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Once it gets going, will be streaming today& #39;s special state school board meeting about Epic Charter School and the recently released audit findings from State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd. As always, will tweet things of interest.
And we& #39;re going. State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister reiterates that today& #39;s meeting is about Epic& #39;s operations, not their instructional method.
Brenda Holt with the audit team: This audit is not about charter schools or school choice. This is strictly about the financial operations. Our office is not taking any stance of any kind about the validity of charter schools.
Holt: took exception that the school was not reporting actual expenditures in 2020. They were reporting estimates.
Holt: we maintain that Epic One-on-One and Epic Blended are two distinct districts. There is no co-op agreement in place between the two to allow the co-mingling of funds that we& #39;re seeing.
(Apologies for the lag time. The smaller intern demanded a lunch break.)
State school board member K. Bollenbach: Oklahoma tax payer money is the only thing that& #39;s in Epic One-on-One& #39;s bank account, right?
Holt: Right.
Bollenbach: And you& #39;re telling me it was pledged for something in California?
Holt: Yes.
Holt: Right.
Bollenbach: And you& #39;re telling me it was pledged for something in California?
Holt: Yes.
Holt: Received records from Epic California. $203K from the learning fund was directly transferred to Epic California. Do not believe that money should have been used for that purpose or accessible to Epic California.
Holt: communicated w/investigative org in California that provided us invoices. Found the transactions. Got the bank statements from the bank in California.
Holt on the advertising section: advertising is not illegal under state statute. $2.6m in advertising in 4 months in anyone’s budget is excessive.
Holt: the mall playgrounds were justified as a PE expenditure.
Bollenbach: you’re telling me Epic employees are state employees, getting state benefits, disbursing LF dollars on behalf of children, but those funds that are being managed by state employees we can’t see?
Holt: yes.
Holt: yes.
Holt: not 100 percent determined whether there’ll be a part 2 to the audit. Depends on litigation. The papers that support this document will be locked down and prepped for open records requests.
Holt: we& #39;ve been in touch with the AG& #39;s office about the audit& #39;s findings. Can& #39;t get into it more, in part because we& #39;ve got more meetings this week with other state entities.
Board member C. Williams Bradley: looking at this and these findings, this is not normal. This is not OK.
When asked about how much money the state should be looking to recover, Holt points out that they don& #39;t know for sure whether the $203K sent to Epic CA from the distance learning fund has been recovered, so that would impact the total.
Holt goes on to mention that it would be at least $2.6m from previously misclassified admin costs and another $8.3m in admin costs (originally $8.9m, was partially repaid in & #39;19).
Holt: got more pushback in the audit process than we normally do. Slow, late responses common to subpoenas.
Holt: Used to having access to file cabinets, etc. to get what we need. Spent about 5-7 days on site during the entire year. Know one investigator showed up unannounced and was asked not to do that again.
More than one records request was greeted with "You& #39;ll have to go through the CFO."
Bollenbach asking if any school districts are putting state money in a private account. SDE employee K. Black tells him that none are to her knowledge.
C. Williams Bradley, who has charter school admin experience, points out that doing so is illegal for charter schools.
State school board going into exec to talk about Epic. Will close out this thread and start a fresh one when they start back up...
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