The California State Board of Education accepted its staff recommendation and voted not to renew the Oxford Preparatory Academy charter school in Chino. The school will close June 30.
Parents defended the school, and one member of the board made a last-ditch plea for the school but he was outvoted.
“But board members grappled over the fate of the high-performing school that might be fatally encumbered with unknown debts accrued by its ousted founder, who is under investigation by district attorneys in two counties for alleged fraud.
“Did the school do wrong, or did an individual do wrong?” asked state school board member Bruce Holaday. “I’m still wrestling with that.
“Holaday offered a motion to approve the school’s appeal, but with a long list of new oversight requirements. The motion died, with a 4-6 vote. No other board members offered another motion, and 14 months after Chino Valley Unified staff first publicly raised questions about the financial health of the school, Oxford Preparatory Academy was out of options…”
“California Department of Education staff recommended that the state school board deny Oxford’s appeal, based on what Charter Schools Division Director Cindy S. Chan called “unrealistic” recovery plans.
“This audit report is horrific,” Chan said of a 2016 report from the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, made up of financial staff from districts across the state. The audit accused OPA founder Sue Roche of “laundering” money through Yorba Linda-based Edlighten Learning Solutions, a company she and her family ran.
“An open investigation by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office also factored into the department’s recommendation to deny the appeal, Chan said.
“We are skeptical that any corrective action addressing all of the issues could be put in place” in time for the new school year, she said. “It looks like they’ve made efforts, but it’s just too short of a time.”
“Founded in 2010 by former Chino Valley Unified principal Roche, the school initially had a warm relationship with the district. Superintendent Wayne Joseph urged the school board to approve its initial charter and its first charter renewal request.
“That changed last year, when district officials expressed doubt about Roche setting up for-profit companies to provide services to OPA, using public school tax dollars for private profit.
“An audit commissioned by the school showed Edlighten still controls $900,000 in OPA funds, according to Joseph.
“In part, we included this list of items to follow up on, for law enforcement,” Michael Fine, chief administrative officer of FCMAT, told the state school board Thursday. “We don’t know that fraud has occurred. We believe there’s sufficient evidence that there may have been.”
“Among that evidence is a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, in which OPA reportedly characterized the company as being an integral part of the school. But two months later, to the district and FCMAT, OPA officials “disputed that they were one and the same and that (Edlighten) held assets,” Fine said.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s funny that this article — about the workings of the California State BOE and an account of a State BOE hearing — just got posted ABOVE, as I just finished wading through a 5-hour video of a different CA St. BOE hearing over whether to allow a different but also manifestly corrupt charter organization, Celerity, to be allowed to open new schools,
I wrote all about it here: (complete with embedded videos)
https://dianeravitch.net/2017/05/13/california-state-board-votes-to-close-two-charter-schools/
In this hearing — held in Sacramento on November 3, 2016 — in similar circumstances, the California BOE, in addressing the Celerity’s problems, bent over backwards and stretched and stretched themselves into pretzels in order to allow Celerity to open two more schools, in spite of the vociferous objections of LAUSD, and the L.A County BOE, who pointed out the corruption and malfeasance practiced by Celerity:
However, in the intervening six months, the CA BOE seems to be evolving in its approach to corrupt charters, taking a harder line against the charter school crooks. It’s sort of a “no more Mr. Nice Guy” thing going ong.
In the most recent CA St. BOE hearing last week, it shut down two of Celerity schools, as well as the school above, Oxford Prepatory Academy.
Now, after watching that video, I have to take back some of what I have written earlier about the California State Board of Ed., and its pro-charter bias. In short, I have a little more respect for the California Board of Ed., after watching the above video. The CA state BOE Mewbers are not the one-dimensional, rubber-stamping ,charter puppets that I had first thought, and characterized them earlier.
For example, they’re not like say, the Republican Senators, who — during Betsy Devos’ hearing and lead up to the confirmation vote — were just completely ignoring and dismissing Devos’ painfully and obviously dreadful performance at her confirmation hearing, and the obvious and damning facts about Devos, facts that would lead any reasonable, objective person to conclude that Devos was and is the single worse Cabinet nominee in 241 years of U.S. history.
She’s like a talking, pull-string doll at one point:
“I support accountability… I support accountability… I support accountability… ”
TRANSLATION:
“I support accountability … two different standards of it, actually:
” — one for traditional public schools, that will enable “reformers” to classify as many of them as possible as “failing, and then close them and turn them over to private, unaccountable managment as .. ‘charter schools’ …
” .. and …
” — one for private, voucher, and charter schools — the so-called choice schools — that will, on the other hand, allow these “choice” schools to remain open no matter how lousy the results, or how corrupt and crooked the management is … because well, you know choice is everything.”
In contrast to this, there is, in the video of the November 2016 hearing, some attempt on the part of California State BOE members to “support accountability.” When presented with damning evidence, they’re not covering their eyes and ears, and rubber stamping the most dreadful of charters, which a “corporate education reform” ideologue would certainly do.
