FOCUS DC News Wire 10/2/13

 

 

Options Public Charter School was founded to improve the fortunes of the District’s most troubled teens and students with disabilities, and the District government sent millions of taxpayer dollars to the school each year for their education and care.

 

D.C. officials alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday that three former managers at the Northeast Washington school diverted at least $3 million of that money to enrich themselves, engaging in a “pattern of self-dealing” that was part of an elaborate contracting scam. The civil case alleges that the managers created two for-profit companies to provide services to Options at high prices, sometimes with the help of a senior official at the D.C. Public Charter School Board.

 

Those companies won lucrative contracts for bus transportation and school management and were paid for services that went undocumented or that were performed by school employees, according to the complaint and supporting documents. The Options managers allegedly received “exorbitant” bonuses shortly before they resigned this summer to run the companies full-time.

 

The managers were allegedly aided by the chairwoman of the school’s board of trustees at the time — WUSA (Channel 9) vice president and news personality J.C. Hayward — and the senior charter school official, who was responsible for charter-school financial oversight across the city. Documents filed with the court papers show that the signature of Hayward, who allegedly helped incorporate one of the companies, appears to be on some of the expensive contracts. The three ex-managers, their companies, Hayward and the charter-school board official were all named as defendants in the lawsuit.

 

Hayward told Channel 9 that she did nothing wrong, but she has been relieved of her duties pending further investigation, according to a news report from the station. Hayward and WUSA’s general manager did not return calls from The Washington Post to their offices seeking comment Tuesday.

 

Donna Montgomery, former chief executive of Options and president of the two for-profit companies, said in a statement that no public funds were misused and that all contracts and payments “were disclosed and vetted by a variety of third parties, including the Options Board, outside auditors and the D.C. Public Charter School Board.”

 

“People tend to believe allegations like these are true when the facts are otherwise,” Montgomery said in a statement provided by Jeff Smith, who worked at Options until July and now is director of public affairs at one of Montgomery’s companies. “This is unfortunate for the Options School and its staff, me and my team but, most of all, the students.”

 

Options, an institution meant to change the lives of the city’s neediest children, served as a “cash-generating machine,” according to D.C. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan, who has asked the D.C. Superior Court to appoint a receiver to oversee the school.

 

Criminal prosecutors are aware of the allegations and “will review all pertinent information as we continue our review of this matter,” said Bill Miller, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr.

 

 

 

Will Sommer of the Washington CityPaper revealed yesterday that the former Options Public Charter School's chief executive officer and chief operating officer are being sued by District Attorney General Irv Nathan for stealing over $3 million in public funds from the school. Almost more incredible than the alleged crime is the fact that co-defendants in the legal matter include long time WUSA9 news anchor J.C. Haywood and the former chief financial officer of the D.C. Public Charter School Board Jeremy Williams.

 

Mr. Sommer explains that the two Options PCS executives set up two companies, Exceptional Education Management Corporation (EEMC) and Exceptional Education Services (EES) to which lucrative contracts were awarded from the school. The Exceptional Education Management Corporation was owned by Options CEO Donna Montgomery and Exceptional Education Services was incorporated by J.C. Haywood during the time she served as the school's chairman of the board of directors.

 

The CityPaper story includes the fact that in April 2012 Ms. Haywood agreed to a $159,000 loan to EES. The same year she signed off on a $981,250 transportation agreement between EES and the school. The contract size was astonishing, especially considering the same service ran the school $70,000 the previous year. It gets worse. In 2013 the WUSA9 reporter gave her consent to a $2,801,721 management fee agreement between Options and EEMC. The Washington Post's Emma Brown includes the fact that the school paid one of the companies $449,000 for billing services and another $1.45 million for items yet to be determined.

