California Schools' Scrutiny Lays Out Unnecessary Expenditures And Overpayments To String Of Charter Schools

1. Superintendent of Direction for the California schools, Jack O'Connell, initiated an audit more than a year earlier into the financial concerns of the Alternatives 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 privately run but moneyed by the state. The OYO California schools serve trainees who have dropped out of the standard high schools. They presently have about 15,000 trainees in 40 store places throughout the state. These California schools students do the majority of their work at house, meeting with instructors two times a week. According to state records, student accomplishment test and high school exit test ratings 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, only 11 percent of OYO trainees finished during the 2003-2004 school year. The rest of trainees 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 Assistance Team, who concluded their analysis and provided their findings in a report that was launched in August 2006. The audit mentions accounting flaws, overpayments by the state, disputes of interest, nepotism, excessive payment, and mixing personal business issues with public schools. The OYO was established and still run by John and Joan Hall, former instructors from Hollywood High School. They have totally cooperated with the California schools' audit, but disagreement 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, mentioned that this is a common practice for charter schools in the California schools system and is a genuine technique for compensating school personnel for longer days and year-round schedules. California schools superintendent O'Connell thinks teachers must be counted just as one full-time position each. The auditors disagreed, citing that standard California schools teachers spend much less time working each year than those at OYO. Nevertheless, the auditors thought the 1.92 amount is inflated. This example, alone, represent over half of the $57 million overpayment. Additionally, the report kept in mind a number of questionable expenses. One example of unrestrained costs, given by the Times was an $18,000 staff celebration held at Disneyland. Allen defended that event as an effort at relationship structure between staff members, who are scattered across the state. He kept in mind that the costs was less than $50 per employee. • Conflicts of Interest and Mixing Private Organisation with Public Schools. Besides the charter schools, the Halls own and operate numerous private companies that offer products and services to schools. The Times noted that the Choices 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 concern. • Excessive Settlement. The audit also questions the combined incomes for the Halls, which is $600,000 every year. The report mentions that it may be excessive for the quantity of time the couple actually works. • Nepotism. The Halls developed a different charity with $10.8 npr car donation new york million of the California schools' funding, called Pathways in Education. The charity is run by their daughter, Jamie Hall. Little cash has been invested towards education so far. The Halls compete that they previously had actually requested guidance on their operation from the California schools sometimes, however never ever got any reaction. Hence, they tried to follow California schools requirements as finest they could with their understanding of the policies. Even O'Connell yielded that none of the

2. mentioned practices are prohibited. The audit advises the California schools need to attempt to recuperate the $57 million in overpayment from the OYO. O'Connell has actually sent the report to the state's chief law officer's office for review and any required action.