Charter school dreams fade in startup turmoil
By Ann Doss Helms, The Charlotte Observer | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
For years they'd been trying to turn their small private school,
Handford and Moss talked about a school where impoverished children would flourish in small classes led by master teachers. There would be arts and athletics, healthy meals and Latin classes.
"It is all about opening our doors to an academic wonderland that's being funded by the government," Handford said.
Less than four months after StudentFirst charter school opened, those dreams collapsed amid allegations of mismanagement, nepotism and financial irregularities. Overdue bills had the school on the brink of bankruptcy. Students were going without textbooks, losing teachers and taking long naps during the day, consultants reported.
The school's board of directors fired Handford and Moss, who are now suing the board they once recruited. Reached at her home, Handford said the allegations about her and her longtime deputy are "fiction, like the
Board members have hired a new head of school and are trying to salvage the school year for the 314 K-8 students enrolled at the school on
"Good things are happening within classrooms, but we haven't addressed all the students' needs," board Chairman
Board members also face scrutiny and renewed questions from the state. Mack, who holds a doctorate in urban education and is outreach director for
The board's chairman also hadn't known about Handford's conviction more than a decade ago on misrepresentation to obtain unemployment benefits.
State charter school officials, who forced the StudentFirst board to confront its problems in November, say they'll give the board a chance. The mission -- providing a rich academic environment for the minority and low-income students who most often struggle in traditional public schools -- is exactly what charter proponents hope to see as
But
StudentFirst's dramatic reversal of fortunes raises questions for state policymakers trying to preserve quality while rolling out some two dozen new charters a year. It also raises a caution for the hundreds of people lining up to run such schools.
"Ultimately," Medley said, "the buck stops with the board of directors."
A compelling vision
Moss, a physical therapist who was then known as
The K-12 school, located at
Mayor McCrory, who was elected governor in 2012, wrote a letter to a prospective StudentFirst donor in 2007 offering his "full support" for a grant. The letter cited students who did internships and community service. "
Handford and Moss are not licensed teachers, but both have worked in education. Besides their StudentFirst work, Moss worked for a local private school and tutoring center, according to her resume.
Handford, 54, has a master's in business administration from
Handford also taught math and SAT prep at a UNCC program designed to prepare students for college.
That's where she met Mack, who was running the UNCC program. He said when she asked him in 2008 to head a board that would seek to turn StudentFirst into a charter school, "it was honestly a no-brainer."
Going public
That was when
StudentFirst tried twice and was rejected, Mack said.
The recession shaped the future of StudentFirst.
In 2010, Cannon, who has since been elected mayor, wrote to CMS officials urging them to agree. "StudentFirst has rendered an unparalleled service in its community," he wrote.
StudentFirst explored three sites and ended up at
By the 2011-12 school year, StudentFirst was, in Mack's words, "kind of hand-to-mouth." Many students returned to CMS and most of the staff was laid off, the charter application says. In
By then the charter law had changed. This time there would be no limit on the number of new charters.
A lifeline arrives
In
The application pitched a school for children whose educational prospects are bleak, offering "a way to escape the spiral of poverty and crime that currently confronts them."
The application outlined school days that would start at
The plan called for opening with 432 K-8 students and a staff of 65, pulling in just under
The 11-member board of directors submitting the application included Mack, Handford and Moss. One of Handford's sons,
In
Gauging the academic success of StudentFirst's private students is difficult. Private schools aren't required to report academic data, as public schools are. The StudentFirst charter application gave some charts on Iowa Test of Basic Skills, but with little context on dates or number of students tested. Mostly it emphasized individual success stories.
This time, after more than a year of screening, StudentFirst was among 23 awarded a charter.
High hopes
"They presented an exciting vision of what the school would be," Proctor said.
Simmons offered his support and in January brought them to speak to the
Two board members and four administrators accompanied Handford and Moss to the meeting, which remains in video archives. Board member
Halliday, who is now the board's treasurer, did not respond to a call for comment.
Moss painted a picture of a school with strong teachers, small classes, lots of motivational programs, out-of-state field trips, foreign language classes, arts enrichment, parent education and healthy food -- "not your typical square pizza and corn dogs." StudentFirst scholars would learn Latin and swimming, have a chance to do yoga and meditate, she said. Moss described a day that runs from
Simmons said he and most other participants left excited.
Even as the group worked to open StudentFirst, some were planning expansion. Reshall Williams, who was introduced at that meeting as StudentFirst's director of academics, had applied in
Williams said last week that the Miracle schools were Handford's project, and "they just used my name." She said she was briefly employed by StudentFirst but has broken off contact with Handford and Moss, and considers herself "a victim." Williams declined to elaborate, saying she has retained an attorney.
Mack says Handford told the StudentFirst board about her plan to create new charters. They urged her to focus on opening StudentFirst, he said, and warned her not to spend any StudentFirst time or money on expansion.
Doubts emerge
Turner, the Sugar Creek director who had helped approve StudentFirst's application, was starting to worry.
Turner said after StudentFirst got its charter, Handford asked to meet with her. She said Handford wanted her to send Sugar Creek staff to set up StudentFirst's lunch program and computer system. Turner was taken aback. That was Handford's job.
After a 2 1/2 hour meeting, Turner said she concluded that Handford wasn't ready to run a charter school. "I was absolutely convinced it wasn't going to work," she said recently.
She said she knows Mack but she didn't think it was appropriate for her, as a state advisory panel member, to approach him about her personal misgivings.
In
Rocky start
StudentFirst opened in August with 338 students, about 22 percent below projections.
Parents say they began seeing problems early, from students roaming the halls and reports of fights in the middle school to teacher turnover, unlighted grounds and inadequate meals.
Plans to have after-school enrichment provided by community partners didn't materialize. Instead, teachers were expected to cover the evening hours students had been promised, often working from
Mack and Vice Chair
At the board's September meeting, Mack says Handford announced that she had hired her husband,
The N.C.
Mack says
"We knew the
Mack said Handford had spent money for asbestos abatement and other building improvements but didn't have documentation.
Another financial question emerged in September: A board member asked about salaries for Handford and Moss. The application budget had said they'd be paid
Mack says he signed it when Handford gave him a stack of documents to sign in July. He said they never discussed a raise, and he didn't notice the amount on the one-page contract. Mack now says he was "a little upset" by it. But he said Handford told the board she was going to keep some positions open while she and Moss took on additional duties.
"I was trying to give Phyllis the benefit of the doubt," Mack said. "Unfortunately, the hiring continued."
A wake-up call
The October board meeting brought sterner warnings from Acadia NorthStar, Mack and Winstel say. The accounting firm's representatives said they could not present a full report because they weren't getting the information they needed from school administrators.
But Winstel and Mack say Handford and Moss assured the board they were rounding up documentation.
In early November, Mack got a certified letter from the
"Over the past month the
What followed were two pages of questions about unfulfilled promises, unpaid bills, special-education services, teacher turnover, conflicts of interest, attendance violations and other issues. The state wanted answers by
November brought another shock: The school didn't have enough money to cover the November payroll. The board asked "nonessential management staff" to defer half their paycheck to December.
Money, management woes
The board hired Prestige Preparatory Schools Network, a
Those consultants found massive problems, according to documents filed in the Handford/Moss lawsuit: Buses were consistently arriving as much as 90 minutes late. Elementary textbooks had not been ordered. "General disorder was observed throughout the middle school," a summary from Prestige says, and middle school students "were taking naps as part of the day, some for as long as 2 hours."
The school was still staffed for more than 400 students, even though it was serving a smaller population.
"Office staff indicates that
Consultants found stacks of unopened mail on Handford's desk, including student records, unpaid bills and overdue notices. Unpaid bills to local vendors totaled approximately
The report also said that
"It's unclear what the purpose of the other account is and no accountability paperwork has been provided," the Prestige report said.
In an affidavit,
According to the Prestige report, paperwork had not been filed for students with disabilities, eliminating nearly
The conclusion, according to Cramer's affidavit: Unless the board acted quickly, StudentFirst would be insolvent and have to close by the end of December.
Criminal checks skipped
The report raised another issue: While Handford and Moss requested criminal background checks on most employees, it said they did not include themselves,
The state does not do background checks on board members seeking charters, but those boards are responsible for following the same background check process as the school district in the county where the charter is located.
The Observer checked criminal records and learned that
Handford said the
Mack said he didn't know about the conviction until a reporter asked about it. He called it especially disturbing, he said, because it should have been disclosed when she was working for his program at UNCC.
It's up to each charter board to set a policy for handling the results of background checks, says Medley of the
When asked whether things would have been handled differently if the board knew about Handford's conviction, Mack said "possibly so."
Secret meetings
As the board got the bleak reports, Handford and Moss were instructed to launch layoffs and salary cuts to bring the budget under control, but they balked, according to Mack and the court records.
On
Board leaders convened two more unannounced emergency meetings -- on
On
That law, which applies to charter boards as well as traditional school boards, requires public notice of meetings -- generally 48 hours in advance, though the time can be shorter for emergency meetings. Personnel actions can be discussed in closed session but must be part of a public meeting.
Mack and Winstel said the only people told about the emergency meetings were the board members whose jobs were not being discussed and the Prestige consultants.
The board's response to the suit, filed
Trying to rebuild
Today more than 300 students report to
Staffing has gone from 65 to fewer than 40, Winstel and Mack said, with total payroll dropping by more than 50 percent.
On
"I want to see the school go to the next level," says Proctor, who is active in the
"It went from night to day," she said. "My children will not be leaving this school."
Others gave up.
She said last week she's still trying to get attendance records and grades from StudentFirst. She said she and her husband have repeatedly apologized to their son: "We should have realized that it was too good to be true."
Challenges remain
This year's eighth-graders were supposed to move up to ninth grade as StudentFirst expanded. That plan is on hold as the school tries to stabilize its K-8 program.
The board paid Prestige
The school has arranged payment plans to catch up on overdue bills, board members say.
Liability insurance is providing an attorney to defend the board in the lawsuit, but the board also hired former
Vinroot, Mack and Winstel say the board has not reported the undocumented spending to police because they wanted to stabilize the school while continuing to investigate.
Vinroot said an itemized list of credit-card charges, which was prepared by Prestige but not filed with the lawsuit, confirms that some payments were made for building improvements and utilities, including
"We don't think it's stolen," Vinroot said. "I don't think there was proper accounting."
Is it enough?
Medley said the state's goal is always to help a school survive. Still, this much trouble this early on is unusual. He said he'll decide next steps after learning more about the issues detailed in court filings.
"Obviously, the nuclear option is the removal of the charter," he said.
StudentFirst will start enrolling students for 2014-15 later this month. Turner, the Sugar Creek director and advisory board member, says that could be tough. Even before news coverage, "the word-of-mouth on them is pretty negative," she said.
Results from state exams at year's end will be scrutinized. All charters are required to meet standards for proficiency and growth; two years of failing to meet those standards can lead to closure for any charter.
Vinroot, who was a founding board member of Sugar Creek Charter, says startup struggles need not be fatal. That school required an extension from the state before it met academic standards, he said.
He says it's almost impossible to prepare people for how difficult the early work will be.
"I, like a lot of people, thought running a school was a piece of cake," Vinroot said. "It's not a piece of cake."
Staff Researcher
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