The Golden State Schools' Scrutiny Illustrates Extreme Spending And Overpayments To Chain Of Charter Schools

1. Superintendent of Direction for the California schools, Jack O'Connell, started an audit more than a year ago into the fiscal concerns of the Options for Youth and Opportunities for Knowing (OYO) schools. The OYO is a chain of independent research study charter schools within the California schools system, which are independently run but funded by the state. The OYO California schools serve trainees who have left of the standard high schools. They presently have about 15,000 students in 40 store places across the state. These California schools trainees do many of their work at house, conference with teachers two times a week. According to state records, student accomplishment test and high school exit test scores are above average, as compared to other alternative high schools within the California schools system. According to a Los Angeles Times post of August 10th, just 11 percent of OYO trainees finished during the 2003-2004 school year. The remainder of students that left school that year either left, were expelled, or moved to other schools. The California schools' audit was carried out by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Help Team, who concluded their analysis and presented their findings in a report that was launched in August 2006. The audit mentions accounting flaws, overpayments by the state, disputes of interest, nepotism, extreme compensation, and mixing private organisation issues with public schools. The OYO was established and still operated by John and Joan Hall, former teachers from Hollywood High School. They have totally complied with the California schools' audit, but dispute many of the findings. Some examples from the audit report are: • Accounting Flaws and Overpayments. The Halls count each of their instructors as 1.92 full-time positions. Their representative, Stevan Allen, specified that this is a typical practice for charter schools in the California schools system and is a genuine approach for compensating school staff for longer days and year-round schedules. California schools superintendent O'Connell believes teachers ought to be counted just as one full-time position each. The auditors disagreed, pointing out that conventional California schools instructors spend much less time working each year than those at OYO. However, the auditors thought the car donation request 1.92 amount is inflated. This example, alone, accounts for majority of the $57 million overpayment. In addition, the report kept in mind numerous questionable expenses. One example of unrestrained spending, given by the Times was an $18,000 personnel celebration held at Disneyland. Allen protected that occasion as an effort at relationship building between employee, who are scattered across the state. He kept in mind that the expenses was less than $50 per employee. • Conflicts of Interest and Mixing Private Service with Public Schools. Besides the charter schools, the Halls own and run numerous personal companies that offer materials and services to schools. The Times kept in mind that the Options in OYO was the not-for-profit part of the setup, with the Opportunities part being for-profit. The audit calls this practice and setup into question. • Excessive Settlement. The audit also questions the combined wages for the Halls, which is $600,000 every year. The report specifies that it may be excessive for the amount of time the couple in fact works. • Nepotism. The Halls produced a different charity with $10.8 million of the California schools' funding, called Pathways in Education. The charity is run by their daughter, Jamie Hall. Little cash has actually been invested towards education so far. The Halls contend that they formerly had requested guidance on their operation from the California schools lot of times, but never ever got any action. Hence, they tried to follow California schools requirements as best they could with their understanding of the policies. Even O'Connell conceded that none of the cited practices are unlawful.

2. The audit advises the California schools must try to recover the $57 million in overpayment from the OYO. O'Connell has sent the report to the state's attorney general of the United States's workplace for review and any necessary action.