Charter schools receive warnings

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | 10:52 a.m.

The Clark County School District has red-flagged three more charter schools for not properly recording student data or failing to contribute to their employees' retirement funds.

Odyssey Charter School, Clark County Team Academy and Keystone Academy join the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy on the list of district campuses that have been sent "letters of revocation" because of a lack of compliance with state law.

Craig Kadlub, director of public affairs and the charter school liaison for the district, said he expected all four campuses to be in compliance by the end of the 90-day deadline. If a school does not fix its problems by then, the Clark County School Board could move to revoke its charter.

Neither Odyssey nor Keystone has met the state's requirements for reporting student information while Team failed to make payments to the state's retirement system, Kadlub said. Team owes the state $74,000 in PERS contributions, Kadlub said.

Agassi College Prep received a letter of revocation last week for failing to maintain the proper employee records and for having two employees without the state license or credentials required for the duties they were performing.

"These are situations that are easily fixed and that's exactly what we're doing," Agassi Principal Kim Allen said. "We will be in full compliance well ahead of the 90 days we've been given."

Craig Butz, executive director of Odyssey, said the charter school fell behind on the student data requirement that all reporting be submitted using the same system as the rest of the district.

A state grant paid for the operating system but the school still had to find someone to enter the data for 1,200 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, Butz said. A full-time employee was hired last month to manage the system and the data has now been recorded, Butz said.

"(The letter of revocation) had nothing to do with the instruction or education of our students," Butz said. "We were late getting the data system up and running, and we take full responsibility for that."

Odyssey and Team use online instruction that allows students to work at their own pace at home. Odyssey is in its fourth year of operations, while Team began in August and has about 500 students.

Sally Armstrong, administrator at Keystone, said her school has been struggling to install the required record-keeping hardware and software since last summer. The district's technical support has been sporadic, Armstrong said.

Keystone has received a letter of revocation for each of the five years that it has been in operation, Armstrong said.

"There's always a little something wrong as far as the district's concerned," Armstrong said. "We'll get it fixed -- we always do."

Frank Mitchell, Team's principal, said a procedural error was to blame for the failure to contribute to the retirement fund. Mitchell said he has not yet seen the letter of revocation.

"We were made aware of the situation by the Nevada Department of Education last week and we're taking care of it," Mitchell said.