Is the Charter School Board doing its job?

by David Safier

A recent article in the Republic revealed that a charter school, Sequoia Choice Arizona Distance Learning, has been getting state money — the per pupil dollars charters get to educate kids — to furnish courses for students at Joy Christian School.

This is wrong, and most likely illegal, in a few ways. First, how can a student getting state dollars as a charter school student be paying private school tuition at the same time? (Many of the Joy Christian students were getting tuition tax credit dollars as well, but that's a different matter.) And how can those students receive their charter school education in a religious setting?

Tom Horne turned the problem over to the Attorney General. Not a bad idea. But that's not the end of the Dept of Ed's responsibility. The DOE's Charter School Board needs to follow up and find out if this is an isolated instance of Sequoia playing fast and loose with the rules or if it's a pattern that should be exposed and corrected. The Board's job is oversight, both of the financial and educational aspects of the state's charter schools.

There is little question that, regardless of what the AG finds, the Sequoia school knowingly engaged in questionable activities. If the Charter Board is acting responsibly, it will do a thorough financial and educational audit of the school and other schools functioning under the same charter to find out if Sequoia is stretching the law in other areas. If the Board doesn't do that, why does it exist?

To be fair, the Board may be looking into Sequoia as we speak. But if so, we should hear that in the media, not just, "We've turned this over to the AG and are washing our hands of the problem."

Here's some starter information about Sequoia, from the Arizona DOE website. Sequoia runs 8 charter schools. A for profit charter runs 4 of them, and a non profit charter runs the other 4. The school in question, Sequoia Choice Arizona Distance Learning, is part of the for profit charter, which means that one of its purposes is to make money for its owners. If it is taking money from the state which it isn't entitled to, personal gain is likely one of the motives.

One of the real problems with our charter schools, from the day they began in 1994, has been lack of oversight. Benign neglect is the order of the day. But when a problem surfaces, the Board needs to spring into action and find out if this is an exception, or if it's the way Sequoia runs its business. Any government funded business should be subject to that kind of scrutiny if problems are found. When our children are involved, it's doubly important.