The State Of California Schools' Report Reveals Unnecessary Costs And Overpayments To Chain Of Charter Schools

1. Superintendent of Guideline for the California schools, Jack O'Connell, initiated an audit more than a year back into the fiscal issues of the Choices for Youth and Opportunities for Knowing (OYO) schools. The OYO is a chain of independent 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 left of the standard high schools. They currently have about 15,000 trainees in 40 shop locations throughout the state. These California schools trainees do many of their work at house, meeting with teachers two times a week. According to state records, student achievement test and high school exit examination ratings are above average, as compared to other alternative high schools within the California schools system. According to a Los Angeles Times short article of August 10th, just 11 percent of OYO students finished throughout the 2003-2004 school year. The rest of trainees that left school that year either dropped out, were expelled, or transferred to other schools. The California schools' audit was performed by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, who concluded their analysis and provided their findings in a report that was released in August 2006. The audit points out accounting flaws, overpayments by the state, disputes of interest, nepotism, excessive payment, and mixing personal organisation concerns with public schools. The OYO was established and still run by John and Joan Hall, previous instructors from Hollywood High School. They have actually completely cooperated with the California schools' audit, however conflict the majority of the findings. Some examples from the audit report are: • Accounting Problems and Overpayments. The Halls count each of their instructors as 1.92 full-time positions. Their spokesperson, Stevan Allen, mentioned that this is a typical practice for charter schools in the California schools system and is a legitimate approach for compensating school staff for longer days and year-round schedules. California schools superintendent O'Connell thinks teachers ought to be counted just as one full-time position each. The auditors disagreed, pointing out that conventional California schools teachers invest much less time working each year than those at OYO. Nevertheless, the auditors believed the 1.92 amount is pumped up. This example, alone, represent more than half of the $57 million car donation new jersey charity overpayment. Furthermore, the report kept in mind a number of doubtful expenses. One example of unrestrained costs, given by the Times was an $18,000 personnel celebration held at Disneyland. Allen safeguarded that event as an effort at relationship building in between team member, who are scattered across the state. He noted that the costs was less than $50 per team member. • Conflicts of Interest and Mixing Private Business with Public Schools. Besides the charter schools, the Halls own and operate several personal services that offer materials and services to schools. The Times noted that the Alternatives 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 Payment. The audit also questions the combined wages for the Halls, which is $600,000 yearly. The report specifies that it may be extreme for the quantity of time the couple really works. • Nepotism. The Halls produced a separate charity with $10.8 million of the California schools' funding, called Pathways in Education. The charity is run by their daughter, Jamie Hall. Little money has been invested toward education so far. The Halls compete that they formerly had asked for assistance on their operation from the California schools often times, but never ever received any response. Hence, they attempted to follow California schools requirements as

2. best they could with their understanding of the policies. Even O'Connell conceded that none of the mentioned practices are prohibited. The audit advises the California schools should attempt to recover the $57 million in overpayment from the OYO. O'Connell has actually sent out the report to the state's chief law officer's office for review and any required action.