State auditors are questioning whether two charter schools in Broward County had any students at all and are proposing that the schools repay the state $5.5 million.
Two charter schools in Broward County failed to adequately prove students attended during the 2017-18 school year and should repay a combined $5.5 million, the state Auditor General report says.
The report, released in late December, questions the student counts at Innovation Charter School in Pompano Beach and Imagine Charter in Weston. Officials at the two schools say they can verify their enrollments and plan to appeal to the state Department of Education, which will make the final decision.
If the department agrees with the audit, the schools would lose roughly an entire year’s budget: $1.6 million for Innovations and $3.9 million for Imagine. The Broward school district, which is responsible for dispersing state money to the schools, could withhold monthly allocations until the money is repaid. If the schools close, the district could get stuck with the bill.
“The district has met with the governing boards of the charter schools with respect to their plans to appeal these … findings and is prepared to assist them during their discussions” with the education department, said a statement from Chief Communications Officer Kathy Koch’s office.
The auditors reviewed records from October and February of the 2017-18 school year; those are the two months when official counts are taken to see how much money schools should receive.
The report said Imagine could not adequately prove that its 948 students actually attended the school and Innovation couldn’t prove that its 386 kids were actually there.
Auditors can be so darned picky. Who ever heard of schools without students?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
. . . Ohhhhh . . . now I get it. So THAT’S why they resist public oversight. Great big silly me. CBK
lol
Socks disappear.
Money is stolen.
Got the difference, Florida state auditors?
yup
LOl!
Florida is such a fan of virtual education that it decided to try virtual students as well. The sad reality is the loss of funding to Broward County Schools. Broward has real students with real needs.
YES. Nicely said.
I have a friend who spends winters at a condo in Pompano Beach. What a waste of taxpayer money. What is sad is that some students are growing up with no education. Did these kids enroll but never show up?
Virtual schools have proven to be worthless but politicians don’t ever get the message.
It’s up at OPEd news https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Florida-State-Auditors-Sa-in-General_News-Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch_Education-Costs_Education-Funding-200119-833.html
My comment which has links to :
Still Asleep At The Wheel: An Indictment of the Federal Charter Schools Program
The Network for Public Education recently released its second report on the federal Charter Schools Program, and the results are not pretty. It is titled Still Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in a Pileup of Fraud and Waste. The report has received national coverage, in newspapers large and small.
As I was reading this it came to me that there was an irony here. The advocates for the private sector see it as less expensive because it regulates itself. This was, of course, a principle Adam Smith applied to business relationships between economic equals doing things associated with making products and selling them. Most advocates for the private sector would say that the parents of these school would have just sent their students elsewhere and the schools would close naturally, without having to create layers of incompetent government. The above example indicates the contrary.
Precisely because the private sector cannot regulate itself, the privatization of schools is an expensive proposition. Regulating these institutions is far more expensive than the way we watchdog public schools. Actually funding a private system that eliminated public school altogether and actually functioned would be so expensive that the public would rebel. Just look at the budget of a good private school for proof of that conrtention.
An unregulated sector funded by the public is an invitation to fraud and malfeasance.
Just close all charter schools and their programs. All are ripe for corruption!
“Auditors can be so darned picky. Who ever heard of schools without students?”
A couple of months ago we learned about the University of Farmington, funded by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to defraud potential student out of tuition and fees while entrapping them into committing immigration fraud.