We have read earlier ( see here and here) about the principal of El Camino Real Charter High School. The school is very popular and academically successful. But its principal played fast and loose with the school’s credit card. While he was moonlighting as a talent scout for a professional basketball team, he flew around the country and charged hotels, first-class air tickets, and meals to his credit card. According to stories in the Los Angeles Daily News, the principal charged about $100,000 to the school’s credit card.
A Daily News investigation published in May found that El Camino’s Executive Director David Fehte had made numerous lavish charges to his school-issued American Express card, including $15,500 at Monty’s Prime Steaks & Seafood in 2014 and 2015, and several personal expenses, such as first-class airfare and luxury hotel rooms. Fehte’s charges also included more than $6,700 for a four-day trip to the Michigan headquarters of Herman Miller, the designer furniture manufacturer, for himself and two other school employees when there was a showroom 25 miles from the school. Fehte has denied doing anything wrong.
My favorite credit card charge: that four-day trip to the Herman Miller showroom when there was a showroom only 25 miles from the school.
Kind of embarrassing. If he were in a public school, he would have been brought up on charges and fired.
The school, which converted to an independent charter in 2011, would have until Sept. 23 to remedy all the alleged violations if the notice is issued, district officials said. If it fails to do so, the LAUSD board could issue a “notice of intent to revoke” the school’s charter and then hold another public hearing. If the board ultimately approves revocation, the school would be forced to cease operations pending an appeal.
The school has been given “multiple opportunities” to review and improve its policies but “has failed to implement such improvements to this day,” leading to “an inability to determine how public funds are being used and identify specific instances of their use for personal expenses,” according to a district staff report on the alleged violations.
Now the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District is giving serious thought to revoking the school’s charter. It seems the principal, David Fehte, was not the only one who used charter funds for personal expenses.
Potential management issues involving El Camino came to light last year. In its latest documents, L.A. Unified accuses El Camino of demonstrating “an inability to determine how public funds are being used and identify specific instances of their use for personal expenses,” adding that “fatal flaws in judgment … call into serious question the organization’s ability to successfully implement the charter in accordance with applicable law and district requirements.”
According to L.A. Unified, a sampling of 425 credit card expenses by five El Camino employees, including Fehte, revealed that “countless expenses were incurred without adherence to any uniform procedure, and without verification of the necessary details.”
The school system also accused El Camino’s board of improperly conducting public meetings by, for example, taking action on items that were not listed on the agendas to be voted on.
In a series of articles, the Los Angeles Daily News reported on Fehte’s spending for such things as wine, first-class air travel and pricey hotel rooms.
Fehte has denied wrongdoing and said he inadvertently charged about $6,100 in personal expenses on his school credit card. He said he reimbursed the school as soon as these charges were pointed out to him.
Some of the expenses were incurred while Fehte was moonlighting as a college basketball talent scout for the San Antonio Spurs, according to the Daily News.
Public school parents might feel some resentment, because while Mr. Fehte was jetting around the country in first class, their own schools were underfunded.
They will just have to get over it. Charter schools are special, and they get special treatment. Especially in California, where the charter school lobby is rich and powerful and underwrites the campaigns of legislators and school board members.
If you want to learn more about charter scofflaws, read this:
http://thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/2016/08/19/a-charter-serves-up-more-kool-aid/
Reading about El Camino (which used to be a great school before being taken over by CHARterLATANS), a few things in the accusations stand out: fraud, embezzlement, coverup, and long-standing practice. I personally believe these crimes can be proven, and will prove systemic among charter schools. The next key might be to nab a whole charter chain. How about looking into the books at Green Dot?
Georgia is closing a charter school, thankfully, after multiple failures. But how egregious must the errors be before the state takes action to close? http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/state-orders-closure-of-macon-charter-school/nsH2Q/
It’s only children’s cognitive development that gets wasted. To privatizers, what’s the big deal? They still walk away with their money.
Remember what some claim about Hillary’s saying: “For education reform, it takes a pillage.”
As for the Donald, he is likely to reply, “What’s that??” when asked about public schools.
This is so corrupt and beyond the pale, it reminds me of scenes in the movie, The Big Short, showing the graft in home mortgage lending.
This is an another epic financial disaster in the making.
No mention of how the Principal was “seeing” a school board member who divorced her husband. Cozy. She got voted off the school board last year.
Oh, also forgot to mention how El Camino High wanted to return teachers to LAUSD right before retirement so the District would have to pick up all their lifetime retirement benefits.
