The former chief financial officer of a now-closed charter school in North Philadelphia was charged with embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the school for which he was responsible. The school is now closed. The money was diverted from teachers, their pensions, and from students.
A former employee of a now-closed North Philadelphia charter school has been charged with embezzling more than $350,000.
Darnell Smith, the former chief financial officer of Khepera Charter School, misused the funds while earning a six-figure salary, Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced Friday.
On Smith’s watch, more than $200,000 was withheld from Khepera teachers’ paychecks for retirement funds, the attorney general said. But the money was never deposited into the Public School Employee Retirement System. An additional $370,000 in employer contributions was also never contributed to the system, Shapiro said...
Smith’s failure to make the pension payments ultimately forced the Pennsylvania Department of Education to withhold payments to Khepera. Eventually, the school was unable to pay teachers or its rent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Instead of being “islands of opportunity for young people,” many charters schools are “islands of opportunism” when they are operated by unscrupulous profiteers. Teachers that thought money was being sent to the pension fund are also victims of the scam.
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so clearly said: opportunism runs this game
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Have these people NO SHAME?
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No $hame
When greed
Is the game
Indeed
There’s no shame
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To be fair, traditional school systems have their examples of fiscal misbehavior, too. Recently, a former district finance officer in Kentucky (which has no charter schools) got a 5-year sentence for stealing $1.6 million meant for kids. It’s wrong where ever it happens, and it isn’t confined to charter schools, unfortunately. https://www.wtvq.com/2020/10/02/former-school-finance-director-gets-five-years-for-stealing-1-6-million/
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Richard,
Frauds and embezzlement are unfortunately more frequently found in charter schools than in public schools because charter schools, by design, have less oversight than public schools. Lucky for Kentucky that it does not (yet) have charter schools. A charter chain in California was indicted for stealing $50-80 million from the state for phantom students.
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I like the way Rob Levine of edhivemn.com puts it, that charter schools are a “griftocentric environment.”
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And a lot of the grift is sneakier than in the case described above. Like actual public schools, charter schools get a per-pupil allotment from the state. Every penny that they don’t spend on kids, the managers of these schools can spend on inflated salaries and perks for themselves. That’s why so many charter schools don’t have nurses or a gym or other athletic facilities or a media center or a proper library or science labs or art supplies or theaters or supplies for teachers or nurses, and so on. And because these are private entities, without the heavy oversight that one finds in real public schools, the charters, many of them, can make these diversions in secrecy.
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And then there is the tried-and-true scam of charter management companies leasing the space for the school to the school at inflated rates, using these funds to pay down their mortgages, and thus turning taxpayer dollars into private real-estate equity.
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And both these methods skirt the law. They are extremely unethical but can be claimed to be perfectly legal.
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And, of course, there’s the old grift of shopping out school services–janitorial services, teacher training, waste management, heating and air conditioning, and so on, to golfing buddies, mistresses, and ne’er-do-well cousins and spouses.
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it would take the collusion of several key administrators to embezzle from a public school district. Even then, the independent auditor would have to be part of the scheme, or the missing funds would be easily detected. Public schools are accountable to the communities they serve.
I had several grants during my teaching career. Any grant money went directly to the business office, not to me directly. I had to put all payments on a district purchase order along with the name of the grant. Every dime was accounted for. Any unspent money at the end of the grant went into the general fund.
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Well said, Retired Teacher. BIG difference!!!
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If this crook is convicted in court, his fine will probably be a fraction of what he took and if he gets any jail time, it will probably be a few months in a country club prison. Once he is out, he will move to another state and find another job in the same crooked industry. Once a member of a crime syndicate, always a member.
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