A charter school whose leaders have been in the prosecution of a former top D.C. school official may be on its way out of business.
Young America Works Public Charter School was opened in 2004 thanks to lobbying by former Board of Education Charter School Executive Director Brenda Belton. Belton has since pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars and steering hundreds of thousands more in deals to her friends — including Brenda Williams, Young America’s founder, and Nadine Evans, Young America’s principal.
With Belton on her way to prison, the Public Charter School Board is now “reviewing” Young America’s charter along with the 18 other schools that Belton was supposed to supervise, board spokeswoman Nona Mitchell Richardson told The Examiner.
The board, a city agency in charge of 56 schools that enroll some 22,000 students, took over Belton’s schools in June and have been conducting “regularly scheduled” reviews ever since. But the board “has not found any useful oversight records” from Belton’s tenure, Richardson wrote in an e-mail exchange.
As first reported by The Examiner, Belton used a company that Williams and Evans founded as a front to shuffle thousands of dollars to herself, her friends and her family. Court papers state that Belton co-owned the property on which Young America does business and Belton pocketed thousands per month in rent. Prosecutors have also alleged in court papers that Williams paid kickbacks to Belton after Belton steered a no-bid monitoring contract Williams’ way.
Williams and Evans have never responded to requests for comment. They did not return a Friday phone call.
The Belton scandal embarrassed the Board of Education, D.C.’s oldest democratically elected body, and gave a black eye to the charter school industry. Hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into D.C.’s charter schools — mostly thanks to earmarks from Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. — but prosecutors and reform advocates quickly discovered that there was little supervision of the spending.
Ariana Quinones-Miranda, deputy director of D.C.-based Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a charter school advocacy group, declined to comment specifically on Young America, but said she hopes that the board will settle the controversy.
“We all want what’s best for kids,” she said. “And if there’s schools that aren’t doing what’s best, we want them held accountable.”
Got a tip on the charter schools? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or send him an e-mail at [email protected].
