Auditors inspect finances of defunct charter high school

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005 | 9:42 a.m.

The Clark County School District is scrutinizing the finances of a charter high school that the school board ordered closed last year.

Clark County Team Academy, an online high school with more than 200 students, shut its doors in December after the Clark County School Board revoked its charter, citing shortcomings in the program's record-keeping and instructional methods.

State statute requires the district to perform an audit within six months of a charter school closure, said Craig Kadlub, director of public affairs for the Clark County School District. Once the audit is complete the findings will be presented to the School Board and made public, Kadlub said.

Auditors are looking at a number of areas, including the relationship between the now-defunct Clark County program and Team A Academy, which continues to operate in Reno but has accrued a stack of unpaid bills, officials said.

Team A Academy's administrator, Judy Kroshus, told the Sun there are outstanding bills for rent, utilities and staff totaling about $100,000, all stemming from before the Reno program severed its ties with Clark County Team Academy.

"I can't pay it (the debts) and Team A can't pay it, because if we did we would be paying for things that occurred before we had our charter and were operational," Kroshus said. "That's illegal."

Like the Clark County school, Team A Academy provides distance education classes to at-risk high schoolers, focusing on students living in foster care and correctional facilities as well as teens at risk of dropping out.

Washoe County School District issued a moratorium on approving any new charter schools, forcing Team A to go to the State Board of Education for sponsorship. The Reno school's charter was approved by the state in August, too late for the school to begin full operations for the 2004-05 academic year.

Frank Mitchell, administrator of Clark County Team Academy which opened in August 2003, said he agreed to accept as many as 100 students from Northern Nevada into his program after organizers of Team A Academy had difficulty in getting their school off the ground.

Mitchell said he had an understanding with Team A's administrator, Judy Kroshus, that she would run the Reno office, handling student enrollment. State statute allows charter schools to have satellite offices outside of the district that sponsors the school, provided no direct instruction takes place in the facility. Mitchell said he later learned Kroshus had been tutoring students at the 7,000-square-foot building she had rented.

"Unbeknownst to me, students were being taught there in violation of the law," Mitchell said.

Clark County Team Academy paid more than $73,000 for staff and facilities at the Reno office, including Kroshus' salary, Mitchell said. If there is $100,000 in outstanding bills, those are debts Kroshus created and should be held accountable for, Mitchell said.

Kroshus said the classrooms at the Reno building sat empty last year and no students received instruction.

"Frank Mitchell was our supervisor, we were all Frank Mitchell's employees and Clark County Team Academy is responsible for the bills," Kroshus said.

Team A has since separated its operations from the former Clark County Team Academy and currently has 120 students, Kroshus said.

An audit of Team A Academy has raised concerns about some of its operations, including teacher hiring practices, said Tom McCormack, charter schools consultant for the Nevada Department of Education. When Team A Academy sought its charter from the state, the school's administrators said students in the auto repair vocational program would be able to get hands-on training at commercial garages in the Reno area, McCormack said. But those plans fell through when local businesses decided the potential liability of having students in their shops was too great.

"Right now there's no hands-on component for the students," McCormack said. "It's the equivalent of teaching chemistry without an actual chemistry lab."

State auditors have also questioned the charter school's practice of hiring teachers who already have full-time jobs working in Reno public schools, McCormack said.

"It's a unique arrangement and may not be in violation of statute," McCormack said. "We're looking into what their (the teachers') contracts allow."

Education department auditors are also investigating Halima Academy, a Reno charter school aimed at serving pregnant students and teens with young children. The state paid Halima Academy per-pupil funding for 79 students, but auditors were only able to verify that 23 of the students had received the minimum daily instructional minutes required to qualify for the money.