 

Most shocking to all of us involved in D.C.'s charter school movement is the alleged involvement of Jeremy Williams, who was the PCSB's highly respected chief financial officer until August of this year. Mr. Williams also served as the interim executive director after Josephine Baker left her post. Apparently, as part of the scheme to steal money Mr. Williams served on the Options board at the same time that he was employed by the PCSB. He then sent confidential emails to the Option executives warning them of pending financial reviews by the oversight body while hiding the suspect contracts from their view. He is now EEMC's chief financial officer

 

Ms. Montgomery, who earned $425,000 in salary and bonuses a year as Option's CEO, denies any wrongdoing as does Ms. Haywood. WUSA9 has taken Ms. Haywood off the air pending an investigation. The Options officials left the school in July.

 

Ms. Brown explains that Options is D.C.'s oldest charter school currently serves 400 at-risk youth. Many of the students have been kicked out of other schools and it serves a high percentage of special needs children. Ms. Brown states that this past July a financial review of Options by the PCSB found “no pattern of fiscal mismanagement” for the 2012 term. A Qualitative Site Review dated March 15, 2013 conducted by the Board contains mixed findings but is mostly positive in its narrative. The PCSB is has now begun the revocation process for the school. The Post reporter states that the PCSB's investigation of Options began shortly after a Freedom of Information Act request just last month from her newspaper regarding the contracts to EEMC and EES.

 

Scott Pearson, the PCSB's executive director, has indicated that even if the charter is taken away the school will remain open through the end of the year.

 

 

WUSA9 weekday noon anchor J.C. Hayward—once called a "news anchor legend" by the Washington Post—is among several people being sued by District Attorney General Irv Nathan for their alleged roles in taking more than $3 million from a D.C. public charter school.

 

Former officials at Options Public Charter School, including the chief executive officer and chief operating officer, are accused of extracting money from the 17-year-old school through extravagant salaries and sweetheart contracts with companies they controlled. The District wants the school to be placed in receivership, with the assets of some defendants—although not Hayward's—frozen.

 

The scheme allegedly centered around two for-profit companies: Exceptional Education Management Corporation (EEMC), which was owned and incorporated by Options CEO Donna D. Montgomery, and Exceptional Education Services at Options Public Charter School (EES), a company that was incorporated by Hayward, the chair of Options' board of trustees. The companies had other ties to the school, too—Options paid for their office space, which they shared, according to the attorney general.

 

At one point in April 2012, according to the attorney general's complaint (embedded below), Hayward signed off on a $159,000 loan to EES. Later that year, she allegedly agreed to a $981,250 transportation agreement between the school and EES—a hefty deal for the latter, considering that another company had been paid only $70,000 for a similar contract a year before.

 

The largest unusual contract Hayward was allegedly involved in went to EEMC. In February 2013, Hayward agreed to a $2,801,721 payment to EEMC as a "management fee," according to the attorney general's complaint, even though the contract had not been open for competitive bidding.

 

Options was expected to receive around $13.5 million last fiscal year, with most of it coming from the District, according to Nathan. Hayward, like Options' administration, didn't respond to LL's request for comment.

 

While Hayward is named in the lawsuit, her alleged involvement pales to that of her co-defendants. Jeremy L. Williams, a member of the school's board of trustees, is accused of sending confidential emails to warn the school's officials of incoming inspections while he was still employed as the chief financial officer of the Public Charter School Board. Another, Options CEO Montgomery, was allegedly paid $425,000 in one year. By comparison, the CEO of D.C. Prep,  ranked as one of the city's top charter schools, made $142,162 in 2012. Nathan's complaint also points out that $425,000 is more than twice Mayor Vince Gray's salary.

 

 

The Public Charter School Board's recent adoption of a plan for evaluating charter preschools triggered an outcry from parents and education activists. But the Board's plan for evaluating adult education charters has gotten much less attention, even though some schools have raised objections.

 

Beginning this year, the PCSB will start assessing adult ed charter schools partly on the basis of whether their students go on to find jobs or enter some kind of postsecondary program. The PCSB says it's just holding schools accountable to their stated goals. But some schools say collecting the data will be a difficult task.

