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Thursday, March 6, 2008
Five charters cited for fiscal missteps
Now-closed Colin Powell Leadership Academy
Five Dayton charter schools were cited by Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor’s office for financial problems in their annual audits.
The audits, released Thursday, show two schools — Academy of Dayton and New City School — with budget deficits.
Three schools cited by Taylor were begun by William Peterson, a former charter school superintendent over five schools who resigned under pressure last year. The schools formerly run by Peterson that were cited are Colin Powell Leadership Academy, Peterson Entrepreneurial Training Enterprise and Arise Sports Management Academy.
All of the audits were for the 2006-07 school year except Colin Powell’s, which is for the prior year. Colin Powell closed in January after Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann filed suit saying the school had failed to live up to its requirements as a non-profit because of its long-running poor academic performance.
Taylor issued a statement calling New City’s deficit a concern — it reached $202,319 at the end of last school year and had outstanding loans totaling $113,800.
“Operating with a deficit could lead to further financial distress if steps are not taken to control spending and eliminate the deficit,” Taylor said.
Academy of Dayton’s deficit was even higher, reaching $722,600 for the same period. New City was cited for 12 findings on issues that needed to be corrected, including failing to reconcile cash accounts monthly, excessive overdrafts costing $1,038, missing documentation for expenses and repeated errors in cash reconciliation.
Academy of Dayton was cited for five findings, including having an unlicensed chief fiscal officer and filing an inaccurate financial forecast with the state.
Peterson Entrepreneurial had 13 findings, including missing documentation of expenses, failure to have an operational budget, failure to reconcile cash accounts monthly or record revenue properly and failure to make payments to medicare.
Among Colin Powell’s eight findings were missing receipts, cancelled checks and signed invoices and failing to provide evidence of worker’s compensation coverage.
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