The Orleans Parish School Board has hired an auditor for Harney charter school upon suspicions of financial shenanigans or worse.
The Orleans Parish School Board confirmed Tuesday that a charter school improperly withheld employees’ retirement contributions, which The Lens has reported could have reduced their investment gains and may violate federal guidelines.
The school district is looking to hire a forensic auditing firm to help investigate Edgar P. Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy and other schools with financial issues. The audit could help quantify employees’ losses.
By The Lens’ count, Harney has received six warnings since last fall related to finances, enrollment, special education, public records and improper restraint of a student. Two more warnings are on the way.
Meanwhile, its chief financial officer is under an ethics investigation for being paid on the side to do school accounting.
Orleans Parish schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. said the embattled Central City school might not reapply for its charter, which is up for renewal this fall….
In a similar case in Baltimore, delayed retirement payments resulted in a federal conviction and a two-year prison sentence.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How many warnings before the board actually DOES something? 10 warnings in a year is a bit much. It’s a rhetorical question–I know that nothing happens when it’s a charter school. SO frustrating.
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The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report which warns that, because of their lack of financial accountability to the public “CHARTER SCHOOLS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS POSE A POTENTIAL RISK TO FEDERAL FUNDS, EVEN AS THEY FALL SHORT OF MEETING GOALS” because of financial fraud and the artful skimming of tax money into private pockets.
If nothing else is required of charter schools, there is one thing that must be required so that charter schools are accountable to taxpayers and inform taxpayers as to where taxpayer money is actually going when it’s given to charter schools; that one key thing is this: Charter schools must be required to file the SAME detailed, public domain financial reports under penalty of perjury that public schools file.
Charter schools will cry that this is “too burdensome” — yet public schools file such reports. What would the outcry be if public schools were “freed” of this “burden”? Why, the outcry would rattle the very heavens! So, why is it that private charter schools are allowed to get away with taking public tax money and not have to tell the public on an annual basis how those public tax dollars are spent?
Charter schools bill themselves as “public schools”, but Supreme Courts in states like New York, Washington and elsewhere are catching on to the scam and have ruled that charter schools are really private schools because they aren’t accountable to the public because they are run by private boards that aren’t elected by voters and don’t even have to file detailed reports to the public about what they’re doing with the public’s tax money. Of course, if they have to do that, the public and the media will see what the charter school scam is all about, and charter schools will fade away.
Forget every other strategy to stop charter schools: If you can force them to file the SAME detailed, public domain, annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that public schools file — and why not? — the public school industry will dry up and move on to other privatization scams in other areas to divert public money into private pockets.
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exactly exposing the GAME: “…the public school industry will dry up and move on to other privatization scams in other areas to divert public money into private pockets.”
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