 

DC is the only place in the country where charter schools extend beyond the K-12 spectrum to include both early childhood and adult education. For the past several years the PCSB has used a Performance Management Framework (PMF) to sort K-12 schools into three tiers based on test scores, attendance, and other measures. But until now, preschools and adult ed schools have been subject to a more flexible system of evaluation: they've set their own goals in conjunction with the PCSB, and then supplied the Board with verifiable data about whether the goals had been met.

 

But the PCSB feels it has a responsibility to ensure that public dollars spent on early childhood and adult education are expended as wisely as dollars that go to K-12 schools. And last month it approved a more structured framework for holding these less traditional schools accountable as well.

 

In assessing both preschools and adult ed schools, the PCSB is trying something no charter authorizer has done before, since no other charter authorizers oversee schools of this kind. And its efforts can create controversy. When the Board proposed to evaluate preschools based partly on standardized tests of reading and math skills, the proposal drew an unprecedented number of public comments and a good deal of media coverage.

 

Disconnected youth

 

The proposed framework for adult ed schools has, by contrast, been largely under the radar. Most of these schools serve a population often referred to as "disconnected youth," or sometimes "opportunity youth"—young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor in the workforce.

 

Lately, increased attention has been focused on this group. While it's true that President Obama has highlighted the importance of preschool in ensuring future success, he's also launched an initiative to help this older cohort finish their education and find jobs.

 

According to one estimate, across the country 6.7 million young adults are disconnected from school and work. The figure for the District has been put at 9,000.

 

Of the 8 schools affected by the PCSB's new adult ed PMF, 3 filed public comments raising various objections to the plan before it took effect. Two of those schools cited the PCSB's requirement that they collect information about employment and education outcomes for any student who has spent at least 12 instructional hours in their program and who says her goal is to get a job. The schools are required to track students for 9 months after they've left.

 

Although the PCSB won't be putting the schools into tiers this year, eventually the data on outcomes will be factored into each school's rating. And the ratings have consequences: a school that falls into the bottom tier for three years is at risk of having its charter revoked.

 

The tracking requirement is "both burdensome and unrealistic with an adult education population that tends to be transient," according to a public comment on the PMF by the director of instruction at Maya Angelou PCS Young Adult Learning Center.

 

"We have trouble keeping track of our students even when they're enrolled," says Julie Meyer, executive director of The Next Step PCS, who also filed public comments objecting to the requirement.

 

While the PCSB has offered to partner with data-collecting agencies to ease the burden on schools, Meyer said that some of that data collection relies on students' Social Security numbers. Her school, which has a large population of immigrant students, doesn't collect that information and doesn't feel it's their role to do so.

 

Federal requirement is similar

 

The PCSB responds that what they're asking these schools to do is no different from what the federal government requires to qualify for federal funds. Two of the 8 charters receive grants from the US Department of Labor and are already collecting this data. Those schools, Briya and LAYC Youthbuild, have apparently not found the effort overly burdensome.

 

Meyer says those two schools are more oriented towards vocational education, a claim that is disputed by the PCSB. She also says that if adult ed charters are required to collect employment and education data for former students, traditional high schools should be subject to the same requirement.

 

But high schools do have to track whether their students go on to college, even if those students have left long before graduation, says Naomi DeVeaux, deputy director of the PCSB. And she says that's no more onerous than keeping track of employment.

 

DeVeaux acknowledges that the new requirement will place demands on these schools. They may have to hire additional staff to gather phone numbers and addresses and to keep in touch with students after they leave the school. But, she says, data collection systems have improved in recent years. And the bottom line is that each of these schools says in its mission statement that it strives to help its students go on to further education or a job.

 

It's understandable that the PCSB wants to hold schools to their stated objectives. But it would be a shame if some schools that are achieving good results end up being classified as failing because they don't have the resources to keep track of a largely transient student population.

 

One thing that all seem to agree on is this: we're fortunate even to be having this debate. In most places, public adult education, like public preschool, hasn't yet advanced to this point.

 

 

Advocates for charter schools, teacher evaluations and other changes to public education that have become mainstream in recent years are at risk of turning into the establishment they once railed against, warned the man at the center of Louisiana’s schools upheaval.

