I just talked to Delaware State Auditor Tom Wagner’s office to find out when the audits for Family Foundations Academy and Academy of Dover will be released. FFA does not have an estimated date, but they expect Academy of Dover to come out in May. I asked if there are any other charter schools being investigated by their office. I was told “we have a report coming out on other charter schools.” I asked if they were of the same magnitude as Family Foundations and Academy of Dover. The response was that those two were reported to their office and both have been talked about in the public so they have made the fact known they are being investigated. But the office gave me no other information about which other charter schools are being looked at. But it is more than one, and whether this is an overall report or locked into specific charters was not provided.
When is the Delaware DOE going to do their job and not just authorize charter schools, but actually take part in State law which indicates they have to have a DOE representative on each charter school’s Citizen Budget Oversight Committee? This is beyond the point of absurdity. Enough DOE! You are making our state look like a bunch of idiots! Do your job and stop worrying about priority schools, standardized tests, teacher accountability and standards-based IEPs. Because this Department needs to be held accountable most of all! House Bill 53 needs to pass as soon as possible so these charters can stop taking taxpayer money and doing what they want with it! And if their own independent auditors can’t seem to catch these cases of taxpayer theft, maybe their own audits need to go deeper every year.
I’m all for choice. I know everyone thinks I hate charters, but I don’t. I hate the lack of transparency, the lack of fair practices, how they keep transportation funds after they have spent their budgeted amount, enrollment preferences that slight any student under any circumstances, the extreme amount of lobbying that happens for their benefit, the special education issues in many of them, the unelected boards, and the corporate education reform designed to create more charters while leaving traditional school districts out in the cold. There are good charters in this state, but the stink of far too many give them a bad name.
And please, Delaware General Assembly, let’s get House Bill 61 through the House Education Committee and out for a vote. This is what I will call the Kilroy bill: that all school boards have to record and post to their website all board meetings. Three years is enough! The people deserve to hear what these boards are saying!
The Season Of Myths 
I suggest that any public school district facing a significant budget shortfall be subjected to a public audit.
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The DOE can’t even provide guidance to the closing schools on what can/should be sold, what to do with items purchased with state funds, etc. Don’t blame the schools. They are trying to handle the business of closure appropriately but repeated requests for information are not being responded to.
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I get that your blog exists only to stroke your own ego, and not to report responsibly about anything going on in the state, but I still have a question.
Without the reports having been issued, and you not knowing anything about what is being investigated or even which schools they are, how do you know that the CBOC representative is at fault? The CBOC exists to detect fraud – what if that’s just what happened?
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Eleanor, thank you for your well-researched comment. I never said the CBOC representative is at fault. I merely stated there is supposed to be a Delaware Department of Education representative on each charter school CBOC. That is the law. When the Charter School office is at a State Board meeting telling them they aren’t sure if there even is a CBOC committee at Academy of Dover, that is a huge issue. This school has been around for ages, and the DOE obviously doesn’t have a rep on the committee if they don’t even know if they are meeting. The same thing occurred at Family Foundations Academy. So please get your facts straight before commenting about how irresponsible you seem to think I am when your comment has no basis in fact.
If you know facts about any of these schools, don’t throw it out into the ether hoping to sway readers against me. Give me facts. Otherwise your comments have no factual basis. But your comment did give me an idea for an article I will post later today. Thank you!
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As evidenced today, the CBOC at Academy of Dover did not detect the three years worth of fraud going on “Eleanor”. It was revealed today the auditing firm the school used for their annual audits were the ones that caught it. And yet, years earlier, the News Journal wrote a huge article about Academy of Dover and other schools using p-cards for personal use. And yet the spending continued, with nobody noticing the BIG RED FLAG in the state’s biggest newspaper. When the p-card transactions are available for view on the state’s own website! And still, no DOE rep on these schools CBOC committees, which IS required by Delaware state law.
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