Charter schools Charter schools that start the next school year in the red will be subject to probation, which is the first step in revoking a charter, state Board of Education member Donna Ikeda said yesterday.
face probation if they
continue in the red
Of 22 charter schools in the state,
10 have projected deficitsBy Lisa Asato
lasato@starbulletin.com"The board policy is that schools will not operate in a deficit situation, so any deficit would be reason to begin probation," said Ikeda, the chairwoman of the new century charter schools committee.
Ten of the state's 22 charter schools have projected deficits for the current fiscal year that ends June 30, according to the state Department of Education.
The negative projections range from $3,521 at Halau Ku Mana on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus to $512,072 at Connections in Hilo.
Schools that project lesser deficits may be able to recover by using grant money or other income, Ikeda said, but she was concerned that others facing upward of $200,000 in estimated losses will not recover.
"When you see figures of $280,000, these are big red flags," she said.
Four of the state's 22 charter schools have projected deficits greater than $200,000 each.
On the other hand, 12 charter schools have projected surpluses, the highest being $500,000 at The Education Laboratory on University Avenue.
Ku Kahakalau, director of Kanu O Ka Aina New Century in Waimea on the Big Island, called her school's projected deficit of more than $300,000 "absolutely ludicrous."
"We would like to see that in a proper accounting in a document, not just a figure saying how much we're short (but) how they've arrived at that figure," she said. "So far we've not gotten one piece of paper to show that."
She said her school's own internal and external audits project that the school will end the year in the black.
She said the school has been paying for its four full-time special education teachers out of its operating budget and even though the department acknowledged that those salaries should be paid by the DOE, the situation has not been rectified.
"That's $100,000 right there," she said.
Meanwhile, the Board of Education, at its 3:30 p.m. meeting at the Lihue Public Library tomorrow, is expected to consider the charter school committee's unanimous recommendation to put a Hilo charter school on probation and also to consider the terms of its repayment plan.
Waters of Life does not dispute that it ran a $171,000 deficit in the 2000 to 2001 school year, but its director, Truitt White, said he felt the repayment schedule to the state, 12 payments of about $14,000 each over three years, was unreasonable.
The school had proposed at Monday's committee meeting to repay the amount over 10 years, starting with quarterly payments of $4,275 and ending with an $85,000 payment in June 2007.
The committee rejected the school's plan of smaller payments saying it "couldn't generate those funds (and) then proposed something with less time and three times the amount," White said, asking, "Where's the rationale in that?"
In February, a circuit judge in Hilo rejected the state's attempt to close Waters of Life because of overexpenditures, saying the law requires it to first be put on probation.
State Department of Education