 

Louisiana State Education Superintendent John White told a crowd Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute that he and others pushing for new ways of educating children have grown in stature and impact.

 

“We went from small-time advocacy to seeing our ideas through the halls of Congress,” White said. “We now oversee not just classrooms but entire state education systems. Charitable foundations back our efforts. Federal programs bear our slogans.”

 

But achievement carries risks, said White, a Washington, D.C. native who began his career as a teacher with Teach for America and then worked for New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein to create a teacher evaluation system and expand charter schools. He led the Recovery School District, a nearly all-charter school district in New Orleans before Louisiana Bobby Jindal (R) tapped him in 2012 to run the state education department.

 

Against growing populism in American politics, advocates for change are in danger of being seen as elitist ideologues, White said.

 

Instead, they should broaden their focus beyond failing schools in inner cities, he said. Otherwise, “we let every parent in middle class America, every family in rural America, every mom looking for a good pre-K, every kid looking for work on an oil rig, every debt-ridden undergrad feel like we’ve got nothing in it for them when it comes to ed reform,” White said.

 

In addition, White said advocates need a long-term strategy for implementing ideas. Most of the country’s 13,500 school districts are “collections of fiefdoms” rather than organizations that can manage changes to technology, labor and curriculum, he said. State and federal regulations hamstring principals, said White, adding that he has cut the bureaucracy in Louisiana.

 

“In order for schools to change, the central office has to change,” White said. “And I believe the best way it can change is to trust educators to do their jobs. Hold them accountable, but trust them. No more strings, no more distractions, no condescension, no more reports, no more white noise. We reformers must create conditions of trust if our ideas are to work.”

 

Before his talk, White repeated Louisiana’s commitment to the Common Core, new academic standards in math and reading for K-12. Forty five states and D.C. have adopted the standards, which are strongly endorsed by the Obama administration.

 

Jindal said for the first time last week that he had “concerns” about the Common Core after conservatives in the state suggested the standards amount to a federal takeover of the public schools.

 

Created by governors and state education officials in both parties and largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Common Core standards aim to create consistency in what students learn from kindergarten through 12th grade. Academic standards vary widely among states, and that patchwork nature has been partly blamed for mediocre rankings of U.S. students in international comparisons.

 

The Common Core standards do not dictate curriculum. Rather, states decide what to teach and how to prepare children for standardized tests based on Common Core. But they spell out the body of knowledge so that for the first time, a third-grader in Maine would learn the same skills as a third-grader in Hawaii.

 

The standards have sparked pushback from critics on the left, who are opposed to standardized testing and some of whom think the standards are too weak, as well as opponents on the right, who see the standards as federal intrusion. Tea party activists have been particularly active in trying to kill the Common Core, dubbing it “Obamacore” and persuading lawmakers in a handful of states to halt implementation or strip funding for the standards.

 

Last week, Jindal asked White and the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to answer questions raised by one state lawmaker who wants Louisiana to drop the standards.

 

White said Tuesday that Louisiana is committed to the Common Core, which the state adopted in 2009 and has been rolling out in classrooms.

 

“Our teachers have been doing this for three and a half years now,” White said. “You don’t tell your teachers in the middle of the year to stop doing this.” Jindal is not likely to abandon the Common Core, he said.

 

 

The government shutdown has caused as many as 19,000 children to lose access to Head Start today, the National Head Start Association reported Tuesday.

 

More than 20 programs across 11 states did not get the annual grant they had been scheduled to receive Tuesday and cannot provide early education and related social services to children and families.

 

“On the heels of devastating sequester cuts which closed windows of opportunity for more the than 57,000 at-risk children who lost their Head Start slots, Washington’s budget battles have harmed even more of America’s most vulnerable families,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association in a news release.

 

Just over a million children are enrolled in Head Start programs across the country. Annual grants are awarded around the calendar year, so most programs can continue to operate off their existing grants. But starting today, no new grants will be made.