The authorizer of the Hmong College Prep Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, wants to fire the superintendent of the school after learning of big losses in the school’s funds.
A St. Paul charter school’s authorizer has placed the school on probation and recommended the board fire its superintendent after she lost $4.3 million of the school’s money investing in a hedge fund.
The authorizer, Bethel University, said Hmong College Prep Academy’s failed investment “illustrates areas of great concern related to managing finance, governance and legal compliance.”
Christianna Hang, superintendent and chief financial officer, founded the school in 2004. It’s now the state’s largest single-site charter school, with around 2,400 students in the Como neighborhood, and is building a $43 million middle school with financing facilitated by the city of St. Paul.
Hang was looking for opportunities to pay for that project when she ended up wiring $5 million to a hedge fund in 2019, in violation of the school’s policy and state law. The school is now suing the hedge fund.
Bethel’s Aug. 30 letter also cited “significant concerns” about conflicts of interest regarding the superintendent, her husband and a former school board member.
The first conflict involved Bridge Partner Group, a company owned by Hang and her husband, Paul Yang. The board in January approved a contract with the company, effectively converting Yang from the school’s chief operating officer to an independent contractor on a fully guaranteed, five-year contract worth around $190,000 a year; the board later reversed that move.
The second conflict involves Northeast Bank, which was chosen to finance $7 million of the middle school project while one of its vice presidents, Jason Helgemoe, served as vice chair on the Hmong College Prep board.
Bethel has directed the board to spend 90 days making numerous changes at the school, including dividing superintendent and chief financial officer into two separate positions and hiring a financial consultant who reports directly to the authorizer.
In addition, Bethel is “recommending” the board fire Hang and replace her with someone with no prior ties to Hmong College Prep and for the board to appoint a chairperson who is not employed by the school; the current chair is a teacher.
If you are wondering why there is a Hmong charter school, Minnesota has a long-established practice of authorizing racially and ethnically segregated schools. Defenders of the practice say the children are more comfortable going to school with children of the same background.
I remember when Southerners said the same about segregated schools in the 1950s.
When was the last time your school had millions to invest in the market?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why is the public paying to help a well connected group of people profit while using tax payer funds? Public schools are transparent, regulated by state and federal laws, and they are accountable to the communities they serve. Quality public schools are a public asset that enhance property values. Public schools belong to the public, not a small group of politically connected people. They do not operate to produce profit. They are operated by professionals for the purpose of educating young people, not making money for select people.
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Christianna Hang was using the school as her own piggy bank. How is this even legal? Not to mention all the other shenanigans going on. The school is now suing the hedge fund?! Who’s paying for all the legal fees involved?
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Sickening. Sickening! Sickening!
Hang should be in Jail.
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Selling garbage is still happening on Wall St. Anytime a “financial advisor” (yes, those are scare quotes) claims you get a 10% return, run in the other direction.
“Clark Reiner, a New Jersey man who manages Woodstock’s investments, explained in August and September 2019 emails to Hang that Woodstock’s strategy involved buying “discounted debt and short-term interest rate bearing instruments.”
Reiner said they were targeting a gross annual return of 10 percent or better, several times what other Minnesota schools were earning on their investments.
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Drivel from Woodstock: “Woodstock possesses the ability to identify the right opportunity at the right time,” and “We…create companies of the future, scalable within their ecosystem. Transparent, trustworthy and tradable.”
Notice the advert-babble, outright lies,and trendy misuse of the buzzword “ecosystem”, commonly used by pompous pseudo-intellectuals who seem to have no understanding of the word’s actual meaning, nor any concern that their pet projects often contribute to the destruction of real ecosystems locally and planet wide.
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I wonder what would be said of a Muslim Charter school or a Satan Worship Charter school? I’m sure the fine people of MN would have a hard time having their tax dollars support those kinds of segregated schools?