However, with the exception of Board Member Patricia Rucker, the Cal BOE’s bias lead them — up until last November, at least — to engage in the most twisted mental contortions when approaching charter school authorizations, and evidence in support of not approving those charters…. contortions that will to offer alternative conditions that enable them to approve these highly questionable charters with a clear conscience, I suppose.
Let’s hope that’s over.
Here’s another thing regarding Celerity, the California Board hearing makes mention that Celerity, which previously had expanded through co-location, has, in recent years, purchased land for new Celerity schools through a new entity, also run by McFarlane. This represents a conflict of interest because Celeritry Global’s CEO Vielka McFarlane has control over both the Celerity company that rents the land to the Celerity school, and the Celerity school that’s renting the land.
As has happened with other corrupt charter schools in the past, the land-opening Celerity entity is free to charge a grossley inflated price — far above fair-market value — to the Celerity school, and there’s nothing that any authorizing entity can do to “bind” that “third party” — the Celerity land-owning entity — from doing so. Mind you, that’s taxpayers’ money that’s being moved around in this shell game, money that ends up as pure “profit” by the Celerity’s land-owning entity, and profit that can be paid to McFarlane, CEO of the land-owning Celerity entity..
A little Googling turned up the following: in Ohio, there is a Celerity school — not listed on Celerity Education Group’s website — that is operating in just such a corrupt arrangement:
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ohio-charter-school-companies-amass-tax-free-real-estate-portfolios-supreme-court-to-consider-white-hat-case-1.524417
FROM the Akron-Beacon Journal:
“Lahoski said, under his group’s oversight, only one charter school, Celerity Tenacia Charter School in Columbus, pays rent to an out-of-state company that also operates the school.”
Oh and here’s the website of that Celerity company that buys land and builds schools — Celerity, Attenture, LLC. Attenture then rents them to Celerity schools at a rate that is neither controlled by or accountable to LAUSD or any other entity:
https://www.bizapedia.com/ca/attenture-llc.html
Oxford Preparatory Academy shows 4% of their students coming from families without college education, and all of those students had at least a parent with a high school diploma. Meanwhile the district in which the charter school is located has 26% of their students coming from families without college education, and a lot of those are from families who have no high school diploma.
I noticed that, too, in Los Angeles. In low-income communities, the data on charters show that somehow, charter schools cream off all the kids whose parents have completed the most education, while with minimal exception, not enrolling those with high school dropout parents.
Why is that?
The most obvious reason is selection bias. The parents most likely to be pro-active and aggressive in their kids’ education — and thus apply to a charter or more than one charter — are also most likely to be highly educated, or the most educate.
The problem here, and the reason stories like this inevitably lead to no broader conclusions about charters, is that this will inevitably be distilled by charter supporters and politicians favorable to them, and to many on the fence, as a “bad apples” problem, not an inherent, gross philosophical problem with the fundamental idea of charters.
The “bad apples” take-away will be it, no matter how many of these cases
pile up together. We have to abandon our faith in that entire way of thinking…..the “mounting evidence” idea whereas the evidence piles up so profoundly that everyone becomes convinced that the entire undertaking is flawed.
That won’t happen with the police and police violence…..it certainly is having a hard time sticking with Trump…..and it won’t work with charters. We can no longer have faith in the idea that the “mounting evidence” will be a yellow brick road to a bigger truth and then a larger corrective.
We must attack and be heavy handed with going after the philosophical, broader roots ourselves. The problem with charters isn’t that they are ALSO hothouses of corruption, greed, and predation, it’s that it is handing over a fundamental common and essential for democracy to a corporation. One leads to the other ALWAYS.
A proper counter-narrative on or side would take what I am saying here as granted, but, alas, our side has yet to develop a counter-narrative that is heard anywhere outside our own circles.
We cannot trust in the “mounting evidence” thing any longer. We have to be blunt in our articulation of what that evidence actually points to. Money, power, and ignorance will always overwhelm and wash out the mounting evidence that leads to truth.
Agree. The ‘other side’ simply states an ideology that infers evidence will no doubt mount & prove them correct. E.g., charter & voucher alternatives to public schools will have to be better than public schools in order to get enrollment, which will cause public schools to improve in order to compete, which will cause the alternatives to compete harder, in a sort of rising-tide-lifts-all-boats scenario. There’s a shallow logic there which glosses the underlying mechanics suggesting a very different outcome. But no matter, since the ‘other side’ studiously avoids/ ignores mounting (or any) evidence. Also no matter because the deep pockets funding charters & vouchers are in it for short-term profits, & project a large & ignorant market where they can pop up somewhere else & run the same scam iteratively for decades.
Our side errs when it mimics this approach, e.g., broad assertions about public education as public good (which seems to the other side as begging the question of those terrible public schools where charter/ voucher alternatives would help at least some). But we also may be erring in simply positing logic that unmonitored (or unfunded oversight) school choice alternatives will inevitably lower all boats, then pointing out the mounting evidence as it accumulates. We will always be better off connecting all the dots right from the get-go. Show exactly where the $ is going, project wasted tax funds based on 2 decades of results now in from natl school-choice experiments, & tot up the local results in real time.
Quite true NYSTEACHER!!