Providence Creek Academy Charter School Investigated…Once Again Shows School Leaders Misused Thousand of Dollars in Tax Dollars!

Yesterday, the Auditor of Accounts released another report showing that school leaders at Providence Creek Academy Charter School in Clayton misused thousands of dollars in school funds. You can view the entire report below.

House Bill 186 would require all charter schools to go through the Auditor of Accounts for their audits, currently all public schools except for charter schools goes through the Auditor of Accounts. Sen. Sokola’s bill, Senate Bill 171, will still allow charter schools to select their own auditors. The issue is allowing charter schools to select their own auditors. Academy of Dover’s auditors audited Academy of Dover for three years. The reason why Academy of Dover was audited by the state someone phoned in an anonymous tip to the Auditor of Accounts hotline–the Auditor of Accounts opened an investigation. Because of the fraud and mismanagement of tax dollars now we are using additional tax dollars to investigate these schools not only through the Auditor of Accounts but also through the Attorney General’s Office.

I was in a meeting yesterday discussing both bills with Sen. Sokola and the Delaware Charter Schools Network. The Charter Schools Network reasoning for not supporting House Bill 186 is the original charter law allowed charters to have flexibility and to have extra freedom from state bureaucracy in exchange for tougher consequences for poor academic performance. Apparently, the current system is not working and we the taxpayers have seen over and over the cases of mismanagement to outright fraud involving our tax dollars. Charter Schools should have their audits performed under the Auditor of Accounts just like our public schools—charter schools are public schools funded by local school and state taxes.

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DE Online article: Audit finds Providence Creek school leaders misused funds

 

Are We Violating Delaware’s Constitution?

In Article X, Section 6 of Delaware’s Constitution, it states the following: 

§ 6. Property tax; use limitations.

Section 6. No property tax receipts received by a public school district as a result of a property tax levied for a particular purpose shall be used for any other purpose except upon the favorable vote of a majority of the eligible voters in the district voting on the question.

Are we breaking the law by sending local funds to other LEA’s without first asking our residents?

All Districts Per Pupil Allocation Varies from District-to-District

A comment was made by WTFinDelaware  on September 7, 2015 under the post titled: Washington State Supreme Court ruling on charter schools and public funding. I thought it was a good point and needed a little further discussion. I was just going to comment under the original post but I thought many others probably thought the same thing.

You do understand that the only local funds that flow to a Charter School is the per pupil expenses of a resident child attending the Charter School right? So in essence, the parent who choose to enroll in a Charter School also has chosen to send their local funding to a Charter School. There are no extra local funds that flow out. The belief that charters are draining fund is just wrong. They are also draining expenses then also, since the local school district does not need to spend find educating these student.

All districts per pupil allocation varies from district-to-district, below is one example. When a student leaves their school district and attends a charter school the money follows the student. We pay about $1,000 in taxes to Red Clay and we have two children who attended public schools.  The $1,000 that we paid in local taxes was not enough money to cover our children’s education. My neighbors who sent their children to private school are helping to pay for my children to attend public school and so is my other neighbor who no longer has children in the public school system. To educate both my children in Reg. 4th thru 12th grades, the local share that is needed is a little over $6,000.  If they were in grades K thru 3rd, the local share is about $7,600.00. Down state it is much less per student.

Reg K – 3 including Basic students – $3,829.95 per year
Reg 4th through 12th – $3,102.26 per year
Basic (Spec Ed) 4th through 12th – 12 – $7,386.34 per year
Intensive (Spec Ed) K through 12th – $10,340.88 per year
Complex (Sped Ed) K through – 12th – $23,863.56 per year