The Oklahoma State Auditor released a partial audit of Epic Charter Schools that reveals irregular expenditures.
A partial investigative audit of Epic Charter Schools has revealed millions of dollars in questionable expenditures that will be referred to the FBI, state attorney general and other authorities for further action, state Auditor Cindy Byrd announced Thursday.
“I have seen a lot of fraud in my 23 years, and this situation is deeply concerning,” Byrd said at a news conference. “Our audit is around 120 pages long — so it would take hours to explain all the violations we discovered.”
Epic spent $203,000 from Oklahoma Learning funds to expand its brand into California, Byrd said.
“Worse yet, Epic founders used Oklahoma school employees to run the California school,” Byrd said. “They used $210,000 of the Oklahoma resources to develop their project in California. And they only paid the money back after our office discovered what had happened.”
Epic Charter Schools also spent nearly $3 million advertising for new students over a three-month period, she said.
“To put that in perspective, the $3 million Epic spent on advertising in just three months was enough money to buy 1.2 million school lunches for low-income students, buy 15,000 new Chromebooks, or buy a half-million new textbooks.”
The story offers more details.
Here is a link to the audit.
WE have been waiting for this report…The owners of the for-profit side of this virtual charter have been syphoning #oklaed funds and used to recruit more students, and to launch another Epic school in CA. Every one of those dollars did NOT benefit the public school students in our state.
The same thing happened to a charter school in New Mexico. The State Auditor at the request of the NM Public Education Commission conducted a deep audit of a particular charter school. The case was turned over to the FBI. Next thing that happened was the FBI showed up at the school, took tons of documents, showed up at the Directors house and found tons of evidence. The Director is now in prison.
If the FBI shows up at the doorstep of a charter school then there is definitely going to be some heavy dues to pay — fines, closures, jail time.
Dennis Dmith retired from his job in the charter division of the Ohio Department of Education. He says that the most common phrase in charter workd is:
“Will the defendant please rise?”
Will these audits and evidence of fraud have electoral consequences?
Winning elections, school boards, town, villages, cities and state legislatures have consequences – policy changes begin at the polls!!!
Oh, man…we had a State Senator who had worked to hold the owners accountable. He was successfully primaries in August. We lost a champion…lots of dark money smeared him, and beat him.