Blogger Anita Senkowski has kept a close watch on the Grand Traverse Academy charter chain in northern Michigan. Two years ago, its founder was convicted of tax evasion, but apparently the board of directors did not require repayment of the $5 million that went missing. Now, due to Senkowski’s persistence, the state has promised an investigation. The founder of the charter chain, Steven Ingersoll, is an optometrist who claimed to have a unique way of teaching children through a method he called “integrated visual learning”; he recruited other optometrists to serve on the charter board.
Two years after Steven Ingersoll’s March 10, 2015 federal tax evasion and conspiracy convictions, Michigan authorities, including the office of its Attorney General, Bill Schuette, are finally investigating Ingersoll’s related-party financial transactions, the GTA’s debt write off process and its decision not to seek repayment of the money that may have been misappropriated by Ingersoll between 2007-2013, estimated at $5.0 million.
Kicked into action by a formal complaint I filed on March 31, 2017, the Michigan Department of Education confirmed to me in an April 4, 2017 that it is investigating the decision by the GTA’s Board of Directors to “write off” a $1.6 million debt owed to the school by Ingersoll, its calculation of the amount—and the three optometrists who looked at a charter school full of children and saw only a cash-rich “golden goose”: Steven Ingersoll, Mark Noss and Brad Habermehl.
After dithering publicly for months in 2014 about its “plan” to collect money owed to the Grand Traverse Academy (GTA) by its former manager, optometrist Steven Ingersoll of Smart Schools Management, Inc. (SSM), the Traverse City, Michigan, charter school’s annual fiscal audit revealed its board decided to just “write off” $1,623,000 to bad debt, and not pursue collection.
The GTA board included a $1,813,330 “repayment” by Ingersoll into its write off calculation — an amount credited against his debt, estimated in by Ingersoll at $3.58 million as of June 30, 2012.
Ingersoll began serving his 41-month prison sentence in February in Minnesota.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once again, THANK YOU for sharing this story. Those of who live in Michigan are eternally frustrated by the fact that the local press just doesn’t seem particularly interested in sharing these details, while the Grand Traverse Academy (which now has 1200 students) has seriously and negatively impacted the surrounding (genuinely) public schools.
Anita Senkowski has done an amazing job of tracking and delineating the details, but she’s a lone voice in the education wilderness.
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https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/04/lausd-board-endorses-proposals-to.html?m=0
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/23/1655589/-3-school-candidates-stand-for-creationism-1-for-science
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Ed reform governance schemes rely on “authorizers”. Authorizers are paid a cut of each charter school dollar. This is central to the charter claim of being “public schools” and subject to oversight. They essentially created a new system of governance where politicians outsourced their regulatory and oversight duties to these entities.
“Meanwhile, neither the school’s board nor Lake Superior State University, the authorizer of the charter school,”
http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/01/upcoming_fraud_trial_for_schoo.html
Authorizers need much more scrutiny and transparency since ed reformers have positioned them as a kind of replacement for elected government.
The charter entity is one piece. The authorizer is another. Can Lake Superior State University detail what they do (specifically) to provide oversight to these schools? Over a course of years what specific services did they provide to justify the fees they were paid?
Some of the authorizers of Michigan charters are located hundreds of miles away from the schools they’re supposedly regulating. How many visits (if any) do they make to these schools?
If politicians want to outsource their duties to other entities the least they could so is insist the contractors provide some accountability and transparency. If they won’t do even that then why do we need them at all? If their job is to just transfer public funds to contractors then we could hire someone to transfer funds and they can all go home.
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Let’s not forget some of the authorizers are involved shady real estate leasing agreements allowing them to double dip public dollars when they both own the buildings and charge outrageous rents. This occurs when public stewardship abrogates its responsibility to provide an efficient form of public education. There is nothing efficient or the least bit honest about these cozy relationships. I am surprised the public doesn’t catch on to this scam and revolt.
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Ohio is usually a couple of years ahead of Michigan in charter problems, so get ready for the lawsuits.
The investigation is just the first step.
The ECOT case is tied up in court right now. Ohio will never see that 85 million dollars again. It’s gone. It doesn’t matter. ECOT is still in business and they’re still shoveling public education funds into that hole.
Compare/contrast with how a public school employee in this district was treated when he misused “booster” money because fraud isn’t limited to charter schools, of course. He was prosecuted. He was on the front page of the newspaper in an orange jumpsuit.
There are two sets of standards and the standards for charter schools and fraud are LOWER. Much lower.
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It’s fascinating how Betsy DeVos doesn’t mention any of these problems when she travels the country promising people this shangri-la of “choice” where it’s all hearts and flowers compared to the hated “government schools” systems.
Is she unaware of these problems in her home state? If she is aware of them why does she omit them when she sells privatization to the country?
Shouldn’t the public be told the risks and downsides of her preferred schools?
If your state is just ramping up privatization based on a sales pitch coming from the US Department of Education, get in your car and travel to Ohio, Pennsylvania or Michigan and ask people how ed reform is going.
They’re not telling you what you need to know. They’re deliberately omitting information you need to make a good decision.
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DeVos is on a “mission from God” to ignore all the grifters and crooks in the charter industry.
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How can she ignore those grifters and crooks when she is one of them?
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