D.C. Charter Schools: "Nearly Nonexistent Oversight"

From WaPo:

Former charter school executive Brenda Belton was able to steal or illegally steer to friends more than $800,000 over three years because of nearly nonexistent oversight by an inattentive school board, an 18-month criminal investigation found.

Even when a school employee warned board members in spring 2006 that something was amiss about the invoices Belton was approving, a divided D.C. Board of Education initially dismissed the report as unsubstantiated grousing rather than fire Belton.

So the whistleblower employee took his concerns to the D.C. inspector general, who, along with the FBI, got a search warrant for Belton's home and office. The red flags he spotted -- noting, for example, that Belton rarely showed up for work -- eventually formed the crux of a federal criminal investigation that led to Belton pleading guilty Aug. 9 to four felonies and facing significant prison time.

In admitting her crimes in federal court, Belton, 61, said that from the time she was hired as the board's charter school oversight executive in March 2003 until just before she was placed on leave in June 2006, she robbed the troubled D.C. school system of both federal and city funds. The D.C. native admitted steering $446,000 in no-bid contracts to friends, sending $203,000 in school money to a dummy company she fabricated and taking $180,000 in kickbacks and gifts from contractors she helped win school business.

She faces up to three years in prison under sentencing guidelines. Her sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 29.

The investigation of her misdeeds -- led by the D.C. inspector general and the U.S. Department of Education's inspector general -- suggested how Belton could so successfully steal without being detected.

She reported directly to the board, which lacked any formal structure for checking on her. There were numerous instances when the school board didn't notice red flags or failed to look more closely into them.

"The board had a lot on its plate, and on one piece, the ball was really dropped," said former board member JoAnne Ginsberg. "The board didn't pick up oversight responsibility the way it should have. People weren't paying attention." One institutional flaw, former board members say, is that the board had Belton report solely to them. The chief financial officer had no responsibility for reviewing her books. Board secretary Russell Smith recommended that Belton report to him, but the board voted against that idea. That meant that a group of overwhelmed, part-time volunteers were supposed to scrutinize Belton's work. No one took on the task.

In the wake of the Belton investigation, the board gave responsibility for monitoring charter schools to a public charter school board.