The State Of California Schools' Review Lays Out Exorbitant Expenses And Overpayments To Chain Of Charter Schools

1. Superintendent of Guideline for the California schools, Jack O'Connell, started an audit more than a year back into the fiscal concerns of the Alternatives 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 independently run however moneyed by the state. The OYO California schools serve students who have actually left of the standard high schools. They currently have about 15,000 students in 40 shop places throughout the state. These California schools students do many of their work at home, conference with instructors 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 article of August 10th, just 11 percent of OYO trainees graduated throughout the 2003-2004 academic year. The remainder of students that left school that year either left, were expelled, or transferred to other schools. The California schools' audit was carried out by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Group, who concluded their analysis and provided their findings in a report that was launched in August 2006. The audit cites accounting problems, overpayments by the state, disputes of interest, nepotism, extreme payment, and blending personal business concerns with public schools. The OYO was founded and still operated by John and Joan Hall, previous instructors from Hollywood High School. They have actually completely cooperated with the California schools' audit, but dispute the majority 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 spokesperson, Stevan Allen, mentioned that this is a common practice for charter schools in the California schools system and is a legitimate approach for compensating school personnel for longer days and year-round schedules. California schools superintendent O'Connell thinks teachers should be counted only as one full-time position each. The auditors disagreed, pointing out that traditional California schools instructors invest much less time working each year than those at OYO. However, the auditors thought the 1.92 amount is pumped up. This example, alone, represent majority of the $57 million overpayment. In addition, the report noted several questionable expenditures. One example of unrestrained costs, provided by the Times was an $18,000 staff celebration held at Disneyland. Allen safeguarded that event as an effort at relationship structure between staff members, who are spread across the state. He kept in mind that the costs was less than $50 per team member. • Conflicts of Interest and Mixing Private Organisation with Public Schools. Besides the charter schools, the Halls own and operate a number of private businesses 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 Compensation. The audit also questions the combined wages for the Halls, which is $600,000 yearly. The report states that it may be excessive for the quantity of time the couple actually works. • Nepotism. The Halls created 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 money has been spent towards education therefore far. The Halls contend that they formerly had asked for guidance on their operation from the California schools lot of times, but never got any response. Thus, they attempted to follow California schools requirements as best they

2. could with their understanding of the policies. Even O'Connell yielded that none of the mentioned practices are prohibited. The audit suggests the California schools need to attempt to recover the $57 million in overpayment from the OYO. O'Connell has sent out car donation georgia the report to the state's attorney general's workplace for evaluation and any essential action.