It was an alleged $50,000 audit report error that put Kinston’s Children’s Village Academy charter school before the North Carolina Board of Education for revocation this month, academy officials say.
Thursday, the state school board closed one charter school in Winston-Salem and recommended CVA’s charter be revoked because of “poor financial management,” according to an Associated Press report.
The school board delayed the ruling until next month.
CVA officials said the Department of Public Instruction was concerned with the school’s financially stability after an audit report from the last fiscal year showed a $229,000 deficit. However, they said a new budget auditor discovered a $50,000 error that brought the debt to $179,000, which has decreased below $50,000 as of Jan. 31.
Mike Parker, chairman of the board of directors for CVA, said he wrote memos to the state school board members specifying financial areas he felt were overlooked.
“The largest part of (the deficit) stemmed from damages that our campuses suffered during Hurricane Irene,” he said. “We got hammered pretty badly.”
Parker said there was an estimated $300,000 in damages from the 2011 hurricane. Children’s Village Academy rents the Dixon Street campus building, and Parker said the owners did not have sufficient insurance. As a result, the school had to cover the uninsured damage.
“We had to make emergency repairs to make the building safe so that the children could come back,” he said.
The school, which does not have a reserve fund, dipped into its tight operating budget of local money to cover the repairs to caved-in roofs and water-damaged buildings.
Children’s Village is now contracted with Acadia North,the financial management firm that found the $50,000 error. The board adopted a budget that Acadia will implement to keep CVA out of financial heat. Parker said the new contract has indicated which cuts to make to reduce the school’s financial shortfall.
“We felt like (the DPI) didn’t take into account the effort that we’d made to eliminate our deficit,” Parker said. “I sent a memo to the board of education members. That memo outlined some of the things that I thought did not get enough attention during their board meeting.
“I just emailed it to all of them. That’s why on Thursday, they decided to table any action on revoking our charter until they could do some more investigation.”
For the next month, Parker said CVA will provide the state with any pertinent information to clear up the situation.
“We will bend over backwards to make sure they understand that we have significantly altered some of our practices so that we do not have these deficit problems again,” Parker said.
The board will have 30 days to appeal the decision if the charter is revoked.
He added, “There are many of our parents who are upset, there are many people in the community that are upset because they know the value that our school has given to those children.”
If still operating next year — which CVA officials intend on doing — the school will introduce Phase 2 of its STEM (science, technology, mathematics and engineering) program designed to support 21st Century learning.
Parker said with 97 percent of the 195 student population at CVA on free and reduced lunch, the school focuses on getting children to overcome deficiencies they suffer outside of school. He said a number of CVA students have gone on to the International Baccalaureateprogram at Kinston High School, for example.
He said some students have transferred into CVA from Lenoir County School campuses and vice versa.
“Parents have the right to send their children wherever they think is best for the child,” said Merywn Smith, Lenoir County School Board member. “But I do think that charter schools should be held to the same standards we are as far as staff and teachers.”
Charter schools aren’t required to have certified teachers instructing in classrooms. Only half of CVA’s teachers are fully licensed.
Parker said the CVA’s mission is designed for children to get a quality education and is confident the school has delivered. The new financial system is also a plus to running the school more efficiently, he said.
“We have made a lot of progress this year to make our school solvent,” he said. “(The state board of education) really needs to have real cause to do this revocation of our charter. I’m hoping what they will find out when they really do investigate is that the basis for doing that is not there.”
Jessika Morgan can be reached at 252-559-1078 or at jessika.morgan@kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessikaMorga