Charter school votes to stay open

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Friday, Aug. 27, 2004 | 11:22 a.m.

The governing body of the troubled Clark County Team Academy voted 4-2 Thursday to open school, despite warnings that Clark County School District officials plan to push for permanent closure of the 250-student charter school in October.

Becky Pintar, the governing body's president, voted against opening the school for the start of the 2004-05 academic year, which is Monday. Following the vote Pintar, along with two other members of the seven-person board, resigned.

Pintar said she was shown financial documents indicating the charter high school's administrators had used a $100,000 federal technology grant to cover payroll earlier this summer. When she questioned the transaction, Pintar said, she was told the plan was to replenish the federal grant account with the Distributive School Account money that was due to come from the state.

"It's my understanding that the federal grant was supposed to be used for a specific purpose and nothing else," said Pintar, a former School District administrator who is now works as a lawyer in Las Vegas. "I was concerned that those types of shifting of funds were taking place."

Frank Mitchell, the school's administrator, did not immediately return calls for comment.

Charter schools receive the same per-pupil funding as regular district campuses but are given more freedom in curriculum, hiring and instructional methods. Team Academy, for example, provides all of its classes via the Internet.

State statute requires charter school governing bodies to have at least three licensed teachers as members. Lori Wright, a teacher at the school, resigned from the governing body last week. And at Thursday's meeting a second teacher, Ronna Wilkey, abstained from the vote and then resigned. The third nay vote and resignation came from Linda Thompson, a former longtime administrative assistant for the School District who now works at Pintar's law firm.

Following an audit, the charter school was notified by the district of a laundry list of violations of state law, including failure to contribute to employees' retirement funds. Team Academy failed to meet the Aug. 15 deadline to bring its program up to code, said Craig Kadlub, director of public affairs for the district.

Kadlub had advised Team Academy to close its operations voluntarily rather than wait until Oct. 16, which is the earliest the Clark County School Board could vote to revoke the charter. State statute requires charter schools be given 90 days' notice of revocation.

By waiting until October the charter school may be putting its staff and students at risk, Kadlub said. Students may lose out on academic credits and teachers could have difficulty finding new employment, Kadlub said.

But Mitchell has previously said the district's audit was incomplete in some areas and drew incorrect conclusions in others. The school fell behind on its retirement fund contributions because of the delayed payment of $193,000 from the state, Mitchell said. Those funds are now expected by early next month, he said.