Not sure what was resolved on that one.
Next week’s vote on El Camino Real Charter High School is about enforcement not policy. Since Board members Monica Garcia and Ref Rodriguez have received large campaign donations from charters, they should recuse themselves from this vote.
Monica and Ref should recuse themselves from office.
Has anyone researched how much money these Charter Schools have cost the taxpayers?
Ref is in office because CCSA purchased his seat with over $1 million in campaign smear money. Most of these charter schools are members of CCSA – therefore it’s a conflict of interest and Ref should be requested to not vote on any “interests” of his campaign financiers. If you have the balls you should all nicely request / demand this, if he doesn’t bow down you could file a gag order on him or injunction barring him from voting on CCSA related issues. You could easily show his vote would be biased. I am not for shutting this school down however I am for: 1) having the non educational expenses refunded by Mr. Fehte, and a full prosecution of him thereby revoking his right to ever work for a school district again. He was the highest paid principal in the district. Who or whom decided this? He owes the school money, he robbed from children 2) The Board should also be prosecuted and held accountable as budgets are approved or denied by “boards” this would put a message out to other charters about financial mismanagement will be taken seriously and as “grand theft” 3) The school’s charter should be revoked and a new administration and staff brought in. I believe even the teachers should have to re apply for their positions – don’t shut down the school but re map it with a recovery school district (if LAUSD has one)
The American Indian Model Charter management Organization’s leadership was found in an audit to have diverted over $3 million dollars to several businesses owned by the leadership.
But, in this case it was more than diversion of millions to personal gain that led the District to seek revocation. The District only learned of irregularity from a whistle-blower. The District wanted to keep the “high-scoring” school open but District leadership had no confident that it had the capacity to over see and prevent future mismanagement. It was this lack of confidence in the people that took over management of the Charter Management Organization of the American Indian Model Charter schools and the lax system of oversight of the finances of charter schools under California charter law that resulted in over $100,000 sent by the District and County to revoke the charter and defend that action in court.
However, ultimately in 2014 the District attempt to revoke the charter for financial mismanagement failed. The judge ruled that the effort of the District to revoke the charter it issued failed to consider “academic performance as the most important factor in revoking the charter” as required by state education law.
Unfortunately, fraud may not be successfully used to revoke a charter if the American Indian Model Charter School case is followed.
The Judge’s ruling against the Oakland School District revoking of its charter because California Education Code law requiring high student test scores to trump fraud as the basis of revoking a charter misses the point. In American Indian Model charter schools case, it wasn’t that the District wanted to close the school but the opposite; the Oakland Unified School District is the District with the highest percentage of charter schools in the State; it has been charter friendly. But, the District wanted to revoke the charter because under present State charter school law the District does not have the capacity to audit and see that the fraud didn’t continue.
California charter school law needs to be changed so that when fraud and mismanagement is identified that a State agency or the District with oversight responsibility has the capacity to check to see that the conditions that allowed the fraud are changed.
Charter school law is built on the idea of deregulation and relying on the consumer to abandon charter schools marked with scandal. American Indian Charter schools have been renewed for additional years after the scandal.
Yet, recently American Indian Model schools have been identified in a Southern California ACLU report that analyzed the webpage of 253 California charter schools to have admission policies, like over 20% of the websites analyzed, discriminate.
Oversight and accountability of deregulated charter schools is very difficult under present laws.
What was my state smoking when we made that law? Unbelievable.
What needs to be done is a serious look at the appeal process in California for charter schools that are not approved, not renewed or revoked. The amount of man hours, lawyers fees and time spent at the district, county and state levels is beyond comprehension. This is our tax dollars that are being spent, or perhaps misspent instead of going towards directly providing more services to students.
appeal processes can drag on forever, they need to be streamlined. if the school isn’t cutting it, appeals shouldn’t be meant to buy them time to re formulate their approach, hire expensive attorneys and accountants. In the case of Magnolia Science Academy they were $1.2 million in debt and delayed their closing with slick legal moves, re shuffling of people/players then getting $9 million deposited in their checking account. MSA had opportunity to cut a back room deal with new players in place negiotiating with LAUSD that folded like a cheap lawn chair.
Educator is there needs to be a serious look at the appeal process for charter schools not approved, renewed, or revoked. The cost diverts money from students to lawyers. Personnel hired to work on supporting students are supporting public hearings and court appearances with more taxpayers education dollars being diverted from directly educating students. Enforcement of accountability of charters is a State unfunded liability for districts.