The superintendent of a Houston charter school and a school employee have been charged with embezzling more than $250,000 from the school’s bank account.
The head of a Houston-area charter school and another school employee have been indicted on federal embezzlement charges, accused of siphoning more than $250,000 from the school for themselves and using some of the money to buy a car and condominium.
A grand jury in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District of Texas handed up charges this week against Houston Gateway Academy Superintendent Richard Garza, including one count of conspiracy, two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, three counts of wire fraud and two counts of engaging in monetary transactions involving criminally acquired property. Ahmad Bokaiyan, a technology support specialist at the school, was charged with conspiracy and three counts of wire fraud. They are now considered fugitives, according to a federal court records…
According to the indictment, Garza awarded a $280,841.85 no-bid contract in 2014 to a group called Hot Rod Systems to build an IT infrastructure at the new school, even though construction on the school had not yet begun. Hot Rod Systems was owned by Bokaiyan. Prosecutors say the two Houston Gateway Academy employees agreed that Bokaiyan would wire some of that contract money into one of Garza’s personal bank accounts. Within days of receiving the contract money from Garza, Bokaiyan wired the superintendent $164,381.
The indictment alleges Garza used more than $50,000 of those funds to buy a new Nissan Armada sport utility vehicle, more than $86,500 to help purchase a condominium, and nearly $26,000 to help make payments on a house loan in Cypress.
Garza’s school enrolls 2,400 students. He had plans to expand to nearly 10,000. He took over the school when it had low scores.
He began an aggressive plan to improve academics on state-mandated standardized tests, placing countdown clocks to test days in all classrooms and requiring even the youngest students to complete three-ring binders filled with practice tests and worksheets. As a result, their Coral middle school campus shot up the nonprofit Children at Risk’s annual school report card rankings, rising to the ranking’s number three spot. All of its 110 fifth and sixth grade students passed the math portion of the STAAR, an exceedingly rare feat for any school, let alone one that serves predominately low-income students.
One wonders whether he worked the same magic with the test scores that he did with the finances.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“It is not the first time finances have landed the charter school district in trouble. The Texas Education Agency in 2013 found that the Gateway schools charged parents fees to enroll their children in violation of state law. In that case, a TEA director called the superintendent of Houston Gateway to explain the fee was not allowed after the Chronicle asked the agency about the letter. The superintendent pledged to halt the fee, TEA officials said.”
The public should ask why state officials and state law enforcement did nothing, and how it happened that this had to involve theft of federal funding before charges were brought.
Something is broken or corrupted at the state level. The system isn’t functioning at all regarding charters. They shouldn’t be able to steal 250,000 and have none of the state regulators notice. They’re either not doing any oversight at all or they’re corrupt.
This isn’t the first time either. The theft from the UNO charter chain in Chicago went unnoticed until they defrauded a bank and federal regulators stepped in. They’re not monitoring the finances at these schools.
Too bad these endless crimes of fraud, et al. by Charter school founders and leaders are not getting as much attention as Trump’s tweets are.
Congress should be investigating Charter-Gate like Mueller did Russia’s election meddling. Then MAGA (Moscow’s Agent Governing America) could cover up, black out, the results of that investigation too.
No pun intended by using the word Gate. That just happened because of Watergate. However, Bill Gates deserves to be flushed down a toilet and into the sewers just like the corporate charter school industry does.
I am annoyed that the city is not not doing more to regulate charter schools in Houston. I own a property in the city and pay very high taxes on the building. Since I have owned the building, the city has instituted a series of expensive inspections requiring permits and fees every few years in addition to property taxes that have doubled in the past ten years. The city has no problem regulating individual property owners. They should apply the same diligence and scrutiny to owners of charter schools that are abusing public funds. The city needs to regulate and provide oversight to stop the waste, fraud and embezzling in the charter sector.