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I taught ELLs for many years. When students first arrive and don’t speak the language, they stay together for comfort and security. After they adjust and learn English, they make friendships with other types of students. This can only happen in integrated schools! Private schools often isolate, and isolation often breeds contempt. What benefit did #45 get from his private education? By the time ELLs graduated, they had friendships with others based on interests. My former ELLs were on the HS track teams, soccer, football, chorus, the math league, etc. They had friends of different socioeconomic groups and backgrounds.
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I observed the same while teaching for seven years in a Rust Belt city of 60,000 whose main economic driver was a federal refugee resettlement center. (I use the phrase “main economic driver” in a positive way…astonishingly positive in this case.)
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I had many Hmong pupils at University City High in Philadelphia in the early 80’s. They were a pleasure and eager to learn and adjust to their new environment, rural people from Laos, loyal allies of ours in the Into-China war, being genocidally murdered by the Vietnamese, even with poison gas attacks on their villages. West Philly was a little tough for them so most moved to Minnesota. UCHS was almost all African-American with a significant Asian student body. The young people I knew had no need for their own segregated school, UCHS was too segregated as it was but to isolate them even more in is tragic, for them and the rest of us. I admit my own bias for diversity, the more the merrier.
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“When was the last time your school had millions to invest in the market?”
“My” school continues to “invest” millions in the
testing market, making money for select people, as
authorized by the so called “community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public school board.”
I fail to see the logic of conflating test based
with community based, locally controlled with
state and federal steerage, accountable to the
community they serve with serving the test based
information misuse racket, on and on.
Showcasing the malfeasance of “choice” schools
is well taken, but it doesn’t resolve or stop
the testing malfeasance, carried out by the
professionals, “for the purpose of educating
young people”.
Until the testing malfeasance ends, what
“leg” are you standing on?
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You are unlikely to find a blogger or an author more outspoken against the testing boondoggle than me.
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The “testing malfeasance” is imposed on the schools by outside actors in the state and federal governments. In order to get funding, the schools have to endure all these high stake tests. Actually, in most cases, the school systems are told/commanded/ordered to give these tests or face penalties and punishments. So stop slamming the public schools, leave that to the school reform crowd and people like Arne Duncan or Chris Christie. Christie never passed up an opportunity to slam the real public schools and the unions, especially the NJEA. Gov. Murphy is a breath of fresh air compared to CC.
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Frankly, since, as was stated, that Christianna Hang made the investment in a Hedge Fund in violation of “state law” then she should be taken to court, found guilty, and sent to jail and a very heavy fine. Right now all she is getting but a slap on the wrist and sent home. Putting this charter school “on probation” is also a slap on the wrist. The taxpayers in MN should be raising all of kinds of cain of this wrongful spending of their money.
The authorizer needs be looking closely at the school’s board of directors. Clearly this people do not know what they are supposed to be doing to make sure the school is properly managed. This people must have their heads in the sand if they were not aware of what was going on with the school’s finances.
Just another indicator that charter schools across this country are running wild and free.
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This is why the charter model is a failure and must be ended. There is literally no reason to give a school less financial oversight because it’s trying out new ideas. In fact, there should be greater financial oversight if anything. This is a crime.
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Bethel University is the “authorizer” of Hmong Prep; If “suing the hedge fund” doesn’t work, will Bethel ultimately be held responsible for the lost money? Bethel is “a leader in Christian higher education ” and “one of the most comprehensive Christian universities in the world” according to its website. A major religious entity and its devoted supporters should do the right thing and make up the loss with their private money.
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Imagined dialogue from “The Simpsons”:
Carl Carlson to Lenny Leonard: “What kind of justice is this?”
Lenny to Carl: “Poetic.”
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Dr. Christianna Hang recently resigned, however she has requested that the school board pay her legal fees, that request has been put on hold until such a time she is charged from the Ramsey County Attorney of a crime. Meanwhile, the board hired an attorney to conduct it’s own lawyer to investigate Dr. Hang’s actions.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-26/muni-funded-charter-school-loses-4-3-million-on-hedge-fund-bet
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