’re now appointing a commission, which will presumably oversee the work of the charter school department. 90% of the state’s students attend public schools but our state government spends 100% of their time on charter schools and private schools.
I’m actually no longer sure that’s a bad thing. Public schools might be better off just going it alone.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/blogs/the-daily-briefing/2015/08/082415-charter-school-evaluations.html
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The sentencing disparity is shocking. Thinking of Atlanta teachers. Thinking or believing that those who hold the public trust should be held to a higher standard and a longer sentence. How silly and naïve I am.
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1.56 million. i wonder what the total cost to taxpayers comes to for the misuse of funds for these charters who on the whole do a poorer job of educating, even by their own misguided standards but have the blessing of the moneyed interests, ergo, our politicians?
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Gordon Wilder,
There was a report recently called “Tip of the Iceberg,” estimating that the loss of public funds (federal, state, and local) due to charter corruption would be about $1.4 billion for 2015. https://dianeravitch.net/2015/07/08/report-more-than-200-million-in-charter-school-waste-fraud-and-mismanagement-is-tip-of-the-iceberg/
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FANTASTIC. Nice to know that money is not running our political system. I really fear for the future of my children and especially my grandchildren.
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BTW, if you’re interested in doing your own estimate of loss of public funds due to charter corruption in your own city or state, you just have to multiply total charter school funding in your area by 0.05 (same methodology used in the report).
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Has there ever been a case in which the citizens of a state sued the governor or legislature for all the waste and fraud in charter funds? The taxpayers are left on the hook for the leadership’s dereliction of duty.
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The loss from charter corruption pales in comparison to the loss from traditional public schools in 2015.
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Can you supply numbers and sources, TE? I try to follow Ed news in the news sources I read, local and national. I do not remember any stories that are as egregious and numerous as the ones in the past decade about Charters. You only have to read Chiara’s comments, she keeps us apprised of the massive corruption in Ohio Charters. In the AZ Republic series on the beginning of the Charter industry here, it was shown that the system was designed without financial oversight. Officials acknowledged that they no had idea how many Charters opened and closed and how much money was lost. No one was keeping track.
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My methodology in estimating the loss of public funds through corruption in public schools is identical to the one used in the report about corruption in charter schools in your post. If you stand by the $1.4 billion dollar figure in your post, intellectual integrity requires that you also acknowledge the much higher level of corrupt spending in traditional public schools that inevitably results from the higher overall spending levels on traditional public schools.
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Gosh, TE, we read frequently about charter operators indicted and convicted for stealing millions. Why no comparable articles about public school principals and superintendents? Could it be because they are audited by public officials?
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Are we in agreement that when you multiply .05 by a larger number you get a larger number? If so, I think we both agree that using the methodology in the study you cite 1) corruption is a larger problem in traditional public schools than charter schools and 2) transferring funds from charter schools to traditional public schools will not reduce the level of corrupt spending because it will still be multiplied by .05.
Of course you might think that simply multiplying spending by .05 is not really a good way to come up with an estimate of corrupt spending. This seems like a reasonable position to
Me, but it also means that the $1.4 billion figure in study is meaningless.
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I understand your reasoning on the statistical methods. You are forgetting, however, that Public school are, by law, financially transparant. Charters schools, again by laws, this time pushed by lobbiest, are not transparant. Therefore, you cannot use the same technique for estimation.
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RetAZLib,
Laws governing charters vary quite a bit from state to state, ranging from some relatively lax standards in some states to requiring the elected district school boards to run all charter schools in other states. That is one reason it is difficult to make generalized statements about charter schools.
The methodology used by the “Tip of the Iceberg” report to calculate the $1.4 billion dollar cost cited by Dr. Ravitch, however, allows no distinction based on transparency or even type of organization. The same 5% is applied to public schools, private companies, local and state governments, and charter schools.
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Corporate money vs. taxpayer’s money: Which one do people think larger and transparent, in general?
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Was the prisoner a “doctor” too?
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I want to apologize for my bad spelling; too early and I didn’t open a new tab to do my “Spell Check by Google” And just like with Spell Check, you better have some idea of the how the word should look.
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