California Schools' Examination Shows Excessive Expenditure And Overpayments To String Of Charter Schools

1. Superintendent of Instruction for the California schools, Jack O'Connell, initiated an audit more than a year ago into the financial issues of the Options for Youth and Opportunities for Learning (OYO) schools. The OYO is a chain of independent research study charter schools within the California schools system, which are independently run however funded by the state. The OYO California schools serve students who have actually left of the conventional high schools. They currently have about 15,000 students in 40 shop areas throughout the state. These California schools trainees do the majority of their work at home, meeting with teachers twice a week. According to state records, student achievement test and high school exit exam scores are above average, as compared to other alternative high car donation ronald mcdonald house schools within the California schools system. According to a Los Angeles Times post of August 10th, just 11 percent of OYO trainees finished throughout the 2003-2004 academic year. The remainder of students that left school that year either dropped out, were expelled, or moved to other schools. The California schools' audit was conducted by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Help Group, who concluded their analysis and provided their findings in a report that was released in August 2006. The audit cites accounting problems, overpayments by the state, disputes of interest, nepotism, excessive compensation, and blending private organisation concerns with public schools. The OYO was established and still run by John and Joan Hall, former teachers from Hollywood High School. They have totally worked together with the California schools' audit, however conflict 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 representative, Stevan Allen, specified that this is a common practice for charter schools in the California schools system and is a legitimate technique for compensating school personnel for longer days and year-round schedules. California schools superintendent O'Connell thinks instructors should be counted only as one full-time position each. The auditors disagreed, mentioning that traditional 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, accounts for majority of the $57 million overpayment. Furthermore, the report noted numerous questionable expenditures. One example of unrestrained spending, given by the Times was an $18,000 personnel party held at Disneyland. Allen defended that occasion as an attempt at relationship building between staff members, who are scattered throughout the state. He noted that the costs was less than $50 per employee. • Conflicts of Interest and Mixing Private Business with Public Schools. Besides the charter schools, the Halls own and run several personal organisations that offer products and services to schools. The Times noted that the Choices in OYO was the nonprofit part of the setup, with the Opportunities part being for-profit. The audit calls this practice and setup into question. • Extreme Compensation. The audit likewise questions the combined wages for the Halls, which is $600,000 yearly. The report states that it might be excessive for the amount of time the couple in fact works. • Nepotism. The Halls developed a separate charity with $10.8 million of the California schools' financing, called Pathways in Education. The charity is run by their child, Jamie Hall. Little loan has actually been invested towards education thus far. The Halls contend that they formerly had actually requested assistance on their operation from the California schools numerous times, however never ever received any response. Hence, they tried to follow California schools requirements as finest they might with their understanding of the policies. Even O'Connell conceded that none of

2. the cited practices are unlawful. The audit suggests the California schools must attempt to recover the $57 million in overpayment from the OYO. O'Connell has actually sent the report to the state's lawyer general's office for review and any needed action.